Pole dancing with no A/C
It was one of those days. Should've stayed in bed.
One of the intersections on my daily commute is Joliet Street and Route 59 on the edge of West Chicago. Route 59 is easily the bigger road, but plenty of people use Joliet to get from 59 to 38 (those two roads meet, but 59 shifts eastward and Joliet is the true north-south connection). Even if you get caught by the red light on Joliet, if there are northbound 59 people turning left onto northbound Joliet, you'll get the right-turn arrow to go south on 59. Today, I got caught by the light, and nobody was turning left from 59--and that was a good thing, as I noticed something odd in the street. What the heck is that? Caught in the right-turn lane, I could see four wooden poles in the road. Oh, that's great, an accident waiting to happen. They were carved, like they had finials at the top, and were pretty long. And, they were blocking the outer southbound lane of 59. The first few cars saw what was going on and slowly edged around them; the inner lane was clear and was able to go straight, no problem. But, eventually there was this blue van that hadn't paid attention to how slowly the cars in front of it were going, and how they were swerving over to the right for some reason, and nearly ran into the four poles, getting so close it couldn't go around them. Nice. The four poles were sort of strewn like matchsticks on the ground, haphazardly scattered. Soon after the blue van appeared, this truck pulls up next to me in the left-turn lane and comes to a stop and two guys get out. I soon realize it's the people who dropped the stuff on the ground, and they manage to stop traffic and pick up the poles. Meanwhile, somebody honked, possibly at me, because I'm just sitting there. Well, let's see, there's a potentially hazardous situation going on that easily could cause an accident, so no, I'm not going to go, and second, now the truck is blocking my vision, so yeah. You can wait a minute. It won't kill you. The guys pick up the poles and traffic resumes on 59, and I'm able to pull up enough to see when traffic cleared, and then I was able to go. It dawned on me that it's entirely possible that someone southbound on 59 was honking, but it's neither here nor there now. I'm just glad it was resolved easily--and I'm currently wondering why I didn't try to get a picture.
So then I get to work, and it's been a long week, and it turns out my boss is off today. Because he got an opportunity to see a show in New York and he took it. Never mind that we're in the middle of our busiest time of year (today was my short day; I left at 4:15; I'd had a work thing yesterday) AND we're still in the middle of having the roof replaced, which today necessitated turning off the air conditioning. It wasn't bad in the morning but by the afternoon it got stuffy. At least it wasn't humid outside like it's been and we could open the doors for some fresh air. However, there's still a lot of pounding from up above; it sounds like they have a dinosaur walking around up there at times. Better, my poor coworker, who does not have a drop ceiling over his head, got hit with something that fell this morning. Perhaps they should have handed out hardhats when this project started. There are three desks back where he works and they're all covered in crap. I'm not sure how it's all getting inside, because I would think the crevices are small but these chunks are decent-sized. Hopefully by tomorrow they'll have moved on to another portion of the roof and our part will be done. The parking spots in our area, formerly blocked by dump truck trailers and styrofoam, are clearing out, which is a good sign. Hopefully we'll be able to start parking in our normal spots soon.
One of the intersections on my daily commute is Joliet Street and Route 59 on the edge of West Chicago. Route 59 is easily the bigger road, but plenty of people use Joliet to get from 59 to 38 (those two roads meet, but 59 shifts eastward and Joliet is the true north-south connection). Even if you get caught by the red light on Joliet, if there are northbound 59 people turning left onto northbound Joliet, you'll get the right-turn arrow to go south on 59. Today, I got caught by the light, and nobody was turning left from 59--and that was a good thing, as I noticed something odd in the street. What the heck is that? Caught in the right-turn lane, I could see four wooden poles in the road. Oh, that's great, an accident waiting to happen. They were carved, like they had finials at the top, and were pretty long. And, they were blocking the outer southbound lane of 59. The first few cars saw what was going on and slowly edged around them; the inner lane was clear and was able to go straight, no problem. But, eventually there was this blue van that hadn't paid attention to how slowly the cars in front of it were going, and how they were swerving over to the right for some reason, and nearly ran into the four poles, getting so close it couldn't go around them. Nice. The four poles were sort of strewn like matchsticks on the ground, haphazardly scattered. Soon after the blue van appeared, this truck pulls up next to me in the left-turn lane and comes to a stop and two guys get out. I soon realize it's the people who dropped the stuff on the ground, and they manage to stop traffic and pick up the poles. Meanwhile, somebody honked, possibly at me, because I'm just sitting there. Well, let's see, there's a potentially hazardous situation going on that easily could cause an accident, so no, I'm not going to go, and second, now the truck is blocking my vision, so yeah. You can wait a minute. It won't kill you. The guys pick up the poles and traffic resumes on 59, and I'm able to pull up enough to see when traffic cleared, and then I was able to go. It dawned on me that it's entirely possible that someone southbound on 59 was honking, but it's neither here nor there now. I'm just glad it was resolved easily--and I'm currently wondering why I didn't try to get a picture.
So then I get to work, and it's been a long week, and it turns out my boss is off today. Because he got an opportunity to see a show in New York and he took it. Never mind that we're in the middle of our busiest time of year (today was my short day; I left at 4:15; I'd had a work thing yesterday) AND we're still in the middle of having the roof replaced, which today necessitated turning off the air conditioning. It wasn't bad in the morning but by the afternoon it got stuffy. At least it wasn't humid outside like it's been and we could open the doors for some fresh air. However, there's still a lot of pounding from up above; it sounds like they have a dinosaur walking around up there at times. Better, my poor coworker, who does not have a drop ceiling over his head, got hit with something that fell this morning. Perhaps they should have handed out hardhats when this project started. There are three desks back where he works and they're all covered in crap. I'm not sure how it's all getting inside, because I would think the crevices are small but these chunks are decent-sized. Hopefully by tomorrow they'll have moved on to another portion of the roof and our part will be done. The parking spots in our area, formerly blocked by dump truck trailers and styrofoam, are clearing out, which is a good sign. Hopefully we'll be able to start parking in our normal spots soon.