Hey! Do You Know What Time It Is?!?!

The phone rang at 5:45am. Perchance, I was awake and on the computer sending out a report, but by the time I got over to the mobile phone to check out the number, it went to voicemail.... ????

By the number, I knew it was from Germany. The last time I got a late-night call -- 2:30am -- it was from Crazy German Chicken (Iris), but it wasn't Iris this time, it wasn't the code for Hamburg. I didn't think it was Michael in Bavaria, either, since he often goes to the U.S. for work and deals with North American time zones on a regular basis. I was going through a mental list in my head of German friends while I was waiting for the voicemail to start playing, but I really should've known it was...

Crazy Berit! Nutter... the message was that she was going to the States and wanted to see if I could meet up. We did this before in San Diego, which turned into a bit of a palarva as Jez was immediately deported back to Germany from San Francisco (he'd overstayed his American visa 12 years before), and Berit had to work a trade show in Las Vegas with their son Vinny in tow, while nursing a broken leg in a recent and rather spectacular skiing accident. By the time she met me in San Diego, she had had enough of the States. What a trip... anyway...

I spoke to the nutter a little later this morning and she sheepishly told me she calculated the time from the East Coast, where she goes for business meetings, instead of West Coast time. Also, her meeting is in Orlando. Florida. It's about the furthest point away from me that she could be. That's the thing about Western Europe -- time zones and distances are a non-issue, unless you get shipped off to Russia or the Middle East for a business meeting. Here, on this big land mass in the New World, pathetic creatures like me who work from home in practically the last time zone on the planet have to contend with phones ringing at ungodly hours of the morning. In Canada we have bloody FIVE time zones. Count 'em, five. If I wasn't such a deep sleeper, who can snooze through registered seismic rumblings, I would never get any sleep at all. I've got my direct line (home) as part of my e-mail signature to our (200-odd) clients, and nearly all of them are based in the East, the financial centres: Toronto, Montreal, New York...

Not long after getting off the phone with Berit, to make arrangements to possibly meet in Spain instead, the phone rang again at 7:15am. It was a double-ring this time, the intercom. Sitting in my shorts and t-shirt, I wondered if I really wanted to know what this was about. Then I remembered the UPS slip stuck to the intercom with my apartment number on it on Friday. Then I fuzzily recalled getting buzzed on Saturday morning, too, then rolling over and going back to sleep. Curiosity got the better of me, so I picked up the phone.

"Hello?"
"It's UPS. I have a package for you."
"You deliver this early????"
"Oh yes."
(grumble grumble)"OK, come up."

The UPS driver was much too good-looking. I mean, it's not as if UPS is at an advantage hiring attractive people to deliver their goods -- are they?? -- except maybe for regular customers who put in standing orders. (Or flirty receptionists who have some say in which courier to use.) Residential recipients like me have no idea who's bringing stuff unless I could be bothered to turn on the telly and scrutinize the CCTV image.

The UPS guy was holding a largish box stamped Thermopak and I realized it was a cooler. A market research company I get paid to provide consumer opinions for had sent me a product to try. He told me he was given instructions to deliver by 8:00am. Why, oh why??? Meanwhile, I was feeling rather self-conscious standing there in my flannel shorts making small talk with the very attractive UPS man, who has probably been awake for hours by then, while I was only half-awake. I was just happy to be able to write my signature on his screen without too much trouble. I made him laugh, too, so I couldn't have been that out of it.