a colorful day
the journal of Michael Werneburg
twenty-seven years and one million words
Tonight I left work early to go meet my accountant. Or, I tried to. But I was stopped by the annoying guy who is the boss of the small firm next door. I have a history with this fellow.
A few weeks back, I was in a huddle with Yuri working on something when he knocked on the door and beckoned me over with a little cupping of his hand gesture. I surpressed the urge to flip him off. But on this occasion, he was taking me to task for leaving the door to the stairwell open (well, not open, but not closed). I guess his secretaries had noticed that I use it.
Anyway, he lectured me for a while (he's 5'3" or so, has a big beard, shares his opinions as if they'd come to him from god (Cher's kid) carved in stone, and stands/walks on the balls of his feet to puff himself up, like Napoleon). His concern was that someone would do as they did in the early nineties and come up through the two doors on the ground level and through that door and steal all of his computer equipment (I guess he's got the placed packed with late model laptops!). From his lack of knowledge of the geography of the stairs and the doors, I knew he'd never (in all the years his firm has been on the second floor) once taken the stairs. But I told him I'd be good and went back to work. A couple of days later he had a go at the poor Filipino fellows who clean the place.
A few days after that, after having noticed that the door was being left open by someone else, I told his snoopy minion that she could tell him that oh yes, it was being left open. And then I forgot about it other than to make sure the fucking thing closed.
Today the Mayor (he reminds me of a certain Mayor) comes striding into our office just before I was about to leave to harangue us about the door being left open, because it was only his staff and us on this floor, and did you know that an office on the 4th floor was broken into on the weekend? They came up through 'the' door off of the parking lot and came up the stairs and got all the computers. They even took a safe! Blah blah blah.
I badgered him for information on where he was getting his facts (gossip between one of his staff and another cancer-ward-wannabe during 'break', it turned out) etc. After he stomped off, Paul and I had a quick chat, and decided that we'd make an extra weekly backup of the systems, and that I'd keep it at my place cos it's so handy.
Then I finally left, now surely late for my meeting with my accountant. I stepped out of the office, and ran into one of the aforementioned Filipinos. I asked him what was the scoop, knowing that he'd have heard it right.
It turns out that the Mayor had it all wrong. It wasn't 'an office' that got broken into, and the thieves didn't take the stairs after overcoming a solid metal doorway with a reinforced handle and a realtor's padlock on the handle, passing a second lesser doorway, then overcome the door from the stairway. They'd had a key. And they'd disabled the security systems on the six (6!) offices they'd broken into. And they'd cleaned the places out of anything that wasn't nailed down.
Anyway, I went off to see my accountant, paid him, and returned. All lickety-split, given that the transit took 2 hours. Then I got groceries at Yonge + Eglinton, and realized that I had to cross the intersection both ways to go to my bank on the way. But I never made it. For as I crossed the street, I ran into he of the 'Flaming Cruller'; Nelson Costa!
I gave him one of my poorly-cut personal cards that I had printed up a few weeks back (cos I didn't want to go around handing out the collectors' items to friends/social acquaintances), and I'll hear from him first thing in the morning. He promises drinks. He seems very... Nelson. Happy, smiling, round-faced, a bit more grey hair than I have.... He grabbed me in a big hug when we met. He was an hour late meeting some people at that Chinese all-you-can-gorge-yourself place. He claimed to hate it. I claimed to agree. Except he was heading there and I know it's just a matter of time before I do so, again. He's working at Atlantis Alliance, which one of my fellow former MLX'ers just left.
He seemed surprised that I'd thought he was in California.
Dang, I never got to the bank machine.