Eww.

Got back about an hour ago from a brisk 16 block (8 down, 8 back) walk to go eat lunch with my prettier, girlier, better half--it is now getting to be much more summery--temp about 540°R, humidity about 60%. Not the day to wear a stylish dark gray, long sleeve dress shirt. Luckily there was a slight breeze, which tousled my sopping wet hair. Got back and looked like I had been riding in an industrial washing machine.

It's fun to walk around, though--I like to intercept conversations in passing. The best one of the day was as a nicely suited fellow was walking along with one of his female co-workers: "...Have you ever seen that movie Gone With the Wind?..."

I guess this was as opposed to, oh...that television show Gone With the Wind, or that advertisment for a lactose intolerance prevention product called Gone With the Wind, or that weird comedian named Gone With the Wind, or that car named Gone With the Wind.

Oh well, at least they weren't all nasty and sweaty like someone writing this.

Another fun thing to do was helping Miss Reba out to the parking deck with some boxes of her stuff for a meeting she's having tomorrow. (If nothing else, I am quite useful for toting stuff.)

She has recently changed garages, and the new one is part of a building renovation going on close to where she works. Neat old place that long ago housed the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce. Now it's being converted for offices and lofts, and alongside it is a vintage parking garage that is reputed to be the first multi-level one constructed in the city.

We walked through all the new construction and through all the old load-bearing masonry walls and heavy timbers of the loft building, then into the garage, which was about like walking into an ancient tomb. Solid concrete, with wonderful ceramic mosaic tile directional arrows inset into the floor slabs--"IN", "OUT"; dim old painted signs on the inside walls advertising the gas and oil station on the ground floor; and a glorious reminder of they days before OSHA--a man lift that went from ground to roof through a three foot diameter hole in all the floors. Wood platform to stand on, a hunk of metal to hold onto, some angle iron framework to hold it together. That's it. Scary looking as a guillotine, yet I can imagine some carefree, greasy kid jumping on it with the key to ride up to four and bring down Mr. Stoke's new Hupmobile. Cool old stuff.

Anyway, back to work.
posted by Terry at 2:47:00 PM