Wanted: a happy hour.

(note: written Thursday after work via blackberry)

At this moment my day feels like a comedy of errors. I spent all day yesterday at my client's office instead of mine - it was a productive day, but there was no time to breathe. Today promised to be more of the same, so I took a deep breath on the way to work, and fortified myself with a Firehook creation. Except that there was a figurative fire this morning, and my client and cohort raced to deal with it while I focused on the task we had intended for today. Most of my day was spent on my laptop in my client's office with my iPod plugged in as I struggled to ignore the five other people coming, going, and gabbing.

At 230pm I claimed a sanity break and headed over to my office in order to fight a losing battle with our IT department for an email stuck in the company filters. "But I NEED it!," actually left my mouth. I barely contained the foot stamp that wanted to accompany that statement.

My hour up, and a few losing innings of Boston baseball later, I was back at the client site, fighting with file transfers, and watching the clock. Bill and Anna were going to meet me at a new bar I'd spotted on the modified commute, and there were happy hour sushi specials and fruity drinks waiting for me. "I'm leaving at 530pm," I told myself, without much conviction, "or 545pm at the latest.". That was better. That came out with more force. At 545pm, one last print-out came from the printer. "You can spare 5 more minutes, can't you? We'll all feel super virtuous if we finish this," my client said with a hopeful expression. I agreed, doing my very best to sound gracious, despite knowing we would neither be merely 5 minutes, nor finish tonight*. Sure enough, at 6pm I pulled out the blackberry, and checked the next train arrival. "Ok," I said, "now I HAVE to go." I put on my coat and headed for the door - feeling somewhat guilty for leaving my co-worker behind, but I was done. I hit the down button for the elevator, and thought to myself, "I can make it across the street and down into the station in 8 minutes..."

The elevator came, I entered, let the doors close, and pushed the button for the first floor. The button light flashed, and went out; nothing else happened. I frowned, and pushed the button again. The light flashed and went out. I took a deep breath and pushed the 'door open' button. The same thing happened. "Ok, don't panic," I thought as I pushed every single button. Each one flashed in turn before going dark, and still no motion in the elevator. Now here's the thing, I have an irrational fear of being trapped in the elevator. Not in the Speed, some crazy guy's set a bomb and we have to hope Keanu Reeves comes to save the day in the worst movie I own that I can inexplicably watch over and over, kind of fear. An elevator just seems such a helpless sort of place to get trapped. No cell service, no one instantly on the horn to get things moving. I mean, if your metro train gets stuck underground, people know from the get-go. Also, there are people in the train with you. I'm very good at being calmer than the people around me in stressful situations, but you leave me alone, and I go from regular day to freak-out in no time. As evidenced by the fact that all of this went through my head in the 60 seconds between the last button pushed and the elevator kicking into motion. Of course, when you're in an elevator that's not responding to any buttons, but suddenly starts moving - not exactly comforting! Turns out, a woman had called the elevator from the floor below mine. The elevator stopped, the doors opened, and I burst out, almost shouting, "Don't get on this elevator!" She was taken aback, but followed me to the stairs, and I started jogging down the stairs on an ankle that gave a little twinge as I hit the bottom flight of stairs. Of course, without thinking, I'd headed for the set of stairs on the opposite side of the building than I'm used to, and came out in a bare, white hallway, thinking, "I just want out of the building!" I was almost running by this point. The woman following me had to give me directions to the lobby, and I didn't even stop to say thanks, I just headed for the door. I jogged across the street, called my client while walking the block to the Metro station to warn him off the elevators, and headed down the escalator to the sound of a train pulling out of the station. I hit the platform, saw 6 minutes on the board for the next train, flexed my ankle, and let out a quiet, but intense "f___!"

I caught a bus straight out of the Metro and made it to happy hour a mere 10 minutes late, where the drinks were pretty great, the crowd was out of control (and overly gelled), and the decision was made that Anna and I were more Monday-night kind of people. So we let the cucumber mojitos do their things and headed to a lower-key locale for the rest of the night.

*They did finish Thursday night, but not until 7pm.