My first FBI agent!

I have lived a sheltered and uneventful life (for which I’m grateful), so yesterday was the first time I met an FBI agent. (Living in Canada all my life has no doubt impeded this quest, tho’ I believe there’s a small FBI office in the U.S. consulate three blocks from my office.)

I was making a presentation at the offices of the Long Beach port authority on a security-related system I project-managed for a joint agency of the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach. I knew an FBI agent was coming, and that the agent was a woman, and the second person in the room was a woman I didn’t know—but she was so unlike my preconceptions of an FBI agent I didn’t realize it was her. She didn’t have the swagger that (male) armed law enforcement usually has.

When I asked her for a card, telling her she was the first FBI agent I’d met, she remarked, “I guess that’s a good thing.” When I told my SO I’d met my first FBI agent, she remarked quite wittily, “That you know of.” Too true.

In keeping with this blog’s theme, I should explain why I didn’t work out yesterday, after two pretty good days. (Getting to swim twice, by myself, two days in a row, is a solid triumph for me.)

The presentation was a disaster. Although I’d given it before, it is really little more than an introduction to an extensive live demonstration of our system. But we could not get a VPN connection through the Port’s firewall, even after 110 minutes of trying. This all meant I didn’t have time for lunch or coffee. Then I had to drive to the office I work with usually, and by the time I got home I was zonked (q.v.i.). A light supper, a conversation with my SO, and I was ready for an early bed. Even Three Men in a Boat couldn’t keep me awake more than 12 minutes.