It was a crazy / interesting day. Nothing particularly good or bad, just different than what I expected because of a whole bunch of little moving things. Put all together it made the day enjoyable. I guess I’m not that different than the girls in that sense.
The roots of the day actually start on Saturday. We were at Moms’ for my birthday dinner. Pops wanted to plan a day to go take me and Dave out to lunch for my birthday. He had a window job scheduled for today, so asked about Tue or Thu. I had a meeting Tue, so we settled on Thu.
This morning was rainy / windy / stormy. When I got to work there were some power issues. Some people were on an affected grid so their computers wouldn’t work. There were also some lights out. I was able to work though.
Mid-morning I got a call from Pops. Because of the weather, he couldn’t do his window job today. He wanted to switch lunch to today. Fine for me. He said he would check with Dave.
Next, the power problem affected the rest of Accounting. I was down for 20-30 minutes, before I figured on trying to set up a mobile hotspot through my phone. It worked. I got Shell on too since she also has a laptop with Wi-Fi and a VPN.
Pops called back. Lunch is on for today. I told Shell that she only has until 11:45, then I’m taking the “network” with me. And because it was my birthday lunch we were going somewhere with wait service and I was probably going to be a little on the long side.
…I was gone for about 1:30. Lunch was at Toscana and it was good as always.
I got back about 1:15. Power was half back, so Shell didn’t need me anyway. Finally got into work a little bit.
In Accounting, the birthday person always treats the group. Normally people bring in breakfast. I’m one of the few summer birthdays, so I normally do ice cream or water ice or something like that. Plus I eat breakfast too early to wait until work anyway.
With the power problems, the air conditioner stopped running. Everybody was hot and miserable. Perfect time for a cool treat. I went to Trader Joe’s for chipwich sandwiches. I found these a couple years ago, and they are fucking unbelievable! I’m not a huge ice cream guy (that’s a story for another time), but the ice cream is good. And the cookie is great. With a chipwich you need a cookie soft enough to eat that won’t fall apart, but not so hard that it squishes all of the ice cream out the sides. Trader Joe’s nailed it.
I came back and the office was dark. We were being shut down by PSE&G for a repair. I handed out the chipwiches. Everybody got happy. And about 10 minutes later CHH called over to say we were closing. 3:00 dismissal! Happy birthday to me indeed!
Jeff Girgenti 