Not off to a flying start

This new year has begun, but I want a do-over.

Oh, it started out all right. The first few days were fine. My daughter turned 18 and to celebrate, we took her to a nice restaurant in Atlanta, where I dropped a couple of benjamins on dinner. It sort of made me miss the days of Chuck E Cheese.

Then, Monday came, the first day back at work of the new year, a time of promise, and renewal, and rededication, and what the hell am I talking about? It was a miserable day.

First off, I woke up and it was 18 degrees outside. Hello, I live in Georgia. I don’t function in cold weather. If I wanted this, I’d move to Saskatoon. I was promised there would be global warming, but no. I get 18 degrees. There’s an inconvenient truth for you.

I went and cranked up my car and let it sit in the driveway for about 10 minutes, so it could warm up and wouldn’t feel like the inside of a refrigerator when I got in to go to work. Well, I climbed in, and it didn’t feel like a refrigerator, it felt like a freezer. I had the heat on maximum, but it was blowing out air colder than Hitler’s heart. My fingers froze to the steering wheel. Note to self: get car’s heater fixed.

I drove on to work, and after about 30 minutes, the air changed from frigid to tepid, so I didn’t become the first person to ever freeze to death on I-75 in a 2002 Chevy Impala. But, it being Monday, and in Atlanta, and the first day back to work, traffic was a nightmare because there was ice on the highway.

So I took a detour and rode through a lovely stretch of Atlanta called Metropolitan Parkway, formerly known as Stewart Avenue. Let’s just say this is not the part of the city that the chamber of commerce puts on its brochures. Luckily, it was so cold that even the hookers and pimps stayed indoors.

At this point I looked down and noticed that the car’s fuel gauge was on “less than empty.” Well, now I was faced with the prospect of running out of gas in a sketchy part of town – oh, and did I mention it was 18 degrees? Finally I located a gas station in the shadow of the Georgia Dome, and breathed a sigh of relief, until I noticed that every single pump was covered by a black garbage bag, the universal sign of, “We ain’t got no gas.”

I held my breath and decided to risk it, and I made it to work without running out. That’s when I realized I had left my employee badge at home. If you work in a big company, you are nothing without your employee badge. You can’t even get into the bathrooms. This was foretold in the Book of Revelation.

So instead of getting to park in the employee deck, I was forced to park in the visitor’s lot, which is conveniently located about 10 miles from the building’s entrance. After walking into a freezing 40-mph wind, leaning forward at a 45-degree angle so I wouldn’t get blown away, I got to the building, picked up a temporary badge and began to eagerly do my work.

By noon I felt like I had the Black Plague (trust me, it’s bad), so I went home and flirted with death for a couple of hours. I fell asleep, only to have my daughter enter the bedroom and say, “Dad?” “What?” I moaned. “Nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to see if you were alive.” Yes, I told her, I was alive, and now, unfortunately, awake.

I made it through the rest of the day without incident, all the while silently hoping that the year was only going to get better from here. This morning, I awoke a new man, ready to start again. I had my badge with me, I heard on the TV that traffic was light, and I was going to drive the Mustang I bought for my son to work so I wouldn’t freeze during the commute.

I showered, got dressed, and went outside to warm up his Mustang before I left for work. That was when I discovered that he had a dead battery, as he had left the headlights on all night. So now, I had to drive to work in mostly-heaterless Impala yet again. Did I mention that it was again 18 degrees outside?

This is gonna be a long year.