Wednesday, March 11, 2009

Something Strange In My Neighbourhood

This day has been just plain weird.

It started with Julie telling me, at 6:20am or so, that the power had gone out 13 minutes earlier (at least, according to the flashing clocks elsewhere in the house). The power seemed to be working just fine, so I got up and hopped in the shower. Just as I was getting out, bam. No lights. So that was delightful.

We all got dressed by flashlight and I stumbled downstairs and out the door to make my way into work. I had 10 minutes before I had to be at work and it takes a maximum of 5 minutes to get to work, so I figured I'd start my day off with a cup of coffee from Tim's if the power wasn't out everywhere else in Acton.

Thankfully it wasn't, so I made my way into the drive-through and waited... and waited... and waited...

I don't know what the guy at the front of the line had ordered or why it took so long to either pay for it or have it made for him, but I must have sat there for a good 3-4 minutes just waiting for the cars to move up one length. Sadly, I was pretty much committed to the line at this point and couldn't have escaped if I wanted to. Grrr...

So I got my coffee with about 4 minutes to spare to get to work. No biggie, I thought. I can still make it.

Then I got to the intersection in the middle of town. I was starting to call down the wrath of God on the idiot who was half-blocking the turn lane until I realized that there was a car with 4-way flashers on. There was also a truck that was basically blocking the intersection from the opposite direction, so I figured there must have been an accident or something and I'd have to find another route to work.

Again, no biggie, but here's where it gets weird.

As I went past the intersection, I looked over to see about the accident but I didn't notice any cars banged up or anything. What I did see was even stranger. A lady was lying face down in the middle of the north-bound lane. There were two guys next to her wearing bright flourescent yellow jackets, so I assume the proper authorities were involved, but I don't recall seeing an ambulance or cruiser or anything indicating what the heck was going on.

Was she dead? Asleep? Drunk? Did a car hit her while she crossed the intersection and tossed her a few yards down the road? Did she trip on her shoelace?

I have no idea, but I'm assuming that it'll be a pretty splashy front-page story in the local paper tomorrow. Supposedly there was yellow caution tape up when Julie drove through there with the kids about 20-30 minutes after I'd gone past, so Garrett got to quiz Mommy about what the tape was doing on the road.

Strange stuff...

Of course, this basically set the tone for the rest of the day. There's some super-bug going around at work, so half of the staff were calling in sick and to top things off, I just finished working a 12 hour shift and I have to go back in at 11pm to cover the overnight shift. Hooray for lack of sleep!

The only upside is that I can basically rest and recuperate tomorrow and be rarin' to go for the concert on Friday night! WOO!!!

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