Date: Wed, 14 Feb 2007 13:46:11 EST
From: LJMJAG at aol.com
Reply-To: johnny at charm.net
To: johnny at charm.net
Subject: How's Your Day Going?



No snow or ice day here in scenic Long Island,  although the way it looks
outside now, as the rain/sleet/ice continues to fall,  I'm already wondering how
much fun the drive home will be.  So instead of  my usual 10-12 minute drive
to work, I spent about 45 minutes in local traffic  before arriving at the
office.

While trekking through the cold wet slop  that is now our building's parking
lot, I must have managed to step in a puddle  causing my right sock to become
somewhat wet inside my shoe.  For the first  hour or two this morning, I
didn't really notice the dampness inside my shoe,  but as the morning progressed,
my foot was becoming increasingly chilled.   In fact, the sole of my foot was
becoming downright cold.  Realizing that I  couldn't keep my wet sock on my
cold foot all day long, I finally decided to do  the logical thing and remove my
sock, in the hope that in so doing, my foot  would stop being so cold.

Now it's about 30 degrees and pretty miserable  outside and here I am in my
office with one foot inside a dress shoe without a  sock.  This really isn't
the most comfortable of positions to be in,  especially as even though my foot
is less cold, I'm not working in Los Angeles  where perhaps dress shoes sans
socks in a law office might be the norm. The  shoes that I am wearing were not
quite designed for sockless wear.  I  thought about placing my wet sock on the
heater but decided against it for two  reasons - first, I'm not sure that my
heater would get warm enough to dry it,  and second, anybody walking by my
office would immediately notice the sock on  the heater and invariably give me a
hard time about it.  Plus, we are in  prime litigation season around here and
there are lots of clients and  adversaries around the office and I'm pretty
sure that socks on the heater is  not the image that the firm would prefer to
project.

Which brings me to  my great idea.  In the back of my mind, I somehow
recalled the "Seinfield"  episode where Kramer decided that all of his clothes should
be placed in an oven  before wearing them, so that you could have that "out
of the dryer" feeling  every time you got dressed.  We don't have an oven in
our office, but (can  you see where this is going?), we do have a microwave.

As surreptitiously  as possible, I stroll over to the coffee/kitchen area of
the office and while  nobody is looking, I (as nonchalantly as possible) stick
my cold damp sock in  the microwave.  With the power setting on full, I
figure a minute should  work just perfectly to properly dry and warm my sock so
that I could then get on  with my day.  While my sock was "cooking", I was
already congratulating  myself on my cleverness in solving my wet-sock dilemma.

While waiting for  my sock, two people wandered into the kitchen to grab
coffee.  I  strategically placed my body in front of the microwave to block the
microwave's  window so  that nobody could see that I had a sock inside the place
that  most people use to warm up their lunch.  "Oatmeal", I quickly replied
when  someone asked me what was cooking.  Unfortunately, as a result of having
to  block the microwave and make small talk, I was unable to check on the
progress  of my "sock soup".

Guess what?  One minute on full power is much,  much too long to try to dry
and warm a damp sock in the microwave.  Want to  know what happens when you
keep a wet sock in the microwave too long?  It  combusts.  That's right folks, my
sock went up in flames.  But that's  not the end of the story - in fact, I'm
just getting warmed up.

Apparently, my sock didn't combust without a fight.  It smoked and  twisted
and writhed in agony prior to expiring.  And since the building we  work in
requires all offices that have a "kitchen" to have a special smoke alarm  in the
kitchen in case of fire (although probably not due to fear of sock  fires), I
managed to set the building's smoke alarm off.

As if the  people who happen to be in the building were not unhappy enough to
be at the  office during "Sleetfest 2007", when the building's fire alarm
goes off, all  people in all the offices in the entire building are supposed to
evacuate.  Evacuation does not mean congregate in the lobby, it means, go stand
outside the  building - in the cold, and the wind, and the rain/sleet/snow
mix that feels  like someone is pelting you with tiny pebbles.

Know what else happens  when the building's fire alarm goes off?  The fire
department is  called.  And since this is Long Island and we are in an office
building,  every time the fire alarm goes off, almost the entire Garden City,
New York fire  department shows up - big trucks, small trucks, hook & ladder
trucks, with  pretty lights and sirens all show up, it's a big full show.  So
outside the  extremely annoyed building's occupants all stand around miserable
and growing  more so by the minute, while inside what seems like the entire
Garden City fire  department heads up the stairs.

Picture this, if you will - I don't  evacuate.  I decide that I have to greet
our friendly neighborhood firemen,  who are in full gear, some carrying axes
(just in case) in the stairwell.   I proceed to explain to the fire chief that
I caused the long extinguished tiny  smoky fire that happened to erupt in the
microwave.

And then it  happened.  One of the firemen asked what caused the fire. I
hesitate.   "Popcorn?" asks one of the men (popcorn fires in the microwave being
somewhat  common).  I shake my head, "no, it was my sock" I try and explain.
"Your what!?", exclaimed one of the firemen.  "My sock", I say again while
simultaneously lifting the legs of my pants showing to the firemen my one sock
on, one sock off fashion motif.

One of the firemen half snorts and half  chuckles, while the fire chief is
quick to proclaim me the most popular person  in the building today and admonish
me not to put anymore socks in the  microwave.  I smartly say nothing as the
fire department cancels the alarm  and leaves the building while the rest of
the highly aggravated, cold wet and  miserable people file back to their
offices.

I, on the other hand, plan  on spending as much of the rest of the day as
possible in my office with the  door shut, with my one foot still slightly
chilled inside of my sockless dress  shoe.

Oh, and how's your day going?

Happy  Valentine's Day!  I can think of quite a few people whose day I have
already made (and who I had better avoid for some time).

Lee Mendelson  A'89