Pet Peeve

I have a pet peeve. See if you can guess what it is.

So last night, I found myself extremely sick, the kind of illness with copious, clothes-soaking sweating, and simultaneously muscle-rending chills. The sort of experience I only expect to have when I quit drinking for more than 24 hours, or lose my dealer in a drive by. By 1:30 a.m. it seemed the perfect storm of symptoms, leaving me miserable and close to non-functioning. But by 7:00 a.m., having told Pooteewheet that I was not going to be out of office for both her sickness and my own, and certainly not on only my second day in my new, pole-free cube, I willed the little bugs into submission with a perfect storm of mental acrobatics and hoofed it into work, a bit late, but earlier than most, and suffering from only enough sweating that it could be controlled with a bootlegged Chipotle napkin. Or four. One might question why I have several dozen Chipotle napkins in my cube, to which I must say, a love of burritos, a well-paying job as a sort-of developer slash business analyst, and recycled napkins equals a perfect storm. I was going to park in the back lot, but the perfect storm of coincidences that led to my sickness and pseudo-recuperation, with just enough lateness to be further out than normal, plus extra people in early hoping to leave early -to take advantage of the end of summer led me to the front lot. Do you think I had to park way out in the third lot? Hell no. There was an opening in the second lot, square in the middle of a number of cars that had parked thirty minutes earlier. A perfect f*cking parking storm. On the way in, I didn't bump into anyone I knew which, given the perfect storm circumstances surrounding my inlaws giving me the flu by passing it to my wife and daughter, was in itself a perfect storm, because I was able to keep my contagion away from everyone except Mean Mr. Mustard, who was only concerned that any perfect storms, even perfect storms within perfect storms, be just imperfect enough to allow the delivery of a few thermos of coffee. I was happy to see him, because his trip to California was the coincidence he needed to pick up the drug company swag from his youth that he knew I coveted to give to my friend the Hamline professor who collects such things. Retro drug paraphernalia - classic. Intersections necessary to put it in the hands of my master's thesis prof - a g*ddamn, motherf*cking perfect storm.