Man, I just had the weirdest day. I was having another insomnia attack last night, and made the mistake of trying to knock myself out with booze. Ooh, it was really bad. Giving me single malt when I'm like that is like casting pearls before swine. It's a waste of decent whisky. So I went to work today with a crippling hangover, and stopped in to the company acupuncturist to see if he could do something to help.
Usually when I get acupuncture it's pretty subtle and almost pleasant, but this time it hurt like hell (he was jabbing me in different places than usual). When it was finished, my hangover was pretty well cured, or at least I had so many endorphins flowing through my system that I didn't notice it any more. But he must have poked something important, because my head inflated to like four times its normal size. I was in a whole other world of weirdness for the next couple of hours, sorta dazed, but at the same time my central nervous system was cranked up to wartime emergency levels. I was jumping at little sounds and sweating, etc.
So just before lunch I was walking away from the printer room back towards my office, and a bunch of techies were milling around the open space on my floor (they were taking a class in the meeting room and were having a smoke break). One of them, a very petite Asian woman, was facing one of the bookcases with her back to me, and she was manipulating something with a shaking motion, producing a kind of clicking, popping, crackling sound. I was transfixed, it was like the sound was jamming my nervous system, but I couldn't see what it was she had or figure out what she was doing to it, or, you know, why. Suddenly I realized that half the crowd of techies was staring at me, because I guess I had a strange expression on my face as I was standing there staring at the Asian girl... and she just kept... clicking the thing... whatever it was that she was manipulating. I had to get out of there!
Then as I scuttled away I saw my colleague Jacob standing in his doorway watching this scene and covering his eyes with his hand, almost crying with silent laughter. I asked him, when my head got back to normal a couple of hours later, what the hell that was all about, like what was his point of view and what, specifically, about the scene was funny enough to laugh at. I wanted to figure out what happened. It was all so bizarre... All he would tell me was "That was very funny, Peter." Which I guess was better than what I got from my co-workers all day (which was the now-traditional "Hey man, you really don't look too good.")
I'm just glad today is over.
Posted by case at March 17, 2004 08:51 PM