Weather woes
Well, it's a level 2 snow emergency out there, which means that Centerpoint is still open, but most of us case managers stayed home, myself included. I am not driving to the opposite end of the city to sit in my office. All I had scheduled today was a bunch of doctor's appointments, one to a local clinic that closed for the day, which means more driving. Those are getting rescheduled to when the roads aren't solid ice.
My life- and my car- is worth more than that. :P
Of course, this has the added boon of getting to sleep in and have bizarre dreams about being super late to work and ending up being Ben 10's case manager. The other day I was Briareos' case manager. I have weird clients in my dreams, and they have some pretty interesting needs!
As far as Ben 10 was concerned: initially, I was biking to work in this weather, as I decided biking the seventeen miles was going to be faster than driving the slick roads. For whatever reason, Ben was there too, as XLR8, his speedy alien, and I was able to keep up with him. If I could ride a bike that fast, I wouldn't be working as a case manager, I'd be training for the Tour de France, but whatever. Next thing we know, we were being captured by aliens who wanted the Omnitrix, and locked up in a weird prison that's popped up in my dreams before.
The prison is this cage that looks like stacks of dog crates, though out of heavy bars. One can be locked into the smallish crates that are too small to stand, sit or stretch out comfortably, or let into the larger area where there's enough room to stand up, but which has a barred floor open to a lower level where guards are prone to jab their pointy staffs with energy spikes up at you. There are only two doors, which requires one person to open the door with a key at a terminal a few feet away and another person to go through in order to work. Guards have to go in pairs, with a third stationed outside to let guards out if one is overwhelmed inside. The inner door leads to the various "permanent" prisons- one is a room with a floor that is a constant stair-stepper, much like the prison treadmills of long ago. One is expected to walk in this room for at least eight hours at a time. A second room is another small box, too small to stand, sit, or stretch out, but there are no bars- it's entirely closed in, with no windows, and like solitary confinement, they are only let out for an hour a day, if the guards remember. The third room is where a prisoner will be "permanently rehabilitated." Obviously, this third room is a terrifying prospect. Prisoners are assigned to the three rooms by chance, and they never know ahead of time which room they will be led to. They will spend the rest of their sentence in this room.
So there we were in this nightmarish prison, myself, and most of the cast of Ben 10, and we were being prodded from below by guards. Ben himself had been hauled off because they wanted his Omnitrix, so we needed to escape the prison to rescue him. Being Super Case Manager, I wasn't about to let Ben suffer in any way, so I turned the guards on one another, stole the keys, and tried to work the door. It opened, but as soon as one turned away from the terminal, it closed. I managed to catch the door fast enough to keep it open wide enough to get my fingers through. In a burst of strength I wish I ordinarily had, and a burst of throwing my body weight around that unfortunately is a reality, I battered the door down and escaped. Of course, that just meant now I was in the halls of the prison, surrounded by guards with pointy zappy sticks. That was about the time I set off in a dead run for the front gate, and my alarm went off.
I wonder if I would've made it?
My life- and my car- is worth more than that. :P
Of course, this has the added boon of getting to sleep in and have bizarre dreams about being super late to work and ending up being Ben 10's case manager. The other day I was Briareos' case manager. I have weird clients in my dreams, and they have some pretty interesting needs!
As far as Ben 10 was concerned: initially, I was biking to work in this weather, as I decided biking the seventeen miles was going to be faster than driving the slick roads. For whatever reason, Ben was there too, as XLR8, his speedy alien, and I was able to keep up with him. If I could ride a bike that fast, I wouldn't be working as a case manager, I'd be training for the Tour de France, but whatever. Next thing we know, we were being captured by aliens who wanted the Omnitrix, and locked up in a weird prison that's popped up in my dreams before.
The prison is this cage that looks like stacks of dog crates, though out of heavy bars. One can be locked into the smallish crates that are too small to stand, sit or stretch out comfortably, or let into the larger area where there's enough room to stand up, but which has a barred floor open to a lower level where guards are prone to jab their pointy staffs with energy spikes up at you. There are only two doors, which requires one person to open the door with a key at a terminal a few feet away and another person to go through in order to work. Guards have to go in pairs, with a third stationed outside to let guards out if one is overwhelmed inside. The inner door leads to the various "permanent" prisons- one is a room with a floor that is a constant stair-stepper, much like the prison treadmills of long ago. One is expected to walk in this room for at least eight hours at a time. A second room is another small box, too small to stand, sit, or stretch out, but there are no bars- it's entirely closed in, with no windows, and like solitary confinement, they are only let out for an hour a day, if the guards remember. The third room is where a prisoner will be "permanently rehabilitated." Obviously, this third room is a terrifying prospect. Prisoners are assigned to the three rooms by chance, and they never know ahead of time which room they will be led to. They will spend the rest of their sentence in this room.
So there we were in this nightmarish prison, myself, and most of the cast of Ben 10, and we were being prodded from below by guards. Ben himself had been hauled off because they wanted his Omnitrix, so we needed to escape the prison to rescue him. Being Super Case Manager, I wasn't about to let Ben suffer in any way, so I turned the guards on one another, stole the keys, and tried to work the door. It opened, but as soon as one turned away from the terminal, it closed. I managed to catch the door fast enough to keep it open wide enough to get my fingers through. In a burst of strength I wish I ordinarily had, and a burst of throwing my body weight around that unfortunately is a reality, I battered the door down and escaped. Of course, that just meant now I was in the halls of the prison, surrounded by guards with pointy zappy sticks. That was about the time I set off in a dead run for the front gate, and my alarm went off.
I wonder if I would've made it?