03 08 00

soundscape

I'm at work. I just spent the last three hours comparing fuel receipts to invoices, and now I'm having problems getting my eyes to focus on anything farther away than one foot.

The door to the office trailer is propped open to let the evening breeze in. (Yes, I work in an office trailer. Want to make something of it?) Our office is surrounded by marshy areas, and I can hear the spring peepers peeping. I've been listening to them all night. There is a big road nearby; whenever a loud truck drives by, the peepers pause for a moment before starting their chirping again. If I close my eyes and block out the sounds of the traffic, I can imagine that I'm out in the woods.

I can differentiate various vehicles by sound. The office is right near a major stop for the university's bus service. Those vehicles are very familiar to me; years ago I spent the majority of my days driving them. There - that rrrrrrrrrrrr wheeeeee rrrrrrrr is one of the newer buses in the fleet. That whiney noise in the middle is the bus shifting; all those new buses have major transmission problems. CHTissssssss... That's a spitter valve releasing, meaning that the air tank is full.

Ah. I can hear a bus that sounds like a vacuum cleaner. I know specifically that it's bus number 67. When I was a driver there, that was my favorite bus. It used to sound like a Harley because it needed a valve job badly. It was fun revving the motor at a stop light, just to hear the engine potato potato potato back down again. But after the mechanics gave it the valve job, it was never the same. It whooshes like a vacuum cleaner, and it's lost some of its pep. A shame, really.

The peepers and the traffic dominate the soundscape. I can also hear the computer humming around me. The server in the back room hums the loudest, and if I turn my head slightly, I can hear a slightly different whine from behind me. The printer's sound is different than the computers' sound; it's higher pitched.

Click hmmm... The refrigerator in the break room just kicked on. It's an old dorm-style mini-fridge. There's a few nasty things in it right now. Some ancient sour cream. A bag filled with ketchup packets from some fast food place. The remnants of someone's lunch molding in a plastic container.

Snap. That was the time clock, clicking over to 10:15PM. The time clock is possessed. No, really, it is. It's designed so that it won't mark over a section of your time card that's already been stamped. It'll beep to let you know you're too close to an already-marked section. But it beeps sometimes when you're nowhere near a stamped section. Sometimes you have to stand there for a minute or more, sliding your time card in and out of the machine, trying to convince it to clock you in (or out.) People have been known to cuss at it; I think that only makes the spirits inside the clock madder. I whisper sweet nothings at it, which seems to work better.

I hear a rumbling roar, and peek out the window. The mechanic on duty tonight took a bus out for a test drive, and he's back. When the mechanics are here, it's a bit odd sometimes. I know that there's another person down at the other end of the building, but I feel like I'm up here all alone. Then they might barge into the office to grab some keys or use the phone, and scare me half to death in the process. I used to lock the door when I was here alone, but now that there's someone around I leave it open (or totally propped open like tonight.) I feel exposed. shiver

I'm waiting for the clumps on the ramp outside that will let me know the mechanic is coming in for the evening to finish his paperwork. Then we'll sit and wait for the whiney rumble that lets us know the last bus is on its way down the driveway. When she gets in our night is almost over. It's almost over now, come to think of it.

I think I'll go outside to have a smoke and listen to the peepers. Good night.

______ of the Day

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