The Longest Day: Part One

There recently was a fairly eventful day in my life by my own standards, and so I feel compelled once again to drag you through several days of recounting the tale. There's fun, excitement, personal growth and frustration, so I would hope it would hold some interest even for the un-entangled reader. Now, I rather knew it would be a full day, but just what a confluence of events and factors it was to entail I really don't imagine I could have guessed. Naturally, this account will transpire over several days.

 The story of the day really begins the night before. The garbage disposal in my apartment and one of the toilets in same had been busted for some time, and finally my roommate was fed up and called the landlady. It's not that I didn't care- I just didn't care enough to call. The point is that I wound up scheduling the handyman's visit. Readers will know how I feel about such men. He wanted to come the following day, and I advised that it wouldn't be a good day. Any day would be good if we were to just let him come and work without our presence. I have no problem with that, but other points of view had to be taken into consideration. At any rate, it came out that if he couldn't come that next day, he couldn't come at all for another week.

I begrudgingly consented to him coming in the morning with the hopes that he'd be in and our before the plans of my roommate and I commenced. The handyman said he'd come between 7 and 7:30pm: criminally early in my opinion, but superior to any perceivable alternative. I agreed, and resigned myself to getting up earlier than I wanted and being tired the whole next day. Come the next day, I was up and ready at the appointed time. The same could not be said for my dear friend the handyman. I presumed for some time that he must be so badly under the weather that not only was he unable to come on time, he could not even bring himself to lift up the phone and call to allay my fears of his impending death.

Finally, around an hour and a half after the latest time he had indicated he might be coming, he came. He appeared to be in miraculously good health, and assessed the situation. Regrettably, he was unable to fix the disposal, and advised that he would have to consult with the landlady and procure a replacement unit. That sounded as if it would take time, and I was not wrong. He and his assistant left, saying they'd be back. That was still shortly after 9. They returned another hour and a half later, ready to get down to business. This was half an hour before the unshakable deadline I had given.

Happily, the transit time I had figured on to reach the location of the day's first planned activity was decreased by the unexpected availability of a ride from my roommate, who I had only recently found out was even doing the same thing I was. The work would be left incomplete when we had to leave. One last inconvenience: the necessity of shutting down all the circuits at the fuse box because they're so poorly labeled. Word came a few minutes after we'd left the apartment that work was completed and the handyman had left with the door locked behind him. It was psychologically satisfying to receive that information, and eased my mind as we headed for our activity.

Tomorrow: I shall tell of the Myers-Briggs/Strength Finder workshop we were then hurtling towards with reckless abandon!