A free day

Where do you go when 20 minute long storms rip through the neighborhood? You go home of course.

This morning when I arrived at work, I couldn’t get my gate clicker to open the gate into the parking lot. While I was saw that no other cars were parked in the lot, instead of coming to the conclusion that our office was out of power, it took me several seconds of sitting in the alley and two phone calls–one to my mom and one to my dad–to realize it. No, there had not been a freak accident and no, I was not being left out of some grand scheme to take Monday off, but yes, our office may be without power.

Did you know that when the power is out, your life basically shuts down. Without power, there are no working phones, no working computers, and hence no access to email. There is no air conditioning, no ability to use the copy machine, no way to make coffee and no way to refrigerate your lunch. Oh, and there are no lights.

So you get a free day. You get to go home. You get to change into shorts, watch the end of the Today Show, check your personal email and get sucked into old episodes of Beverly Hills, 90210.

And then the power at home goes out. This is 10 million times worse than having the power go out at work. You think you have time now to catch up on magazines, paint your nails, take an extra walk with your pooch; and you do all of that, but secretly you just want to sit on the couch and watch soap operas all day.

The world needs more free days.

[image courtesy of pinterest]