freakE fryday

One of the neatest things about life is JUST when you think you've seen just about everything, something invariably happens to remind you to the contrary. Take today for instance...

A little history first:

I went outside after lunchtime to put my cooler in my truck. It was way windier and colder than I had counted on, so I neither dillied nor dallied. I did notice a small crew of dudes working on the utility line that runs adjacent to the road that extends past my workplace. Even though I'm not enjoying my present job, I was thankful that I'm not a lineman for any utility companies. With the storm blowing in, I couldn't help thinking "Better them than me."

Fast forward two and a half hours:

I'm sitting at my Group W workstation doing research online to try to figure out just exactly what Google wants from our website to raise our overall rankings on certain keywords and phrases. In the back of my mind I'm trying to think of a interesting subject for my next (this one) blog entry. All the sudden my screen goes wonky, I hear a loud booming noise that I assumed originated in the shop downstairs, then the power fails completely. It is difficult to think straight with a half dozen battery back-up units chirping away in some apocalyptic rhythm, so I bolt for the window located about 15 feet from my desk.

At first I notice a fresh, light dusting of white powder on the west face of the Sandia Mountains to the east. Then I notice the rapid, jerking decent of the utility company's cherry picker not far off to the northeast. The crew on the ground was understandably nervous as the basket of the cherry picker lowered to the ground with it's cargo- now a smoldering lump of human-shaped char. I'm not sure if the guy touched the wires by accident, or if weather was to blame.

My coworkers and I watched as a number of police cars and ambulii arrived on the scene. I could tell from the wires hanging from the utility pole that the power was going to be down for a while, and that I was going to get a 90-minute jump on the weekend.

As I left for the day, I was NOT prepared for the smell that hit me as I left the building. It is really difficult to describe other than it was not pleasant. Sort of a mixture of burned hair and a full plastic ashtray that is melting. As I pulled out of the parking lot and began my journey homeward, I thought, "Better HIM than ME!" (About a mile later my mind asked itself if it believed that the rapture had begun. There was no reply.)

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times... "If you are going to get hurt at work, do it on a Monday. If at all possible, you never want to spend payday in the emergency room (and/or morgue)."