Making Mountains-of-Suck out of Molehills (also of suck)
Unfortunate fact: I am sick. Not too surprising, that. It's been miserably cold and rainy these past few days. When I get cold and wet, I get sick. My immune system isn't. The crappy part is that I picked up two extra shifts for Thursday and Friday mornings. I showed up on Thursday to find that I was going to be outside for most of the day, excluding trips to my car to warm up. I was guarding the gate to a nest of condos where there'd been a fire, making sure only former residents and site workers got in. After about eight hours of that, I naturally felt pretty lousy.
The really sucky part was the next day. I felt even worse, a result from being outside the first day. Plus, it was colder and snowing steadily the entire time, and my shoes, while water resistant, did not much care for all-day immersion in inches of slush. The other guard showed up late, then disappeared once he arrived and I never saw him again. Plus, I put the car heater on full-blast to warm up right as a big moving van pulled up. "Hmmm..." I thought to myself while exiting the vehicle. "Should I perhaps remove the door key from my ring while I leave the ignition key in the 'on' position? After all, I may accidentally bump the door-lock in a cough-medicine induced stupor."
"Nah. That'll never happen," I responded, as I accidentally bumped the door-lock in a cough-medicine induced stupor. God dammit. Now not only am I deprived of my only source of relief, I'm burning gas about as fast as a parked car can. I swear untold times as my car grows hotter and hotter, the melting snow on the roof and hood reminding me that it is warm and I am not. The sweat pants I'm wearing under my uniform is soaked to the knees, to say nothing of my socks. I am a snowman. A snowman, with The Diphtheria. All is not well.
I call Amber at home for my spare keys, but she's nowhere to be found. After an hour and a half I give up. It is $50 for a locksmith to come out, well over half of what I will make that day. Plus, they will not be there for at least an hour while I continue to burn gas, warming an invisible Dale while the flesh-and-blood one freezes his fleshy, bloody little ass off. To top it all off, that's just for coming out, even if they can't get it or totally desecrate my locks. Fuck the locksmiths. We rockin' this shit DIY.
First, I ask for help. One of the guys from management has a jimmy, which warms my heart figuratively, though not literally, as he attempts to use for about 20 minutes with no success. I ask anyone passing by for a coat-hanger, as I am not allowed to leave the gate. I finally get two different guys arriving both at once, each with a coat hanger. SInce I have never done this before and they are poking away as if they know what they are doing, I defer. They do not.
Therefore, after about 10-15 additional minutes they leave for lunch. Dave, the maintenance guy (who incidentally locked his keys in the maintenance trailer that same morning), left me a screwdriver and a third coathanger, so I give 'er a go. I prove surprisingly good at breaking into my own car. It takes me a few minutes to figure out what to do, but once I get it right it takes only about 10 more minutes. I untwisted my coathanger instead of cutting it, then corkscrewed it through the window insulation and into the car. Shoving the screwdriver into the doorjamb gave me all the room I needed.
I finally caught a break. I have power locks, vastly easier to trip with a wavering coat hanger.
I was supposed to go to a party tonight, but I think you can guess that somehow I just didn't feel like it. Instead, I think I will drink tea, consume meds, and play some Gyromite. Since the game was designed for that worthless R.O.B. robot, you have to play it with two controllers. It's like a really shitty Wii.