today
At 4 A.M. sharp as I awoke and knew with instant certitude that the rhythmic sound was not going away, nor was my brain going to ignore it. Said sound proved to be an employee of the hotel next door shoveling the shit-ton of ice that had accumulated in their parking lot. It's not like the parking lot is very big, but just one guy with just one shovel was at it for the better part of three hours. I lay in the dark for about 30 minutes, trying to fall asleep, imagining how I might kill this man. When this began driving me insane, I got up and cleaned the kitchen, did a load of dishes and two of laundry. Then, despite my ~4 hours of sleep, I thought I'd go to work.
I managed to gingerly make my way over to the shuttle stop without falling on my ass. Once there, I had to kick viciously at the ice to carve out a place to stand on the sidewalk so as not to get hit by passing commuters. When the shuttle pulled up, a sign on the front doors informed me that they were broken and that the back doors were the way to go. Indeed, this had been the case last night. So, as two people got off, I walked carefully to the back doors, positioned myself to get on without stepping in a puddle, and was promptly shut between the doors. I'm not sure how this happened-I'd made I eye contact with the driver, he knew I was there. Perhaps he thought that a glance at his visage had sent me running, but in fact I was only trying to access the doors that, y'know, opened. (It turned out that the front doors did work, albeit slowly. But then why leave the sign up?) The other passengers shouted at the driver, I was released, allowed to board and driven to the Metro.
Ah, the Metro. When I got there, the city-bound side of the platform was teeming. This often happens if there's a delay, but this turned out to be single-tracking, which is far worse. Some mechanical problem had happened just outside my station and the opposite track was closed. Oddly, though, the schedule screen seemed to know exactly when the suburb-bound trains would be arriving, whereas the other screen was flashing between seemingly arbitrary ideas: no train, train in 5 minutes, train in 8 minutes but without passengers, train in 17 minutes, and so on. I pondered giving up and going back to bed, but figured I might as well just wait it out.
No sooner had I made this decision than Fire & Rescue showed up. Their desire to evacuate the station was expressed thus: Two of them walked across the platform on the sparser side (presumably in the direction of whatever issue they were there to tackle) and quietly, almost as an afterthought, comment to seemingly random people that they need to evacuate, evincing no particular desire to spread this message widely or urgently. Meanwhile, one of them barreled through the dense crowd on the other side of the platform, angrily shouting "MOVE" at intervals, saying nothing else. Just as I was approaching the first escalator, my train entered the station. I briefly considered going for it, as a number of people did, but decided I did not want to see what kind of grisly consequences might be in store for those who don't listen to the nice firemen. I joined the throng and we all dutifully made our way past the station manager trying to give evacuation instructions through a woefully insufficient bullhorn, past the legions of Fire & Rescue workers descending into the danger zone*, and back up to street level.
*I feel the need to point out that at least one station on the Red line smells like an electrical fire at least twice a week. The station did smell a little burny this morning, but I've experienced much, much worse. I can't begin to guess why this merited intervention on such a grandiose scale.
I thought about catching two buses downtown, but the bus bay was full of fire engines and ambulances and the streets leading to it were blocked off. Unwilling to make my way over icy ground toward the nearest street bus stop, feeling that I'd made enough of an effort, I went home.
In the end, I spent my day packing up all the Christmas fare (sniff!) and drinking amazing tea, so the day was not a total loss. Note to self: Next ice day, just sleep in.