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what passes for weather
Tuesday, September 21 1999
Strange weather came through San Diego today. In the morning there were high clouds streaming in from somewhere, and by the late afternoon a light rain had begun to fall, the first rain I've seen in San Diego since the winter. The air was so unusually warm and humid that it sort of creeped me out with nostalgia. It was a nostalgia for Virginia summers I remember somewhere deep within my bones, a place that can also distinctly recall sweat beading upon the troubled skin of an adolescent forehead. The television guys said that a tropical storm was passing through, though I have no idea where it could have come from given the frigid 57 degrees of the Pacific.
This afternoon most of my colleagues in product & engineering headed off to Hawaii in an airplane to partake in a company-funded "vacation" to Maui (not Waikiki, as I'd originally reported). There was plenty of the usual last-minute panic-induced coding by soon-to-be merry vacationers, but with plane tickets, deadlines are absolute, and by 2:30 the offices in my part of the building had pretty much cleared out. The only ones left were the new hires, a few engineers who couldn't go because of scheduling conflicts, and the dreadfully overworked Data Analyst, one of the few women in the pre-arranged Hawaii contingent. Suddenly someone had sprung an audit upon her and her much-needed vacation had evaporated over an excruciating series of hours. She and I were the only ones in our part of the building for a time and she was trying to get me to tell her a funny joke so she'd stop crying, but I couldn't think of anything funny at all. Finally she had to leave; she couldn't bear the idea of anyone seeing her in this state.
For my part, I wasn't going to Hawaii because I couldn't bear the idea of 5 days and 5 nights with a bunch of co-workers who look at me weird unless I play along and act like a normal Lite-beer drinking SUV-coveting Schteve. I escaped from that scene when I graduated from high school and I have no desire whatsoever to return, even for an expensive trip to the Enchanted Schteve Islands, boils on the ass of the Pacific. This, of course, wasn't the reason I was telling people when they expressed amazement that I hadn't gone. I told them that I'd be going to New Orleans a few weeks later and that I couldn't justify going on two long vacations back to back. This means, of course, that I sort of have to go to work now during my colleagues' absence, but it's kind of nice working in the office when no one else is around.
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