Flight of Fancy

I've been spending waaaaay too much time at work lately. Okay, so maybe it saves me having to fight my way through traffic if I go in before 6am and head home after 8pm, but it can't be good for the sanity. Although it is insanely busy, and I probably should feel tired, the hectic pace is somewhat energizing.

I've always enjoyed a good rush. In my waiting days, I absolutely thrived on the jam-packed nights where stopping to think was not an option. Serving 15 tables of 4, 6 tables of 6 and a table of eight, which turn over (have new customers sit down for the waitingly impaired) four times each in a six hour period isn't easy by any means, but it sure was a heck of a lot of fun. I guess it takes a certain kind to thrive off of the kind of hustle that requires, but I did indeed, and I was good at it :) I still miss it from time to time. I stopped by the restaurant where I worked for 6 years for my birthday this year with some friends, and was happily mobbed by a lot of regular customers. A few of them even proceeded to tell one of the newer waiters some "war" stories of my "glory days". I won't bore you with details, but let's just say that carrying 8 plates of food through a jam-packed restaurant and getting them all to the right people without a spill with your bare hands, leaves an impression. Particularly when you do it consistently all night, lol.

While the busyness at the present job doesn't really compare to that kind of activity, I nonetheless got that old feeling of "autopilot" today. Everything becomes automatic and just seems to flow, and click into place. Accomplishing not only my job, but several other people's all in record time.

Somewhere in the midst of the day, I found the time to strike up a conversation with the facilities manager. Our building is directly on the landing path of the Lester B. Pearson Airport in Toronto, quite the busy hub. At 7 stories high, it definitely isn't the tallest building I've worked in, but there's something to be said when large aircraft are regularly passing about 200 feet over the top of you.

It takes a bit of getting used to, especially when your office is on the 6th floor, and every landing shakes the building. My second week on the job, I was sitting at my desk, quite into my work, when a plane came over the top. Already getting used to it, I didn't think twice until I heard something smash into the window behind me with quite some force. Those who know me will tell you that when it comes to instincts, mine are razor-sharp and I was instantly on my feet and heading for the door. When I noticed the funny looks on the faces of those who had seen me, I figured that it wasn't actually a piece of some plane's landing gear coming through the window and turned around to look. Low and behold, a window washer hung outside the window in nothing but a rappelling harness, laughing so hard I thought maybe he might fall. I don't know if he did it on purpose, or it just worked out the way it did, but I still haven't lived it down to this day.

So there I was, talking to the facilities manager when he suddenly turns to me and says "Hey, want to see something neat?". Of course! I'm not about to say no to a question like that, am I? So up the elevator we went, then up some stairs, and voila, we're up on the roof. Just as I was about to ask him what was so neat, I figured it out as I heard a rumble and looked up to see a 747 only about 300 feet above me on it's approach to the airport. From that distance, the size, power, and speed of an aircraft become very, very apparent and I loved every second of it. We were only up there for about 15 minutes before my phone began to ring and I had to slip back inside, but two landing aircraft just made my day.

Best part of it? He's agreed to grant me access to the roof so that I can set up my camera up there and get some shots of the planes coming in and landing at the airport. Should be fun :)