9:00am, on the garden-ish pathway from the parking lot to IPAC, in light rain.

As I turned the corner onto the walkway that leads to my building, I discovered that it had been transformed into a river of mud. There was quite a lot of rain Sunday night, but the rain gutters on the road didn’t show any signs of being overworked, and I’d never seen quite this level of sludge on the path before even after harder downpours.

The drainage in IPAC’s backyard is a bit of a mystery, as we discovered last year when a sinkhole suddenly opened up between the walkway and the picnic area. It turned out that the track dumped all its drainage into a little “rock river” just behind IPAC, which in turn emptied into a pipe which we all assumed went to the main storm drains. Instead, the pipe dead-ended in the ground below the new sinkhole. Over the summer, they extended the pipe and repaired the sinkhole – again, we assumed the extended pipe now went to some form of storm drain.

My eyes followed the source of today’s sludge to a bit of PVC pipe poking out of the ground near the ex-sinkhole. I guess our walkway is the new storm drain.

1:30pm, looking out my office window.

Angela and I were suddenly struck by how incredibly dark it had become outside. All day long it had been gray and drizzly, or gray and pouring, but now it was dark – it looked more like evening than early afternoon.

Then we heard it: thunk… thunk thunk. Last week, a bunch of workers were repairing the IPAC roof, and stomping around in boots; this sounded a little bit like that, but much more random than footstpes. thunk thunkety thunk-thunk. We exchanged puzzled glances. “Hail?”

The thunks turned into a steady rattling, and now we could see ice bouncing off the street outside and ricocheting off the parked cars – including my own, parked just outside the building. I began to wish I’d parked in the new covered garage instead of just out front, but in the pouring rain at lunchtime the parking spot 20 feet from the front door was awfully appealing.

Half a dozen IPAC’ers careened down the hallway to the front of the building, and stood outside gawking and cursing at the marble-sized pellets slamming into cars. I thought about Anne’s VW Golf, which actually looked like the surface of a golf ball after it encountered some Texas hail. Luckily for me and my Honda, “marble-sized” was as big as it got.

It did put a few dents in poor Serge, though, one of my co-workers who bikes into the office in the early afternoon. From Glendale. At least he was wearing a helmet when the hail hit.

4:45, in the gym locker room.

I thought the gym would be packed on a rainy day, but it seemed like no one wanted to make the walk down here. The weight room and cardio machines were as deserted as I’d ever seen them on a Monday, and when I staggered back downstairs to shower and change, I was the only one in the locker room. While I rinsed the shampoo out of my hair, I could hear thunder in the distance, and thought about how incredibly dark it would be in the locker room if we lost power. I wondered if I could find my way over to my locker again by touch; wondered if I would want to grope the walls of the shower and locker room that much.

The lights were still on as I towelled off and pulled my clothes out of my locker to get dressed, and I was looking forward to drying my hair before going back to work. I pulled off my towel and wrapped it around my hair, and reached for my underwear, when

Talk about getting your pulse up! The only thing louder than a fire alarm? A fire alarm in an echoing, tile-filled locker room, when there’s no one else in there but you.

It was still pouring outside, making shorted wires much more likely than an actual fire. But there I was, stark naked and all alone, and suddenly it crossed my mind that I might have to decide between naked humiliation and burning alive. Even if I’d smelled smoke, I think I probably would have done what I did: yanked on my clothes as fast as I could, tossed my deoderant and comb in the bag, and dashed barefoot out into the lobby. I was still pulling my jeans up where they’d snagged on my hips to one side, and untwisting my bra straps, when I joined the entire population of the gym milling about to the loud honking of the alarm until it finally silenced a moment later.

I can’t wait for the next round of thunderstorms to hit this afternoon.