Bad things happen in Threes...or Fours?

This week seems to have been a not very good week at all for the people in my office, including myself. Monday was a holiday but the long weekend saw no end to work for me. It all started when a very important manager of mine down in Panama quit on me without warning. Saturday he called to say he was giving his 2 weeks notice. Sunday he didn't show up. Monday he called to say he wasn't coming back at all. Unbelievable...at least with 2 weeks he could have been able to train someone to fill his shoes...you think you know a guy. So that left me in a shitty predicament with LOTS of work to do over the weekend.

On Tuesday everyone comes in with a bubbly and rested attitude except myself of course, but I noticed that my Marketing Assistant was also less than bubbly. Turns out a very good friend of hers died over the weekend. Ouch. She was taking it extremely well however and I have already told her that I think she is amazing for that.

On Wednesday I am just starting to turn things around with work (found a solution/replacement for that position in Panama) so things were looking up until I get a phone call in the evening from a staff member to tell me that his father passed away in a sudden freak accident. Once again...Ouch. I am not really good in situations like that so I simply told him to take as much time as needed and do what he has to do and not worry about work.

So we are halfway through the week and we are looking at 2 deaths and a work-related crisis. Great. I was talking to my office manager about the whole thing and remember saying the phrase "Death Happens in 3's"....so they say...or is the saying "Bad Things happen in 3's"? She shrugged and pushed the thought out of her head. I on the other hand kept thinking about it. If it's Death that happens in 3's then I've still got one more to go. If it's Bad Things that happen in 3's then I'm done.... I wonder...

Well yesterday morning I believe I got my answer....

I had just finished meeting with my office manager and a Realtor at a location fairly close to my home. We left the meeting and she jumped on a street car and I jumped on my bike and told her I would meet her at the office. I didn't get 3 blocks up the street when it happened.

I always go on and on about how Toronto seems to have amazing infrastructure for people who ride bikes. It's a rare thing to find a city in North America as big as this one that supports bik-riders.

So I am on the right side (in the designated bike lane) of the rather busy street riding at a comfortable pace when this big black car comes out of a side street to turn onto the same busy street that I am passing on. The driver looked at me and saw me and I could have sworn he was slowing down. When I realized that he wasn't going to stop, I started ringing my little bell and screaming WOAH! but it was too late. The impact happened right at my right leg of the bike. He hit me hard enough to throw me off my bike and into the heavy traffic in the street next to me. THANK GOD a car who saw the whole thing stopped behind me before hitting me a second time and the driver jumped out of the car to help me get out of the road. I was stunned.

Something to note. In Toronto it is not law for adults to wear helmets while on a bike. It is law however to have a bell on your bike... yea well....I'm buying a helmet before I ever get on a bike again...Also, when you are flying in the air, you tend to close your eyes, brace your body and hope for the best... You don't quite remember details about how you landed and what happened to the bike etc... A bunch of witnesses told me the same story. I landed on the right side of my face first and then flipped over onto my left arm. The damage on my body definitely matches that story. At first I thought I was fine but as the minutes passed and the adrenaline in my body began to calm down, I realized that I had damaged my arm pretty badly. After about 2 hours I could not move it at all. After many hours in the hospital, begging for pain-killers (which I eventually got, thank god) and watching my arm visibly swell to twice the size of the other one, turns out I fractured my elbow pretty badly and so have to wear a sling for the next 2-3 weeks.

So in the end, it's all good. It could have been MUCH MUCH worse so I feel lucky. My face looks like shit and my entire body is soar today, including of course my arm...and I'm irritated as shit trying to do things with one hand all the time (including typing this story)...but I'll live.

I tell you what though - as soon as I realized that I was going to be hit, there was one thing going through my mind...it went something like this.... "NO WAY....AM I GOING TO BE #3??"

When Awesome Security Becomes Too Much Security

Today I learned that it is never a good idea to have invested in a ginormous amount of security and no backup plan B to cover your own ass. As is the case with any other day, I found myself in the office working extra hours to get caught up. A new design recruit was with me today because he is scheduled to start work with me on Tuesday. He wanted to come in and take a look at the office in advance so I brought him along.

Because it is a weekend, and most sane Canadians who are not work-a-haulics like myself do not work on weekends (especially long weekends), the office building is in lock-down mode, with access only to limited managers like myself. Let me paint a picture of how the office works on weekends. The main office door on the ground floor opens during off-hours such as this, with an electronic fob. From there, stairs take you to the appropriate floor (in my case the 3^rd floor) and another door, also with fob access needs to be opened in order to reach the hallway in front of my main office door. Both the door at the stairway and my main office doors are rigged up with their own (2 different, that is) security alarm systems which activate if the doors are left open for too long during the off hours. Bathrooms are in the hallway, in between these 2 security systems, as opposed to inside of the office.

So after a few hours of working, my new recruit decided that he was ready to leave and go explore some of downtown Toronto RIGHT when I decided to go to the washroom. So I come out of the washroom and I see him in the hallway waiting for me to ask to borrow my camera… at that point, my face turns white… as I realize that we are both in the hallway…and my camera that he wants to borrow is in the office on my desk, in my purse, alongside all my keys to the office and even to my apartment and my cell phone and my wallet and anything valuable to me…is in the office….and I can’t remember if I unlocked the auto-locks. SHIT. Shawn, did you close the door? – Yes…... SHIT.

We were SOOO locked out. No way in, no way to call anyone (my phone is inside and with the existence of address books in the phone, I’ll be damned if I actually know anyone’s phone numbers by heart), no money to go anywhere (wallet inside) and nowhere to go anyway….cause I don’t know where anyone nearby lives and the keys to my place were locked inside. Hhmmmm I think back to the days when I refused to own a cellphone. That was just over 3 years ago….how did I survive? hahaha

So we sat down on the floor in the hallway trying to figure out what to do. Looking back, THANK GOD this guy chose to stop and ask me for the camera before going…had he left without doing so and left me there by myself, I would have been ridiculously screwed. I would have been walking around knocking on doors asking for someone to take me in for the next 2 nights, considering that Monday is a holiday so people won’t arrive at the office till Tuesday. Oh yes, I was in a Royal Tiffle ladies and gents.

He had quarters in his pocket so I told him to go out and find a payphone with a phone book and call a locksmith. I had to stay behind to be able to open the door to the building for him downstairs….easier said than done. Why? Because if I close the door at the top of the stairs, which I explained earlier requires a fob (on my keychain locked inside), I’d be locked out of the 3^rd floor and be even more screwed. So ok, I will leave my shoe in the door upstairs and wait for him at the bottom of the stairs to open that door when he gets back from the payphone….solid plan right? WRONG. Again, if that door is opened for too long, the alarm is triggered..

So what do I do? He leaves to call a locksmith and every 5 minutes I put a shoe in the door and RUN MY ASS OFF down 3 stories, which is actually 6 flights of stairs to check to see if he is there and then, if he’s not (which happened 3 goddamn times), run back up those same 6 flights of stairs and get back to the door to close it before 45 seconds passes and the entire building’s alarm system goes off. That’s right…when was the last time you tried to run up and down 6 flights of stairs in 45 seconds while hearing warning beeps coming from an alarm system that you really don’t want going off? LOL

I didn’t need the extra workout or the feeling like my heart was going to explode multiple times but in the end it worked and when he finally came to the door, it was with a locksmith. $250 later I was home free, sitting at my desk on the phone with a friend laughing about the whole thing.

So what did I learn? 2 things: (1) The security in our building is AWESOME and I won’t EVER have to worry about people breaking in after-hours….and there is the realization that by investing in so much security, I may have been a tad on the paranoid side. Hey, at least it works. (2) I have suddenly found the need to attach a bracelet or something that will attach the keys to me at ALL times.

What a day.

Imagine...The Power of the Mind

If you can imagine it, you can have it. This is the name of the game. This is the lesson to learn. It couldn't be any easier. Reality is not what your eyes show your mind, but what your mind creates for your eyes to see. You are not limited by logic, the past, or the world around you. You are not even of the world around you. You are supernatural, pure spirit. You came first. Magic, miracles, and luck are the consequences of understanding this, the inevitable result of dreaming and acting in spite of appearances.You are ever so close. Simply stay the course. It won't be very much longer.

If you can imagine it, you can have it !

Make it a great day!