i am, at heart, an introverted sort of girl. it is not entirely uncommon for me to come home from work friday, maybe go out or maybe not, then stay home for the rest of the weekend, until i have to go to work on monday. oh sure, saturdays i might make a quick run out to get hippie produce or run an errand, but that’s a couple hours at most. (and it doesn’t count if i am sufficiently disinterested in being outside that i don’t do anything with my hair beyond shove it under my sox cap.) i usually am getting a little stir-crazy by the end (definitely can’t pull off an entire three-day weekend without getting out) but as i said, it is not uncommon for me to stay inside an entire weekend. this scarf ain’t going to knit itself, you know, and i have stuff on the TiVo i have been meaning to get around to watching (not to mention the entire box set of The West Wing and i am only halfway through season 2, we’re still in the worthwhile, compelling sorkin years here).
but this weekend i have stuff to do. i was going to go out and do some ice skating practice at open skate this afternoon; i still want to work on my crossovers, which (frankly) suck. and, among other errands, i have to take my car to the mechanic’s, which is the only time sensitive item on there, as they are only open from 9 until 2, and the guy recommended i get there earlier rather than later.
so that is why i was very dismayed to shower, get my “goin’ to the mechanic’s” self-entertainment kit prepared (two books, knitting), remember to bring my checkbook even, and then walk down the hallway to discover that all the call buttons on all the elevators, passenger and freight, are not responding.
i live on the thirtieth floor.
i have a bad knee from that ugly skating fall i took, what, 3 months ago now, which is still healing up from a probable bone bruise, and my doctor explicitly forbade me to take more than three flights of stairs at a time. pretty much, i am allowed to climb out of the subway. down is better than up, but it will still hurt. plus, if i walk down, and the elevators continue not being fixed, that means i will have to walk back up, which will completely suck for my knee. (but it’ll have to be done because, although i could certainly crash on a friend’s couch, my cat will need his insulin shot this evening and tomorrow morning. so it’s not actually about me.)
so that’s an order of magnitude difference, there. and while i wait to see when the buttons will start working, the clock ticks away the time that my poor car should be getting some TLC. tick, tick, tick… but i don’t have a lot of choice.
at least, i hope this teaches someone a valuable lesson about single points of failure and redundant systems when it comes to elevator control systems. the least you can do is put the freight car on a different system from the passenger cars.
i liked it better when i was staying in my house because i didn’t want to leave.
