Although I debated staying home today, the prospect of using PTO to get out of the Office seemed silly when I realized I have to work a shift at the Bookstore tonight. So I dragged myself out of bed a bit before six, showered, dressed, made my lunch, and walked out the front door of my building, noting in the snow the bootprints that showed at least one of my neighbors wasn’t taking the day off.

My glasses fogged immediately in the Woodley Park Metro’s elevator, but the trains were running. They were warm, I was sweating. I had to wait about ten minutes for a shuttle to work, and although the big old vehicle moved a lot slower than usual, I got here okay, about half an hour later than I usually do. There was a woman in the bus shelter with me: snowflakes on a woman’s uncovered head are remarkably sexy. On the other hand, people not wearing hats on such a cold day strike me as being somewhat stupid.

But I got here okay. I tapped in my code and entered the office, and noticed the distinctly empty coat rack. The lights all off. I began flipping them on and made my way through this place, checking the kitchens, the offices, but no one was here. I slit open some boxes and found the hot chocolate, made myself a mug, answered my cube neighbor’s phone: it was my cube neighbor, wanting to know if we were open.

I had no idea. Were we supposed to be? I made some calls: people didn’t answer. He decided to spend the day with his kids, but I found out our company’s snow policy: “That’s why we give people PTO,” when my boss returned my call.

I tried to log into the internet: it was down. I called out IT guy: nope, he wasn’t coming in, yes, his boss was coming in, and knew the internet was down.

I sent his boss an e-mail, the old fashioned way: opened a WP document, typed it all up nice, complete with sent: to: and from: lines, a big bold TEH INTERNETZ IS BROKEZ! OMGZ WTF! above that, and a similarly written text for the message itself, printed, posted it to his monitor. “Oh, yeah, brilliant,” he hollared out of his office when he arrived, “I’ve been getting calls about this since THREE AM!”

Kind of hard to work without the internet — had access to our database, but not to the tools of my trade: no Google, no financial websites, no CNN, LinkedIn, Jigsaw. Also: no Gmail, no Facebook, no Reader, no blog, no MMOG. It’s back up now, six hours later.

About a dozen people — out of fifty — made their way in, the bulk of us by nine, a few others making their way in by noon. One coworker, a New Yorker, took a break to walk to the bank: we told him it would be closed, he mocked us, then came back to report it was closed, and he mocked this area for shutting down in the snow. Two coworkers were in a car accident as they tried to come in from Frederick: their car is fucked, but they’re okay. Another coworker wanted to come in from Annapolis, but I convinced him anyway. “But, I spent thirty minutes cleaning off my car!” he protested.

It’s pretty casual in here today: people are walking around, talking, laughing, running through the office firing on each other with Nerf guns. I plugged my iPod into a radio and played Queen and Murray’s Head and other nerd music. “I’m okay with that,” I told a coworker. “It wasn’t a value judgement,” the one who appraised my music as such remarked.

I made some phone calls, read a book, took a nap. Washed my mug. Went to the bathroom. The day is almost over.