I caught the city bus early this morning—at 7:25 instead of the regular 7:55 or 8:25 that I usually catch.
I took a seat toward the back of the bus, where across from me sat a man and a woman. The man had long, dirty-blond hair, which covered the sides of his face, which was down between his knees, forehead resting on the top of a travel cup for coffee. His head wasn’t resting on his hands resting on his knees, but all the way down between his knees—he was bent over like a closed compact.
I tried to discern if he was tired, sick, hungover, or a little of all three. The thing I wondered the most was whether at some point, he’d sit up and upchuck. I have to admit, though, that I was also curious to see his face—to see if he was hot or not.
I also tried to figure out the relationship between him and the girl sitting next to him. She was sitting upright, alert, and better dressed than he was. She was holding a manila envelope—with no flap—and there were a bunch of papers sticking out the top. It looked like perhaps it was the man’s “file,” and I wondered if she wasn’t a social worker or something taking him “downtown” for some agency or court meeting.
Finally, at a little over halfway to my destination, the man sat up, leaned against the back of the bus, eyes closed, and promptly tilted to his right, his head landing on her shoulder. He was decent looking and didn’t throw up.
I passed the stop in front of my work building and got off at the next one, as I was meeting one of my favorite peeps, Myra, at the Drunkin’ [sic] Donuts for breakfast. We weren’t meeting until 8:00, so I used the 15 or 20 minutes waiting time to fire up my laptop and break up nine pictures that I had on one slide in a PowerPoint presentation, giving each one their own slide. I got five out of the nine done before Myra arrived.
We both tried their new Waffle Sandwich, about which I’ve heard raves from at least two different sources. Myra thought it looked good from the poster-sized advertisement of it that they had in the window. It wasn’t bad, but we were both definitely underwhelmed by it.
It was great to catch up with Myra, as always, and we set off to our separate offices at about 8:45.
I walked the two or so blocks back to my office, and as I neared the office, I passed one of my colleagues, Jen, coming in my direction and she said, “How was your breakfast with Myra?”
Ah Twitter. I had tweeted that I was meeting Myra when I first got to Dunkin’ Donuts as they have wireless access in there. Actually, I think it picks up the wireless from the campus across the street, but either way, there’s access in there.
We had a double-booked conference room situation at 10:00 today. I had it to give my Technical Communication in China presentation to my officemate, my manager, and my manager’s manager. Another manager had it for his staff meeting. In our calendar reservation tool, the room used to be called the ETSS Conference Room and now it’s called the OIT HLB B3 Conference Room. Apparently the manager had booked it under the ETSS moniker and I had booked it under the B3 moniker. They system is supposed to resolve this, but something went awry.
Since it was a big room and they had 10 or 12 people for their meeting, and we had four, we went to my manager’s manager’s office and I projected my presentation up on his whiteboard. I really didn’t want to do it in there, but it turned out just fine.
It went well, and we had a good discussion about the potential other audiences to whom to deliver this presentation, which was actually the goal of today’s presentation.
I work with some good people.
This afternoon I started going through the too many piles that are on my desk, putting things away in file folders as I did. I found a few things that had fallen through the cracks, and I took care of a couple of them.
I caught the 5:00 bus home and immediately headed out to Durham once home. Robert and I attended Third Friday at Golden Belt, which went from 6:00-9:00. We got there at about 6:45. One exhibit was the Bailout Biennial, another was Marcha Forzada Collective: 38 Eyes x 57,436 Steps, and room-size galleries of several of the Studio Artists participating at Golden Belt.
As it turned out, Robert knew a couple of the artists who had space there, which was cool. One of them had a photograph of a very sexy model, who was also a matador. The matador was a nude model for a class he took in Mexico.
After our 45-minute or so gallery visit, we had dinner at Fishmongers on Main Street, which was delicious in spite of a way-too-long wait. We had a very simple order: the Sourdough Bread appetizer, the bowl of Oyster Stew soup, a side salad, the Fried Jalapeños appetizer, and one dozen steamed Little Neck Clams.
It took a long time to get the first two things, which our waitperson specifically asked us if we wanted brought out first—Robert’s salad and my bread. And after that, well it was just an incredibly long wait—at least 15 minutes, if not more, no exaggeration—until the clams, soup, and jalapeños arrived.
Back home, I checked to verify that my Internet connection was still hosed, and worked on tonight’s blog entry (offline) before reading a little more of Stiff.