Another Monday in paradise

So I get in this morning, and for the second Monday in a row, something has happened to bring down our ability to do work. At least this morning it is just the phone lines being down - not much I can do there. Last week it was a cluster fuck of power surges, servers going down, and critical servers not coming back up correctly. It took Tom and I 15 hours to get everything back to normal. We spent the entirety of those 15 hours in the server room, with an over ambitious AC unit blowing on us constantly. At 68 degrees. In a polo shirt. Makes for a fridgid existance.

I also found out yesterday that one of the people I worked with at my first job died. She was a tough woman, didn't take shit from anyone. She smoked like a chimney, and was a fan of the sun, so she had the skin of a well worn, lovingly cared for baseball glove. I remember many years ago, when I was working with her. We had gone out to lunch with a bunch of people from work, and ended up at a fantastic Greek restaurant in Old Town Alexandria. Now, if you're familiar with Old Town, you'll know that most of the restaurants, and shops, are in old row houses, with steep, narrow staircases leading up to the second floor. Well, we were eating on the second floor, and on the way down, Marcia slipped on the third or forth step from the bottom. She fell backwards onto her elbows, and slid down to the ground floor. Well, not one to show weakness in any situation, and obviously embarrassed, we kept going. Marcia insisted that she was fine, and she looked ok, so we went back to the office. It was only once we got inside again that we noticed that the sleeve of her jacket at her elbow was soaking. In blood. Turned out that when she landed on her elbow she tore her skin down pretty deep. But she never complained, never said it hurt. What a woman. She was one of a kind, and will be missed.