Temp Job Hibiscus

Today I worked. I worked for the first time since Hell came to my doorstep and demanded entry. Today, as then, I told Hell to piss off and did what a man does in time of dire crisis - namely, sweat. I spent 6 and a half hours today cataloguing computer equipment for a bank.

I wrote the following terms in longhand for over two pages:
CPU/Ser. #: ___________/Compaq/Desktop Pro

Or perhaps this:
DSU/Ser. #: ___________/ADX Kenflox/Satellite 651

I carted servers and routers, monitors and CPU's from one small corner of a tiny office to the other. I swivelled equipment with an expert's verve, locating the infinitesimally small type that would grant me the magical combination of letters and digits known as the serial number.
Then I wrote that there number on my sheet and continued on.

I fell into a Zen-like absorption with the process. My fingers slid down the rough texture of the plastic beige cabinetry of each piece of equipment as if they were examining ancient artifacts from a dead land. I stacked DSU's and Switches into tiny symmetrical rows and marvelled at their tidiness on the foldout table underneath the window.

And lo, just when I was about to snap, to say to myself "Why, lord, why so many tiny pieces of equipment to sort?", something magical happened. One of the people working in the department offered to take me to lunch.

Yes, that's right - he extended the olive branch between worker and temp and said the words that all temps long to hear - "You like authentic Mexican?" His name was Rick, and Rick rocked.

Turns out Rick was the fulcrum of the day. Rick was a former theologian in the Southern Baptist tradition, and had come from ministerial stock for three generations. Bible thumpers all. But Rick found that the evangelical tradition couldn't take him where he needed to go, and he became a different man. An Episcopalian, indeed, even a former Unitarian with a taste for the likes of Chesterton and who can blame him? Regardless of your religious bailiwick, G.K. Chesterton is a marvelous man.

So there we were, plopped down in the El Rinconcito Taqueria (which means Piglet Taco House in Espanol, for those of you keeping score), yakking away about religion, about the need for your own doubt, and all sorts of mad things. Rick saved me from the abyss.

Out of nowhere (okay, out of the IT Dept. but still, when you're surrounded by beige plastic objects in a beige building with beige walls, Nowhere seems apt), this man took it upon himself to make a connection with me. If this type of thing could happen every day for the rest of my life, I could stop eating and simply subsist on the energy of profound fortune until I irradiated into a beam of pure light and left the stratosphere.