Hot Rails to Fairview Heights
i got into the office early yesterday. At this stage of the project, we have to have someone on-site from 8am EST to 6pm PST. This means 7am to 8pm CST. According to my schedule, i was the early guy this week. Matt laughed when i said i got off work at 4 or 4:30. "No way in hell you're going to leave the office that early!" i didn't have any snappy retort since he was probably right. But when i got to the office, one of the other guys on the team was there. "What are you doing here so early?" "i'm the early guy this week, what are YOU doing here?" "I'm the early guy! Didn't you get the new schedule?" As it turns out, no i didn't. It was sent out while i was on vacation as an attachment to a meeting invite. Since i was here, i didn't get the invite and, hence, the attached schedule. No matter. But the day went OK and then later, some of the boys asked me to come with them to look at a minivan that one of the guys that's over here with his wife and kid from India was thinking about buying. One of the other guys was going to keep an eye no the store while we were gone. At first, i was under the impression that it was just a stop or two away on the Metrolink. As we were leaving, they said it was over in East St. Louis. That sent off alarm bells since everyone knows, you just don't go to EStL. Oh well, at least it was broad daylight as we were leaving about 5:30 - early by our standards. We finally got on the train and found that the stop we were going to was east of Fairview Heights - about 15 miles east of the river, practically in the middle of nowhere. The van was old and high-mileage, though in pretty good shape for its age. Still, as much as they planned on driving this thing, it was probably best they pass on it. On the way back, the train dumped us all at a station in the middle of the woods and we had to stand around in the heat and humidity - a heat-index of 108 - for about 20 minutes waiting for the next train. Needless to say, we sweat our asses off. i was talking with someone lately about the heat and, to be honest, we've gotten off easy this year. Here it is August and we're just now getting "traditionally" hot-n-humid weather typical of a Missouri summer. We were hot when i was a kid, but we never had air-conditioning. We'd sit in the shade or on the cool tile floor in front of a fan. And that fan had big old slots so you could stick your fingers in and try and stop the blades. i guess we were used to it. "Acclimated" is the proper term, i suppose. i remember when i brought my german boyfriend, Egon, over for a vacation back in '99 and he finally understood why Americans were so hung up on automobile cupholders. "You just run from your air-conditioned houses to your air-conditioned cars to go to an air-conditioned fast food restaurant where you get giant glasses of soda and before you leave, you go back for a free refill before getting back into your air-conditioned car and you need some place to put it." They didn't do it that much over there back then. We didn't do it back when i was a kid. They're doing it more now. We have shown them the way.
