#354 - Thai Dairy Queen

Up at the crack of seven this morning, again.

I noticed a small puddle of fluid underneath my car this morning and swore softly to myself. It smelled like coolant and was slick between my fingers. I popped the hood and sure enough the coolant levels were well below where they were just a day ago. I had an new engine put into the car and that meant all new fluids.

There was no good reason for it to be down so much coolant. I checked around the car and didn’t see any leaks and that told me it was likely a loose pipe somewhere underneath that either didn’t get attached properly or loosened up over the last few days.

I drove the car to the dealership and had to wait for them to open the doors.  I must have sat in my car for about fifteen minutes before they all arrived. I wasn’t alone however, two other patrons were there waiting as well, and Robyn pulled into the dealership to give me a ride to the GO Station afterwards.

I’d had the feeling that it was oing to be one of those days and so far, a leaky car was spot on. I made the next train and listened to my audiobook for the full ride. I was the calmest part of my day, but I couldn’t have known that then.

I walked along the Esplanade to get to work, passing the old café and instead popping into the Berkley Street Café to get a bacon, egg, and cheese croissant. They told me it would be a ten-minute wait, and I was okay with that. There was no need to rush to work. There is a happy fellow that comes in with his dog every morning to get a coffee, and I hate the fact that he brings his dog into a food establishment. I thought that was considered unhygienic by the people who give out licenses to restaurants. There are probably a bunch of dog owners that just took offense to that. But that’s okay, I am a cat person first and foremost.

I grabbed my breakfast and headed to the studio, enjoying ever bite of my meal. The croissant was perfectly cripy and a delight to eat.

Me and my supervisor were the only two people in our crew to come into the studio today. Everyone seemed to have really good excuses all lined up.

The day was a bit chaotic again. My tracking software went rogue on me for a while, displaying information it had never shown me before. I had to get someone to come and help me get it fixed before I could use it again.

There were multiple requests from artists to get more work, and although it derailed me from my tasks, I was happy to comply. Need to keep the artists working.

I did an inventory of what I needed to do and seemed to get stopped every time I tried to get started on a task. Some days are just like that. Just about the time I was running out of work to distribute to my painters, the layout department came to my rescue and delivered a bunch of drawings. That meant we could keep working and wouldn’t waste time.

Noon arrived and I spent the first half an hour with one of the ladies that made and updates our tracking software. I had her construct a page based on my specifications, and she was able to put it together while we talked. I needed a visual representation of all the shots in an episode displayed all at once.

I was so happy to have something go right today!

I took a short break and sat with some colleagues. I didn’t bring lunch so I had a Nutri-bar and some snacks the company leaves out for us as well as a can of Fresca I brought from home. The chatter at the lunch table was varied and fun. I told them about the man on the bike I encountered last night, and the funny thing was there was a story about a guy who got hit by a police car that night while riding his bike.

I wondered if it was the same guy, but we couldn’t find any pictures posted anywhere of what he looked like.

Returning to my desk, we worked with the Technical Director to sort out some issues with our render farm. One of the PC’s was getting hung up all the time and we thought we knew a few reasons why it might be doing that. After some more testing, things were left as inconclusive.

Around that time, the art director went through the show I was supervising and approved a bunch of paintings and made a few revision requests. The revisions were minor and that meant I could start to render all the files for the next team. What a relief it was to get that show off my plate. I’ll be able to focus more on the next episode next week with this last show behind me.

We had a three o’clock meeting and it took a full hour to get halfway through all the questions that needed answering. We ended the meeting and rescheduled the second half for tomorrow.

I spent the rest of my day approving and revising paintings for the next episode. If felt like I was finally moving forward again.

The weather looked like it wanted to rain when I stepped out of the studio at the end of the day. I had my new mini umbrella ready to deploy, but it never got bad enough to need it. I’d left the studio about fifteen minutes later than I’d wanted to, so I hopped on a bus to try and make up the time.

I managed to get onto the seven thirty-five all stops train and that was good enough for me. My goal was to get back to the dealership before seven so I could pick up my car before they closed at seven.

I hoped the all-stops would get me there in time, but it was going to be close. If I could catch a bus right from the station I would have had a chance. It was about that time that I realized that I was on the opposite side of the train to where the buses picked up. Time to pack up the laptop and walk through the train. Every second could make the difference tonight.

I chose the correct bus and made it to the dealership in time.

There was no charge for the coolant leak repair, because they were the obvious reason it happened in the first place.

The drive home was crazy busy. One of the lanes was shut down and it had backed up traffic for a couple of kilometers. Robyn called, worried something had happened to me since I was so late.

Eventually I made it home. I was so glad to be there after being gone for about thirteen hours. Robyn wanted to go out for dinner, and inwardly I sighed, because I just wanted to be home. Then we decided to go to our favourite Thai restaurant and get Four Flamed Fish and Thai salad. That got me headed right out the door with no complaints.

We had a great dinner and afterwards we walked over to a Dairy Queen to get some Blizzards. Robyn got a Smarties one and I went for the strawberry cheesecake flavour. We were both glad that we got small and not medium. Full of Thai food and ice-cream we waddled across the street back to our car.

The kids were stalking Robyn on the 360 app and noticed were close to a McDonalds. I think there plan was to have us bring them home food, but they lost interest when we declined to pay for it.

Back home we settled into bed to watch a show before calling it a night.

I was so tired I knew I would fall asleep as soon as the lights went out.

Until tomorrow.