A hard day's night...

Well, a funny story about my Sunday evening two weekends ago, at least...

Sunday was spent catching up a) on sleep, and b) on work. Yes, I was working. Preparing for our "Freedom Training" that was starting on Monday. We are constantly updating the curriculum (hopefully improving it) and I hadn't yet finished all the updates we'd planned. After working for awhile, I took a short break to attend house church (a small group of us meet for church at my friends' apt), which was actually a mini birthday party for a friend's daughter, Sneha. She turned 7 (but her size is more like that of a 5-year-old).

I walked in to her wearing the most elaborate princess gown full of golden roses and singing "happy birthday to ME" at the top of her lungs....she was the most strung-out-on- sugar child I have ever seen. And this was PRE-sugar. She's a hoot. Seriously. We had all brought her "princess" gifts, which she gushed appropriately over...until she opened her gift from our hosts: a birthday princess Barbie. Holy toledo! I thought for a second that she was literally bouncing off walls...it was a sight to behold. The dogs in MY neighborhood (five minutes walking distance away) were barking in response...okay, not really. We ate cake and then dug a wee bit into 1 Peter 2.

An hour later, it was back to the office....at 1 AM, as I was pressing print on the first of several documents that I needed to print, the POWER went out in the entire building. Printing was out. Luckily, we have small back up batteries so I was at least able to keep working on the computer. But these batteries don't last forever, and as the back-up- generated lights began to flicker out, I decided I should save my work as is and shut down before I lose it all. It was now 2:30 am and I had to be back at the office no later than 7 am....with tons to do still, I figured I would simply go home, shower, get ready for the day and ride my bicycle straight back to the office to complete my work.

We usually have mandatory hour and a half power outages, but we hadn't had any for awhile now. For some reason, even though these things are totally unpredictable, I simply thought it would turn back on after a short while. So, I shut down, packed up, locked up our office (padlocks and all) and headed downstairs to retrieve my cycle...our building has a night watchman and a gate. I''ve worked late many nights and the gate is never locked...shut, but not locked. Tonight, however, it was. Padlocked. And our "guard" was sleeping soundly on the steps in front of our office building.

I felt guilty waking him up, but I tried to make the normal "okay, I'm getting ready to leave now" noises...nothing (apparently, my fears that the sad little bell on my bicycle is useless are true; I had better replace it soon before I get run over). Yes, my attempts were pathetic, but honestly, if the pulling-the-gate-down-over-the-office-door-and-padlocking-it racket didn't wake him, nothing would! That process sounds like the tin man pre-oiling tripping over himself in a greek amphitheater. It's just painful! Well, to me, at least. Doesn't seem to phase our guard one bit.

After some time, I gave up: if the dogs barking up a storm and the unregulated car horns (that can also be heard in Sri Lanka) weren't causing him to stir, I didn't stand a chance. Defeated, I headed back up into the office...I feel safe here in general, but I'm not stupid; and walking back at this hour to my house sans bike, while possible, is not a wise thing to do...I undid the fallen tinman, worked a bit longer, and then arranged three desk chairs as a makeshift bed (you all have been there, done that, right?) for a brief nap....

I woke up (with the help of my wonderful boyfriend and fellow co-worker's calls/texts) an hour and a half later to find the electricity still had not returned and I again attempted to leave the grounds. Luckily, this time was much more successful...I had just enough time to clean up and then ride back to the office with the hope of printing something before our car left at 7. The power, however, did not return until midday, apparently...sigh. Oh well. I tried. Oh, and I got home that day (Monday) from our day in the field by 9:30 pm....after a LONG, de-licing shower and a quick call from Ben, I was finally able to get some sleep in a bed.