Dan Posluns

Happy America Day, everyone! Canada Day was just a few days ago, and I celebrated in style, as I am wont to do.

Work is now in that “hurry up and wait” phase of the project where I’m spending considerable time idling followed by sudden bursts of furious work at inconvenient hours. It’s better than the constant crunch I was dealing with before, but I’m still generally getting home from work much later than I’d prefer. I’ll be glad when the app is delivered to Apple and is out of our hands, which should be in just a few days now (fingers crossed).

It was unclear whether yesterday (July 3rd) would be a holiday for us, because on the one hand we’re theoretically at our most critically urgent phase, and on the other hand there really isn’t much to do unless there’s a fire to put out. It wound up being a bit of both for me: I fielded some problems at home, but mostly took it easy.

Yesterday was also Zombie Walk, an event where they were attempting to set a world record for the largest flash mob of zombies. I knew a lot of people who were attending but wasn’t planning on going myself; the effort required between costuming, makeup and time devoted to the event was just too demanding, and I was really looking forward to the day off. Besides which, the event took place quite literally around the corner from my work office, and I knew from experience how tough it was to find parking anywhere in the Fremont area whenever there was any sort of parade, street fair or other type of event.

As it turned out, though, between pressure from my friends to attend and a last-minute change in the project I couldn’t make from home, it wound up being a fairly good opportunity to kill two birds with one stone. So I carpooled with them, and they dropped me off at work while they went to go and get made up as zombies.

When I met back up with them we walked about fifteen minutes back to my office, where the registration line for the Zombie Walk had already grown and extended around the block. I walked with the three of them as they calmly cut past the line, crossed under the yellow tape into the main lot and told the staff there they were ready to get to work.

I did something of a double-take, as I had not realized my friends were part of the event staff and that I had inadvertently signed on as a volunteer. I stood there slackjawed as we were handed badges and orange traffic-marshalling vests, and two-sided signs that could be used to direct zombies (“stop” and “slow”).

The next hour or so was spent in mixed ways. The time of the event hadn’t been properly advertised, and one of my friends needed to get things from the car which was parked a fifteen-minute walk away, so she and I had to speedwalk it over there and back, lugging with us zombie makeup, picnic items and folding chairs for the outdoor showing of Shaun of the Dead that was going to follow the walk.

I should mention at this point that it was hot out. Extremely sunny and extremely hot. And I was wearing two layers of tattered zombie clothing with a large plastic prosthetic against my chest that didn’t exactly breathe. I was not doing so well.

When we got back I was given a very quick zombie makeup job, and our jobs were explained to us in a highly abstract and unspecific fashion. I had no clue what was expected of me and was extremely nervous. It wasn’t until the zombie hordes actually got to walking (led by a guy dangling a brain from a stick he was carrying) that I started to get some idea of what I should be doing to help keep it moving safely and efficiently.

We were about four blocks from having completed the tour and returning to the starting point when one of the main organizers suddenly ran up to me and said “I need you to go lead the next wave, NOW.”

“Okay,” I repsonded, eyes wide and positively betraying that I had no clue what I was even doing there let alone how one is meant to take charge of a several-hundred-person zombie horde, and I ran as fast as I could through the relentless heat up and over the four blocks it took to get to the starting point.

Over the next hour or so I twice led a swarm of zombies around Fremont, armed only with my orange vest and cardobard sign, doing what I think was an admirable job from the absolutely no training that I’d received. There were some difficulties and blatant errors in judgment I made regarding which intersections to cross and when, but it could have gone worse I suppose.

We stayed and watched the movie afterward, and heard the announcement that there had been nearly four thousand zombies registered (earning us the world record by a slim margin).

All in all, my day off wound up being consumed with about eight hours of zombie madness, many of which were spent walking all around Fremont in the hot sun. My feet ache like hell today, and soon I will be embarking on another walk of about 25 minutes from my work to a friend who has a houseboat on Lake Union, right near Gas Works Park where the fourth-of-July fireworks will be exploding from.

It will be an awesome party, but I look forward to giving my feet a rest in the coming weeks.

Dan.

Tags: holidays, photos, seattle weather, storytime, work

This entry was posted on Saturday, July 4th, 2009 at 2:10 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.