A Night To Remember

This past weekend Jessica and I went up to NorCal to visit my brother and my friend Heidi who was visiting the U.S. briefly before heading back to Europe for school. There was a lot of activity during our stay and some of the main highlights from the trip consisted of wine tasting, eating dinner at Paul’s restaurant (of which he is now the daytime Sous Chef as of last Friday), and dancing Saturday with Heidi in S.F. All in all, it was quite fun and memorable, but it was what happened after dancing with Heidi that was most memorable.

All three of us (Heidi, Jess, and myself) had a fun time dancing and when it was over we were exhausted. So we took Heidi back to Redwood City, where she was staying with her brother, and departed to Fremont where my brother lives. Earlier in the evening my gaslight had come on, and being a relatively new car I was still unfamiliar to how far I can go when the light is lit. Fremont isn’t that far from Redwood City so after not finding an open gas station on our way back to the freeway I felt confident enough that we had enough fuel to get home. That was the first of a series of errors that led to our misadventure that evening.

Being close to 1am, we drove down the 101 freeway heading towards CA-84; however, completely engrossed in conversation, neither one of us noticed when we drove past the exit for the highway. After several minutes we wised-up to the situation and called my brother. He informed us that we could just drive on into San Jose and then take the I-880 to get back to Fremont. So we drove on some more… that is until I felt my car lurch. I made my way to the closest freeway exit and noticed off on my left-hand side that there might be a gas station over the hill from this exit.

Just as I get off the freeway my car dies on me. I turn the key off, wait a few seconds and re-ignite it. This gives me enough power to turn my car around and get to the side of the road right in front of the hill separating us from the gas station. So now that we’re broke down, Jessica calls AAA and we wait for an hour for the tow truck to find us. The problem was that neither of us knew what street we were on, but knew that we were next to the San Jose airport. Eventually the tow truck finds us and gives us some gas. Despite my insistence that we could make it to Fremont on the gas we were just given (just over 2 gallons), we headed over the hill to the gas station to fill-up.

By now, it’s well past 2am and I have traded seats with Jessica because I was feeling tired. But after fueling up, we both caught a second wind and felt like we could get something to eat if we found someplace open on our way back home. So we get back on the freeway and start talking again and the next thing I know, we pass the freeway exit we’re supposed to take. At least we spotted it this time. We get off at the next exit and right before we turn back on the freeway, we notice a 24-hour Carl’s Jr. Jessica maneuvers past the freeway exit and into the turn lane for the restaurant. She flipped a U-turn thinking there was an entrance from the street only to find out that there wasn’t. I quickly pointed out that we were about to get back on the freeway so she swerves all the way to the left, whereupon I point out again that she’s about to get on the freeway going in the other direction. So she swerves to the right, and it was then that we noticed the flashing lights in the rearview mirror.

The cop pulled us over and walked up to the car, asking us what we thought he stopped us for. We thought it was for all the swerving around, fearing that he would walk us through a sobriety test (we didn’t drink that night, but the last thing we needed was to be tested for drunk driving), but it turned out the U-turn we made was illegal. He kindly pointed out how to get back to the freeway and let us go. So we turned around and by now were both craving some food to ease our minds. We made sure that we made a legal turn at the light and pulled up to a very crowded drive through at 2:30am.

We eventually got some food and got back on the road and got off at the right exit once we got to Fremont. The problem with Fremont, however, is that there are no street signs at the intersections; rather they are posted before the intersection. So we got to an intersection and uncertain if it was ours or not we continued on instead of turning like we should have. After waiting for a train to cross, we realized our mistake and turned around eventually finding the right intersection and making our way back to my brother’s apartment. We finally rolled in just after 3am, and fortunately, the door was left unlocked for us. We snuck into the house, quickly changed into pajamas and crashed. After it was all over, I lay there in bed and just started laughing. The events of the evening were so unbelievable that I couldn’t control my laughter.

There are many other stories from our trip and like I said earlier lots of memorable moments, but this night was the most memorable misadventure I have had in a long time.

Chairs

I have been very busy at work the past couple of weeks as we near our annual reliability audit. Aside from the regular audit preparations, I have attended classes, workshops, conferences, meetings and have generally not had enough time to focus on the escalating tasks from each. I came into work on Monday to find out that the one “surprise” audit category they will look at this year is the one I’m most involved with and so began a dreadful week full of extra meetings and long hours of perfecting every tiny error, leading to the sentiment expressed in my last post. After being quite busy the past 3 days, today has finally slowed down enough to where I can start to get back to my previous tasks, of which procrastination is included (hence a post).

There have been several small incidents that I have been wanting to comment about this past week, but hadn’t found the time, nor the effort to do so, until now. Probably the most amusing account from the past couple of weeks involves the new chairs I have in my office. Several of my coworkers had grown weary of standing while stopping by my office and many have suggested that I should get some more chairs in my office. But where do I get extra chairs without stealing them from someone else? A couple weeks ago, I solved my problem by bringing in some chairs that I had inherited when my father brought them home from work after grabbing them from some closing local office branch. His justification was that I could use chairs in my apartment. They’re not great chairs, mind you, but they do have big cushions and are both rather comfortable; however, I have no place to keep these chairs in my new place.

So one Friday I snuck these chairs into my office while most of the office was away. In the following weeks, people began to slowly notice them as they walked by or when they stopped by the office. This past week I have had more company in my office than usual and the first thing out of everybody’s mouths when they enter are, “Cool chairs!” I don’t know if people are more excited about the fact that I now have chairs or the chairs themselves, but it’s made everyone really excited as they enter. I knew that people would be jazzed-up about my new car, but I didn’t expect them to be just as jazzed about some second-hand chairs. Who knew that chair envy was so common here? It’s a good thing they don’t have wheels or else I might never see them again.

I should have plenty of free time tomorrow, as it is Friday, so perhaps then I will get to my intriguing tales from this weekend.

Crunch Time

Why do I suddenly feel like I'm back in college right before finals and final projects are due?

Had a great weekend in S.F. with plenty of stories to share, but first I've got to survive this week at work!