(Day two of #100BM)

Not long after yesterday’s spontaneous decision to get blogging again, and to celebrate life’s humdrumness, I went to the gym. As I was pulling on my ultra-sexy compression running socks (which, until recently, I thought were a total rip-off, but are actually improving my recovery times by quite a bit), I got a call from work.

Though I felt like throwing my phone against the wall in a rage (I once got a call from the luggage carousel at the airport, minutes after arriving back from vacation, to tell me the cinema was low on coffee), I answered. The power was out. Again. For the fourth time in a month and the fifth time since Christmas. Most were related to a substation fuse blowing out for reasons unknown (but they were, like, totally investigating) and knocking out one ‘phase’ of power, meaning low-powered items still worked, but more essential movie stuff like, oh, the projector, popcorn machine, and most of the lights, did not. Work computers and all but the ’emergency’ phone didn’t function either.

This time, we lost all power and it was going to take up to 12 hours to fix. We needed to get the word out that all shows needed to be cancelled. The boss was running errands and doesn’t have a smart phone. We had an Embassy-sponsored festival screening that night.

So, I took my sexy compression socks and possibly slightly too small running shorts to the lobby of the banking building where my bunker of a gym is located to update FB and Twitter, to email one of the festival organizers to say ‘Hey, uh, did you guys hear about this?’, and put a notice on our website saying that, sorry, we would not be having screenings today.

Which is about all that can be done even when one has a full office at their disposal.

I then went and had a fucking terrible workout during which I paused the treadmill three times to catch my breath, and check my email messages. I noticed that the most popular post-work radio show in town tweeted about the cancellations, meaning they probably announced on-air it too. My phone lost 60% of its power trying to get shit done in the fallout shelter that is the Downtown Y. My running time was appalling (as expected). It didn’t matter. I got shit done and felt like a very tired low-stakes superhero. Like one step up from Aquaman.*

Then I bought an overpriced smoothie and rice krispie square and had a phone chat with my boss, who commended my getting the message out as best I could.

Still, at the risk of sounding like a Hicks from another mother, I wasn’t supposed to fucking work yesterday. Sure, it was mostly just 15 minutes of squatting near a weird corporate ornamental fountain frantically trying to get a real 3/4G signal, then obsessively checking my phone for updates for much of the rest of the evening (which, let’s face it, I would have done anyway), but boo-urns.

So, Day 2, this project isn’t as ‘feh’ as I had hoped?

Eh, I participated in a (not great, but still sorta fun) trivia thing, ate fish & chips, and got home to a cat who wanted nothing more than to sleep on me. Which ain’t so bad. On a scale of -10 (catastrophic) to +10 (beyond marvellous), it was probably a -0.5.

And although I’m going in early after an anxious night of minimal sleep to help get all of our equipment back online, the boss said something about maybe buying me lunch? I love lunch.

* I literally don’t know anything about Aquaman except that he has a reputation for being useless and that the frankly ridiculously fit Jason Momoa is playing him in a movie and wants to blow that notion out of the water. I am just trying to look cooler to nerds. Sorry, Aquaman.