Author Archives: Niki

This is my 151st post. I have completed 150 blogging days. It’s amazing how time flies. And it’s amazing how slow time is.

I was always known as someone who loved countdowns. I am always counting down until the next time I see Marco. Doubly so without the usual summer trip to NL this year. Mostly because it will be so weird to not be there on Marco’s birthday in July.

49 days until Marco’s birthday.

106 days until Marco comes back (give or take a week).

168 days until Thanksgiving (when I visit my parents again).

195 days until Marco and I leave for NL.

208 days until I watch couches burn.

I can’t wait for the moment when I realize I want time to slow down forever, since I am finally with Marco and not counting down towards Marco time.

Sometimes you just have a day where — at the end of the day — you still can’t believe it happened. It still feels a bit unreal.

One of the things that I am in charge of is the Learning Commons, which happens to be on the lower level. And over the weekend, it flooded with about 2 1/2 inches of water. The entire room, the long hallway outside of it, everything. Of course it happened on a Saturday – so I found out about it 48 hours after the fact, when most things (not all things, as I was to find out) were dry. And musty.

We still aren’t quite sure what happened – but the rumor is that the sprinkler system malfunctioned upstairs, sending a wall of water cascading down the elevator shaft. With nowhere else to go, it went down into the lower level. (In fact, it wasn’t the first time that room flooded. Years ago when it housed the journals and microfilm, we dealt with 10″ of water in there when a main pipe line burst. But that was before my time.)

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It was an interesting morning. I walked past the data room at work and heard a rather loud noise.

Turned out to be the server. We entered the room and it was HOT. The air conditioning had turned off overnight it seems. Didn’t see any issues after it was turned back on (by the IT department) at least. But still…poor server.

We’re in the beginning stages of another summer thunderstorm. There have been many lately thanks to the hot temperatures. Today’s high was 90f (32c), feeling like 97f (36c). The latest thunderstorm just began in the last minute or two, though it has been windy for the last hour or so. They told us to expect winds up to 60mph (96km/h).

That reminds me of a storm that we had a few days ago – we had emergency alerts taking over our TVs for most of the day (including 3 in 5 minutes! It was insane), though nothing ended up happening in my neighborhood. In America, the National Weather Service can decide to send out an alert, which takes over the programming and changes the screen to black with information and some loud beeps to get your attention. They then tell you about the situation, including where it is and what to expect. At least we don’t get too many tornadoes in New York!

Speaking of alerts, the security department at work told us to expect some alerts through our “beacon system” this afternoon. I wish they had mentioned that that would mean that their alert system would be taking over the public computers without warning:

Just imagine the red ALERT! flashing every second or so for maximum scary effect.

Of course I found it amusing that this alert only appeared on the public computers, not the staff computers. Maybe they don’t want to warn us about our impending doom…