Today is Columbus Day. It’s also National Coming Out Day. I chose to celebrate the latter with my Facebook Status today, and one of my friends commented along the lines of, “Ah, Christopher? Was there something you wanted to tell us?”
To which I think the appropriate response is, “Duh. He goes by ‘Christopher’ and not Chris. What do YOU think he’s trying to tell us?”
Anyway. It’s a Federal Holiday, which means Yours Truly still had to work, because I’m one of five people inside the District limits NOT employed by the government.
(Which also means that I’m one of five people who doesn’t get every other Friday off for working more than 10 hours in a day. On the contrary: know what I get as a reward for working four ten-hour days? A fifth ten-hour day! Actually, I don’t mind, but I rarely have sympathy for hearing government workers talk about “long” hours.)
This morning I went to work, completely forgetting that our building won’t heat or cool offices on Federal Holidays. It’s an unseasonable 87 degrees outside today. And our office has a wall of windows that spectacularly catch the morning and mid-day sun. Needless to say, it was HOT in there. We were all pitted-out and I swear I saw sweat drops hitting one of my colleague’s keyboards.
I finally cracked around 1pm, deciding to hoof it home and work in the comfort of my air conditioning. Which was a good plan, but I was so over-heated, I had to strip down to my underwear to cool off after my walk home.
No sooner than I had settled in at my desk, someone knocked on my door… forcing me to run around, find pants and make myself presentable. It was my neighbor, Michael, stopping down to tell me he’s having his floors replaced tomorrow. (HOORAY!)
To explain why I was home, sweating and looking a bit crazy, I said, “Wow. You’re actually lucky you caught me at home. Our office is hotter than hell because of the holiday.”
This comment could’ve completely derailed the conversation in about five different directions. Fortunately, he just looked at me and said, “What holiday?”
pithypants 