Saturday, Jul. 09, 2005
Hurric@ne Dennis is ruining what little food I have in my refrigerator
I woke up this morning to no electricity and the Grandmother of all pimples smack-dab in the middle of my forehead.
I don't know how long the electricity had been out, just that I woke up soaked with sweat. The entire Grove is suffering from power outages due to the weather bands from Hurricane Dennis bringing us high winds (60mph) and tons of rain last night. Apparently, we got hit worst than Key West, which is closer to the hurricane than we are (Key West is 4 hours from Miami by car).
I almost didn't come in to Job #2 this morning because 1) I couldn't see anything in my apartment and 2) the rain was too heavy for me to drive in. But hwhen it cleared up around 7:20, I decided to go ahead and come in. It's a good thing I did, too. They left so much work for me to do and I couldn't imagine coming in tomorrow and staying for 8 hours to get all of it done in one day.
A couple minutes ago, I almost had a heart attack because I thought I was stuck in the stairwell.
Job #2 Building is under Hurricane prep, so all the elevators are inoperational. I work on the 3rd floor. I used the stairs that are closer to the building entrance, but there are stairs closer to the side I work at. I had to use my key card to open the door to the stairwell on both the 1st and 3rd floors.
I started getting really hungry, so I decided to run downstairs to the vending machines. I used the stairwell right across from my office. When I got to the first floor, there was no entrance onto the first floor because the stairwell led outside the building. I didn't have my key card, cause if I did, I would have just gone outside and walked the 10 feet to the other entrance.
Instead, I headed back up the stairs to the 2nd floor to gain access to the other stairwell. The door was locked. I go up one more flight of stairs to the 3rd floor. Locked. Then my brain started going in a frenzy because I was now locked in the fucking stairwell. How the hell was I going to escape? All the doors are locked, there is no one else there to "stumble across" me, I have no access to get into the building if I used that stair exit, and there are no cameras in the stairwell to alert the security guards, who usually are doing something other than watching the security monitors anyway.
I started to panick. But then, I decided to go up one more flight and try the 4th floor. There was nothing to lose. Either it would be locked like all the other doors or by chance, it would be open. Thank god it was. It would have been so damn embarrassing if I had to start banging on the door in an attempt to get someone's attention.
I called Gus yesterday after work. I did better than I thought I would. My deadline for him was Thrudsay, even though in my head I was planning on trying on Wednesday. I'm glad I was able to hold out for longer.
He called me back 20 minutes later. We talked for about 5 minutes. He was driving to the beach, in the pouring rain, to drop off some books to some girl. And I just wondered why he couldn't drive down the 5 extra minutes to me afterwards just to see me. I didn't bother to ask him cause I felt that maybe he just didn't even want to talk to me at all, which just may have been a figment of my imagination.
We'll see what happens from here. He'll be done with his ride alongs in 2 weeks, just in time for the school year to begin. Maybe by then, things will return back to normal. I hope.
summerroll at 12:04 p.m.