Yo ho, yo ho, I just want to head home

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/09/2017 (3255 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It’s Thursday morning and I’m sitting in my office cubicle, drinking cold coffee, staring blankly at my computer screen and generally feeling sorry for myself.

I can tell, just by the sensitive way you’re reading these words, that you are surprised I am required to write Saturday’s column on Thursday morning. Well, that’s just what life is like for a big-shot newspaper columnist. Thank you for being so understanding.

Anyway, I am wallowing in self-pity due to the fact I had to come into the office to write today’s column as opposed to staying in my home office — a computer stuck in the corner of our dining room next to a picture window, which provides me an awesome view of the rabbits stuffing their fuzzy little faces in my wife’s vegetable garden.

It’s not that I don’t like coming into the office. I have a swell office cubicle, which looks like something you would see on an episode of the reality TV show Hoarders, because my desk is buried under about 30 metres of old newspapers, press releases, snack containers, unsharpened pencils and other journalistic debris.

And there are swell people in my office, such as our business department, Marty and Murray, who sit directly behind me. This allows me, on occasion, to sneak up behind them when they are conducting serious telephone interviews and poke them in the back with a pen, causing them, in mid-interview, to say something like: “Vis-à-vis your quarterly earnings in the context of OUCH!”

There’s Larry the Cafeteria Guy, who this morning when I showed up at his counter and pointed out that his main entrée was deep-fried chicken, said, “Hey, do you want to come in the back and look at the chicken before I fry it?”

In all my years as a professional journalist, nobody has asked me that before, so I said, “Sure.”

I followed Larry into the back of the kitchen and gazed in wonder at the largest pile of unfried-fried chicken I have ever beheld in my life.

Getting back to my point — and I do have one, I think — I am feeling mildly grumpy over the fact I was unable to work at home this morning. As much as I enjoy going into the office, I love working at home because it gives me the journalistic freedom, if I want, to spend the day sitting at the computer wearing nothing more than my ratty blue bathrobe.

They do not allow me to wear my bathrobe in the office. Although once, many years ago, I wrote a column in my cubicle wearing only shorts to celebrate No Pants Day, which is held on the first Friday in May and involves appearing in public wearing only undergarments on the lower part of your anatomy.

No one complained — at least not that I know of.

At home, I can write wearing anything I want. A few years back, I attended a fancy costume-themed party, which forced me to rent an incredibly expensive pirate captain’s outfit, complete with high pirate-style boots, a puffy shirt and a tri-corner hat, so I decided to wear it while I pounded out a newspaper column, which confused my wife.

“What the (bad word) do you think you’re doing?” my wife asked, frowning.

“Arrrrrrrr! I be getting me money’s worth, ye swarthy sea dog!” I replied.

“You’re an idiot!” she said.

But I can’t write at home today. Do you want to know why? I will tell you why. I can’t write at home because the universe is conspiring against me.

It started a month or so ago, when they began driving the piles for the cool Canada’s Diversity Gardens project in Assiniboine Park, which is conveniently located directly beside my house — especially my bedroom — so that every morning I am bounced out of bed by the following noises: “BONG! WHAM! BOING! THUD!”

I was starting to get used to that ear-splitting noise, which is when the city sent me a notice stating they are going to be repairing the water main on our street and will most likely have to shut off our water service on a few occasions and hook us up to some temporary water supply.

Then a city crew came and dug up a mountain of dirt on the corner beside my house and started running long hoses around the neighbourhood.

I’m cool with that too, because I enjoy looking at piles of dirt out the window, but then Manitoba Hydro informed me they need to shut off my power today so a bunch of guys can come into my yard and remove a tree and trim away a bunch of overgrown branches to give them unfettered access to upgrade or replace the main electrical lines in the area.

“Do you know what that means?” I asked the Hydro arborist — a super nice fellow named Brent Bencharski.

Brent, who knows what I do for a living, did not even blink.

“Yes, Doug,” he replied. “It means you will have to go into the office to work instead of sitting around the house in your pyjamas and bathrobe.”

The thing is, he was totally right, other than the fact (and forgive me for sharing this) that I do not wear pyjamas. So here I am in the office, sipping cold coffee and trying to form some professionally humorous thoughts to share with you.

Hold on. What was that sound? Oh, it’s the phone. Hang on for a minute.

OK, guess what? That was Brent from Hydro, politely apologizing and saying I can come home now if I want. Due to some technical stuff I do not understand, they don’t need to shut my power off now before they trim my trees.

So I think I’ll pack up and head home — or at least I will as soon as I can remember where I left my pants and my pirate hat. ARRRRRR! Which reminds me, International Talk Like a Pirate Day is almost here (Sept. 19). Don’t say ye haven’t been warned, ye lily-livered chum bucket!

doug.speirs@freepress.mb.ca