I Don't Want To Do That Again

     The plan was simple: get up an hour early, head downtown to work early, snag one of the "privacy rooms" on the second floor (rarely in use on a weekend) and use Guest Wi-Fi to do my critique group meeting (this is allowed) before clocking in.

     Because of the parade, I needed to come in from the west and talk my way past a police barricade to get into the parking lot, same as every parade day.  Thanks to the sprawling Methodist/IU hospital complex, the interstate and the river, there aren't a lot of southbound options west of Meridian Street -- Capitol Avenue is the only one that really works.

     I was running late. Capital was unexpectedly closed north of 16th St.  I weaved around, got into a construction dead end and had to double back to Capitol.  The police car near work was unoccupied, and I sneaked past it, into the parking lot, gathered my stuff, hurried upstairs and set up.  Comes nine o'clock and there's nobody.  Uh-oh.

     Opened my personal email to find several notes from group members asking after the meeting link.  I had carefully scheduled the virtual meeting and saved the invitation in a text file, a week ago Wednesday, then sent out a group message with the deadline for manuscripts.

     Unfortunately, I had failed to include the saved invitation with that message and never checked the copy I send to myself specifically for making such checks.  I hurriedly sent the link out to everyone, and by 9:10, everyone had checked in.  But it made for a poor start and I was pretty rattled.  I managed to get through the meeting; it ran late, but I still had plenty of time before work.  I packed my stuff up, went downstairs and looked over the position where I thought I'd be working.

     There was no information about the task at hand.  Nothing in my work email.  I checked the setup for some other things -- all lined up, ready to go -- and sat there, wondering, until the phone rang.  My boss.

     "Um, boss, what exactly am I supposed to be doing?  There's nothing here."
     "Oh, right.  We're running it all from [a different area, with different hardware].  You'll need to get over there and I'll call you." (The same phone number rings at both locations.)

     I double-timed over and still didn't beat the next call.  He gave me a quick talk-though while I grabbed a notebook and wrote frantically.  I was basically a human "break glass in emergency:" if the connection failed, I was there to switch to a backup, using an unfamiliar interface.  There were a few other things to check and monitor, but that was the main job; the rest of it was run at the point of origin or by remote control from far away.

     Traffic was still heavy when the event wrapped up several hours latter.  I killed time until driving was easier, then went home and promptly fell asleep.

     Last year, this was almost as much a challenge.  Next year, I'm either rescheduling the critique group or having someone else chair the May meeting.