Obama drama, some CAT bus training, overheard germs, work, and errands…

Nearly 300,000 people have applied for the approximately 7,000 available jobs in the Obama administration. ~ New York Daily News ~
With hotels in Washington, D.C. rapidly filling to capacity for Barack Obama’s January 20 inauguration, area college students have been renting out their dorm rooms for anywhere from $500 to $1,800 a night for the weekend. Colleges have rules against this sort of thing, but they are difficult to enforce. ~ Politico.com ~


There was a new bus driver being trained on the city bus this morning. There were two other drivers (or managers, or some capacity of CAT employment) sitting in the first couple of seats. Not quite sure why it takes two other city employees for the training, but one was holding a copy of the route schedule, and the other one was making entries into a form on a clipboard.

The guy holding the schedule told the bus driver the name of the next intersection at which she was to turn, along with the direction. The lady with the clipboard, I presume, was marking down the arrival times at each stop.


While waiting for the infamously slow elevator (whose “Close Door” button does absolutely nothing, which is slightly frustrating for the patience-deficit person that I am, but I digress…) to arrive, I overheard the guard behind her desk say to the man standing in front of it, “So, have you seen an infectious disease doctor?”

Not the kind of question you care to hear at all. I guess the only thing worse would have been to hear it between two people once inside the elevator.


We had a 9:00 meeting this morning—not my favorite way to start off a Monday morning, particularly since I didn’t have time to get my morning coffee before it started.

However, to totally make up for it, after the meeting I went across the street to the Atrium Food Court to get my usual 85-cent 16-ounce cup of coffee and the cashier said, “It’s 15 cents this week!” It’s an “exam week special,” as described in this Technician article.


I took the Wolfline (NCSU bus) over to the Campus Bookstore during lunch to look at diploma frames, secretly hoping they’d be on sale for the end of the semester and Christmas. Fat chance.

The cheapest one, which will be fine, was $125. I’m going to wait and see if my mom gives me her (traditional) one hundred dollar bill to shop for myself for Christmas, and if she does, I’ll put it toward that.

I ate in Talley Student Center, since it was right there by the campus bookstore, at the Taco Bell, and then took the Wolfline back to the library, across the street from my office building.


I met with Ed again this afternoon on a news item for The Bulletin and OIT News, and got that done.

After that, I worked on an update of the About OIT > OIT Units web page, incorporating Stan’s suggestion for a “quick link” navigation scheme at the top of the page, and Jude’s (and mine) desire to have a short blurb for each unit’s mission in the detailed section.


I caught the 6:00 bus home, which thankfully, was uneventful. While waiting for it, I checked in with my parents. Dad answered the phone and sounded in great spirits. He’s going to be doing some breathing physical therapy.

In a parallel universe, I’ll be doing some for my knee here for the next several weeks. Here’s to both of us experiencing good, quick results.

After dinner, I ran a couple of errands—K-Mart for some household goods, and Food Lion for a grocery run.

They’re baaaaccck…


My IBM friend, Fran, photoshopped one of my China pictures for me, and I used it to order holiday photo greeting cards. Yay!

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