Such a day

It’s Jenni’s birthday today (Tuesday), but for a variety of reasons, we’ll hold much of the celebration off until the weekend. Not to say it isn’t important. I wish her a fabulous unnamed birthday, but I’ll do more celebrating with her later. Happy Birthday, Jenni! I LOVE YOU!

Of course, it didn’t help that the fridge decided to stop doing it’s primary job sometime overnight. When the cat awoke me at 3:30 in the morning to be fed, I noticed the items in the refrigerator were not their usual temperature. I checked a little, then went to bed, deciding I’d look into it further when I woke up.

But when I got up, it was no better. It appeared to be making cold air, but either the fan or something wasn’t mobilizing the air to the rest of the unit. So once I got to work, I called for service. And in one of those truly bizarre, you’d-never-believe-it-happened moments, I got a call from a service technician a mere 5 minutes later, who said he could be at the house in 20 minutes. I told my supervisor I was heading home for a bit and hustled home.

Roughly 2 hours later, after removing three panels in the back of the freezer compartment, the tech found the problem: huge chunks of ice, one of which had actually enveloped and frozen the blower fan which had the sole purpose of getting cold air from the freezer into the refrigerator. Once thawed, the motor sprang to life and merrily returned to its job, and I was back at work in time for a morning meeting before lunch.

At work, we’re trying to absorb the ramifications of the latest reorganization, which always seem to befuddle the rank-and-file. Managers get shuffled from position to position without any apparent regard to what it is that they’ve been doing their whole career, to wit: our manager, who has managed help desks for the better part of fifteen years is being shuffled off to manage two groups about which he openly acknowledged he knows nothing about. Our new manager, at least, is a former supervisor, and at that, one of my former supervisors. So we’ll see what we’re getting.

Then it was time to head home for National Night Out, the designated one day a year when you’re almost contractually obligated to go out and meet your neighbors, or at least stop shooting the eye daggers at them as you pass their house. Yes, for one evening, you’re forced to not just nod at them as they’re standing in their doorway in their robe and slippers after having grabbed the paper, but you have to interact with them and talk to them. About everything except the state of your lawn or the two defunct cars parked permanently in front of their house.

We did not have a block party on our block, probably to avoid any shooting, so we were largely saved from the humiliation. Though one family from our block was at the same event we went to, at church, just a couple of blocks from home. And Jenni invited some friends from a far off suburb. Perhaps it was meant as some sort of suburbanite retraining program…Or maybe just friendship. It’s always hard to tell with her: evangelism can take many forms.

Since it’s the only building on half of the almost triangular-shaped block, the church blocked off one of the streets that flanks the building and had it’s own neighborhood shindig. There were hot dogs and a potluck dinner, lemonade, root beer floats, a fiddle player, and a mayor.

Oh wait…Here. His honor, The Mayor, not looking stressed at all from leading the city and its motley crew of almost 300,000 occupants:

Oh, and there’s Patrick too. He’s calling the bingo game, and Rybak joined in to call some of it before Patrick wrestled control of the game back from him. Or something like that. I don’t think fists were involved.

But let me back up for a sec. Look there at the picture. In the background is a red Prius, which apparently is the official Hissonormobile or Mayormobile or whatever you want to call it. Well, before the mayor literally sprinted from the party at the block behind him to our block party, this prius pulled up and the two people in it looked horribly lost, or confused by the yellow police tape blocking the block. They did a u-turn to point the direction you see there, and right after finishing that maneuver, and with me laughing to myself about what a pair of idiots they were, the mayor and a lackey jogged across the street to partake of the festivities.

So as I said, he called bingo for a bit, glad handed the crowd, thanked us all for having him and helping make for a successful evening of neighborliness in our fine city, and then he jogged back to the low-emission Mayormobile with his lackey and the took off down the parkway to another event, no doubt. Ah, what politics has come to these days when the mayor and one-time gubernatorial candidate is wearing a properly neighborhood themed t-shirt and shorts and running shoes.

A local restaurant later delivered a pizza and some salad, which seemed to cap off the gathering pretty well, and actually, after an unbelievably humid start to the day, the evening was almost bearable for the walk home.

So not a bad day at all, really, even though it had its difficulties, things came out pretty well.

Now excuse me. I need to wish my wife happy birthday again.

See you tomorrow.