Today was my first day back to work since Christmas eve, and my badge was nowhere to be found this morning. I finally ended up grabbing a business card of mine, which shows that I work at NC State, to try and use to ride the bus free this morning.
The driver accepted it. I was both surprised, and pleased.
At work, I had two voicemails, which I never have, and which aggravated me in two ways:
- There is no external indicator at all on my phone that I have messages. I have to lift up the receiver and listen to see if there are short dialtone beeps. That’s the indicator. Ridiculous.
- Both messages were from Xerox reminding the previous owner of my phone that he needs to call in with his copier’s meter readings or they’ll use estimated readings to charge him. I called Xerox before the holidays, after getting many messages from them, to tell them that “Paul” is no longer at this number and to please change their records to stop the calls.
I had nine spam e-mails that had gone into the Junk folder; three of the titles were funny in a dirty kind of way:
- re: Scarlett did it for cash
- I love them shaven
- re: 9 inches and so tight
I ate lunch at the Indian food area that’s in the back of the Gopaks Bazaar convenience store on Hillsborough Street. I got their Chicken Curry, which was quite good, albeit messy to eat at my desk.
I hitched a ride home with Jude, my manager, at about 5:45, as I didn’t want to try to negotiate a free bus ride again with my business card, and I live pretty much on her way home.
I checked in with my parents, and my dad sounded so good. Thank goodness. I’ve been avoiding checking in with them, wanting to have done it starting on New Year’s Day.
My dad’s voice has returned more to normal (lower; it had gotten higher pitched for a while), he was quick and in good spirits, and handed the phone to my mom as quickly as he could, which is perhaps the strongest indicator that he’s back to normal.
My mom sounded in very good spirits, too. Relief.
I spent a good portion of the rest of my evening going through all of the paper piles in my house, tossing a lot of it out. My main motivation in doing it, other than it’s something that’s been needing done for months, was to find my badge.
In the course of taking down two Chinese silk runners that Robert’s mom gave me and that I had hanging on the wall, to put back up with decorative thumb tacks instead of the strapping tape currently holding them up (and starting to sag), I hit a Chinese mask she’d also given me, which was hanging on a nail just above the runners, and it Humpty Dumpty-crashed to the floor.
All of John’s horses, and all of John’s men, couldn’t put that mask back together again. 
That totally bummed me out.
And for some personal, positive health news, I had a virtually pain-free back/hip day today.
I never made it to the gym tonight, as I wanted to find my badge first to make sure I had it for tomorrow morning’s bus ride. In the course of looking, I did find my old graduate student ID card, which expires at the end of this month, so I at least have that for tomorrow morning.
I’m going to call Helios in the morning to see if perhaps I lost it there on Christmas eve when I left work early to meet Kevin (av8rdude) there. That’s the last place I remember having it.