The truth about bottled water, a bus oven, a lunch read, and lethargy…


Today’s buscapade is about being hot… and not in a good way.

This morning, the driver I’ve dubbed “The Sultan of Sweat” was driving the bus. The first thing I had to do after taking my seat was to take off my jacket. This is the same driver who, a few weeks ago, I had to go up to the front of the bus and ask to please turn down the heat. I believe the words that I used were, “It’s incredibly hot in here. Would you please turn down the heat?”

This relates back to my comment yesterday about the variation in people’s temperature comfort zone. I can’t fathom how this driver could not be hot.


I had one meeting canceled this morning and another one that was supposed to be 30 minutes that went 45. That’s all I’m going to say about that meeting.


I wanted a Kabob Wrap from Laziz Biryani Corner restaurant inside the Gopaks Bazaar convenience store today, but I also wanted to read during lunch, and that menu choice is not conducive to holding while turning pages in a book. It takes two hands two eat, and there is usually sauce and juice leaking from it, which would make a mess on a book.

To that end, I settled on Amore’s, which is very close to my office, and where I get the Pepperoni Stromboli, which takes 10-15 minutes to cook—providing some good reading time. I also eat it with a fork and knife, so turning pages is not affected by the choice.

I’m reading essays of James Baldwin, and what I’m struggling with the most reading them is the size of the print in this edition of the book. The essay I read today, “The Discovery of What It Means to Be an American,” was obviously (from the title) about what it means to be an American, but particularly those things pertinent to being an American writer, and it was interesting. One point that I liked that he made was about living abroad for a while, particularly living around other Americans abroad. He basically said that there, you discover that all of the differences you might have had back in the States recede to the background, while all that you have in common, namely shared experience and culture, comes to the foreground.


Late this afternoon, we had our weekly hour-and-a-half working staff meeting, which we spent going through a website that is being dismantled, and deciding what content on it should: 1) be migrated to a new site as is, 2) be updated before migrating it, or 3) or being dropped altogether.


Going home, I caught the bus with the least amount of wait time I’ve ever had since I’ve been riding in September of ’08. As I walked down the steps of my building, I could see the bus down Hillsborough Street. I had to hustle to get over to the stop on time. Fortunately, it’s very close to my building, or I would have missed it.


I’ve pretty much felt on the lethargic side all day today and at home, it was no exception. I grabbed a quick bite and then lay down for a two-hour nap.

Leave a Comment