Oops
So I managed to have a wee small meltdown last week. We (the three of us in my little company) were supposed to go to dinner with a client from a corporation that brings us a respectable amount of business. But I'm a geek. It's obvious to anyone reading here that I'm a geek. I don't shmooze so well with the corporate types.
And just in case dinner wasn't enough, said dinner ended up happening in the LAST remaining dot-com outpost in the city. I didn't even know there WERE any dot-commies left around here. I'm talking 'bout the $900-jacket, extra hair gell, Mercedes-SUV types that took over my city during the late nineties. (Yes, the ones I wrote code for, so don't get the impression I'm blameless here.)
Anyhow, I'm there, and I'm horrifically underdressed in my significantly-under-$900 gabardine shirt, black pants, and sandals, having heard we'd be having seafood by the Embarcadero. I also didn't think to bring a bunch of cash for parking. There's
always parking by the Embarcadero at night. Or there are lots where you pay afterwards, and there are ATMs nearby. Except on the bizarre time-warp block where there's
only valet parking, and at first I can't even
get a valet to look twice at me in my Toyota (which on normal days I'm damn proud of, since I bought it new for cash outright and it gets better mileage than anything but a hybrid, and it is NOT a frelling SUV).
So of course it gets worse. I finally get a valet to deign to look at me in my car, and find out that it's ten bucks (due up front) to park the car. And I have exactly nine dollars. There's no public parking for blocks, and I was supposed to have been at dinner ten minutes ago. And the asshole won't let me leave the car in the street for 30 seconds so I can go grab a buck from James. I lost it. I just lost it. I drove to a payphone (cell batteries were, conveniently, dead) and called James and asked him and Rob to please please say I had a personal emergency. Then I went home and took about fifteen xanax and wondered what the hell I was doing with my life.
Damn, man. These are such petty, first-world-y problems to have, too. I should probably just suck it up and be glad I'm healthy, in love, and working. That's a lot of good stuff to have at once. Is it so wrong to want that, plus the ability to write code I'm happy with, plus the ability to maneuver through client dinner obligations?
I dunno.
On the shiny side of things,
Cinder and yoga have taken care of my back/hip pain. I actually feel 35 again, instead of like sixty. And Monterey was fantabulous. We had a hotel cottage-thing right on the water, Jason went body-surfing (I stuck to the pool - the beach had thousands of dead jellyfish that looked
exactly like used condoms), and we went to the aquarium and gawked at fish, then ate their relatives in a touristy restaurant over the water. And I got to read
Beggars in Spain by
Nancy Kress.
So, you know. The usual. Liz tries to act like a normal human and fails, but takes comfort in nature and science and fiction and stuff. Also, Jason. Jason helps a lot.
Posted by Liz at July 4, 2003 04:29 AM