Good days and bad
On the way home yesterday my friend's car died just as we got on the freeway. It was 5:30pm, dark and cold with the potential for rain. The exit ramp we used enters directly into the HOV lane on the left side of the road. For whatever reason my friend let his car coast to a stop on the shoulder. All his warning lights were flashing. He tried and tried but just couldn't get it started. For a moment the engine roared to life but he had to throttle the engine to keep it running. Unfortunately it just died again before he could even get the car in gear. He thinks the fuel pump died.
We waited 45 minutes for a cop to come by. Fed up with waiting we decided to walk back the way we came which was the only option to get out of there. It's impossible to cross 5 lanes of busy freeway traffic. So we walked about a mile and half on the center 15 to 20 foot wide no-man's land, into the wind, while traffic raced by us. It was freezing and i still had my cold. We were afraid that if a cop ever did show up that it would be just as we were trying to help ourselves. There was also the fear that some car would go careening onto the shoulder and wipe us out. We were able to get off the freeway and walk over to a nearby Taco Bell in hopes of making a call for help. Unfortunately we were told that we would have to walk to the next block to use a public phone. By the time we finally reach a public phone it was 7pm. My friend called his wife to pick us up. i had a jacket on but my friend didn't so he was really cold and we just happened to be waiting outside a Starbucks but it was closed for the day already. So he was doubly pissed. i eventually got home at 7:30pm. My friend told me that he went home and had dinner before calling a tow truck. He was surprised to see that his abandoned car was still there and unscathed, meaning no ticket. But as he waited for the tow truck a cop finally did come by at about 9:45pm.
i felt okay when i went to bed last night but this morning i almost felt like calling in sick. i went to work anyway but mostly because i knew i had the important field measuring task to do. There's not to many times when one gets to get out of the office. For about 3 hours i went over a set of the existing plan, duplicated them in ArchiCAD and plotted 3 sets. At noon the office had an annual free staff lunch. After that i went with one of my 4 bosses to the job site. The building itself is actually pretty small but it's just part of group of mixed use office spaces. Most of the spaces are medical offices. Our client is a dentist who wants to renovate his current space and expand into an adjacent, unoccupied space. The floor plan is an odd jumble of walls that once separated 4 tenants into a roughly 50'X50' single story office building. At first i was surprised to see the client because i thought he was younger than me. He looked younger than me but he's actually 5 years older than me. He has a nice office. Have you ever seen a drink station in the waiting room? No not a water fountain but a water and coffee station. Really nice furniture, all kinds of toys for kids, a big tv, and fragrant candles burning. It was all surprisingly inviting for a dentist's office. The first thing we did was measure, document, and photograph the unoccupied space which was once the office for a landscaping firm. That office stunk of cigarettes. We then measured, documented, and photographed the dentist's office. The office was loaded with computers, flat screen monitors, and new dental equipment. i liked the personal office chair the client used - an old dentist's examining chair.
This music, as Audrey would put it, is so dreamy.
We waited 45 minutes for a cop to come by. Fed up with waiting we decided to walk back the way we came which was the only option to get out of there. It's impossible to cross 5 lanes of busy freeway traffic. So we walked about a mile and half on the center 15 to 20 foot wide no-man's land, into the wind, while traffic raced by us. It was freezing and i still had my cold. We were afraid that if a cop ever did show up that it would be just as we were trying to help ourselves. There was also the fear that some car would go careening onto the shoulder and wipe us out. We were able to get off the freeway and walk over to a nearby Taco Bell in hopes of making a call for help. Unfortunately we were told that we would have to walk to the next block to use a public phone. By the time we finally reach a public phone it was 7pm. My friend called his wife to pick us up. i had a jacket on but my friend didn't so he was really cold and we just happened to be waiting outside a Starbucks but it was closed for the day already. So he was doubly pissed. i eventually got home at 7:30pm. My friend told me that he went home and had dinner before calling a tow truck. He was surprised to see that his abandoned car was still there and unscathed, meaning no ticket. But as he waited for the tow truck a cop finally did come by at about 9:45pm.
i felt okay when i went to bed last night but this morning i almost felt like calling in sick. i went to work anyway but mostly because i knew i had the important field measuring task to do. There's not to many times when one gets to get out of the office. For about 3 hours i went over a set of the existing plan, duplicated them in ArchiCAD and plotted 3 sets. At noon the office had an annual free staff lunch. After that i went with one of my 4 bosses to the job site. The building itself is actually pretty small but it's just part of group of mixed use office spaces. Most of the spaces are medical offices. Our client is a dentist who wants to renovate his current space and expand into an adjacent, unoccupied space. The floor plan is an odd jumble of walls that once separated 4 tenants into a roughly 50'X50' single story office building. At first i was surprised to see the client because i thought he was younger than me. He looked younger than me but he's actually 5 years older than me. He has a nice office. Have you ever seen a drink station in the waiting room? No not a water fountain but a water and coffee station. Really nice furniture, all kinds of toys for kids, a big tv, and fragrant candles burning. It was all surprisingly inviting for a dentist's office. The first thing we did was measure, document, and photograph the unoccupied space which was once the office for a landscaping firm. That office stunk of cigarettes. We then measured, documented, and photographed the dentist's office. The office was loaded with computers, flat screen monitors, and new dental equipment. i liked the personal office chair the client used - an old dentist's examining chair.
This music, as Audrey would put it, is so dreamy.