~Friday~ I was back on the city bus and back at 8:15. I took a seat across and one row back from Sci-Fi Fantasy Man, who was wearing a very nice London Fog charcoal-colored trench coat and heads down in a book. His books are usually small and thin. This one was larger and thicker than normal. I averted my eyes over there as I heard him turn a page to watch Chapter 9: Core System appear at the top of the next page. I strained and strained to finally make out the name of the book, which was printed in smaller type along the top of the other page: Star Wars. Altogether now, let’s put a look of 
on our faces.
Logorrhoea boarded and took a seat behind the bus driver. Her hair was better today, but whenever she turned her head a certain way, the sun shined on the side of her face revealing grease all up in her temples. She was quiet for exactly one minute and then inched up to the edge of her seat so she could see the bus driver around the divider. She actually didn’t speak as loudly as she normal does, but let there be no doubt I could clearly hear everything she said. At least I don’t have to type it in ALL CAPS.
She said to the bus driver, “You know that lady with the gray hair? She died. Colon Cancer.”
The bus driver gave an inaudible, but apparently appropriate, response.
“Teddy Pendergrass died day before yesterday. Colon cancer, too. He was still in that wheelchair.”
We had our weekly Student E-mail Initiative Implementation Team meeting, which is scheduled for 1.25-hours, and regularly runs over, but today Sarah (a peer manager to mine) ran it instead of her boss (and my boss’s boss) and we were out of there with 20 minutes to spare.
I met salonnières Anna and Kim at the Cup A Joe on Hillsborough Street, where we waited for Brad to no avail in spite of multi-communication attempts to wake his ass up and get him there. 🙂
I walked back to my office, which I hadn’t planned to do, but the weather has warmed back up (to around 60° today) and it’s only about three blocks up Hillsborough Street.
I’ve been waiting for the Winter 2009 edition of the NC State Alumni Magazine to go online to point to that editorial of mine that was published in it. After all that, they only publish certain stories out of the magazine, not the whole thing, and so not the letters to the editor. For posterity, below is what was published.
To put it in context, my letter was in response to an article called “Taking a Hard Look,” which consisted of an interview-type article of 6 o7 people in the upper echelon of NC State University and the UNC System. The discussion was centered around “the Mary Easley incident,” which evolved into Provost and Chancellor incidents; that is to say, their resignations.
| I read [“Taking a Hard Look”] with interest to see if it would come across as a public relations piece or as an authentic sharing. I’m happy to report that, for the most part, I experienced it as the latter.
Its authenticity to me manifested itself in the candor with which the group called a spade a spade, whether [they were discussing] the former chancellor, the Board of Trustees, or any other executive leader of—and decision made by—the university. I found quotes like these refreshing: “[I]n a lot of respects, I blame the board for not asking more questions,” “I don’t think there’s any question that there’s been a real disconnect between the faculty and the trustees in the past,” and “The reality is three of our last four chancellors have left in the less than ideal circumstances.” I also admired these forthcoming comments and exchanges: “We should have brought [Mary Easley] in the front door,” and in response to Ms. Gordon’s contention that there is a lot less of the colleges “protecting their fiefdoms” and a “much better working together,” Mr. Padilla’s response, “I’m not sure, but I hope you’re right. I still see a lot of college by college.” I walked away from this piece thinking about one of Dr. Stephen R. Covey’s tenets, “When trust is high, communication is easy, effortless, instantaneous, and accurate.” With the discussion about moving away from a “fear-driven culture” “welcoming the critique and welcoming the question-asking,” I felt that this group gets that and would like to see NC State evolve into such a culture of trust. Thank you for talking about the elephant in the room with this article. John Martin ’07 MS |
On the bus ride home, I took a seat in front of a guy I know from the bar, Joe, whom I see every now and then on the bus.
Someone behind me asked a guy sitting near him, “What stop do I get off for Crabtree?”
The guy responded, “You just missed it. But you can just stay on this bus and ride it back around. And ask the bus driver to point out which stop it is to you.”
What he didn’t mention, and I thought sort of critical, was that that little “ride around again” was going to take about an hour-and-a-half.
A girl sat to the right of me with obviously fake, 1.5-inch long fingernails that started with shocking pink on the thumbs, and then alternated with lime green ones across the other fingers. At one point she started picking, really hard, at the edge of her MP3 player right along the edge.
I couldn’t decide if she was trying to pull it open or if she was sharpening her nails. In either case, as hard as she was doing it, I was in disbelief that those nails didn’t come flying off. Must have been Super Glued on.
At home, I was pretty much in and out and off to them gym. It was one of those days when having a “gym buddy” was absolutely critical. If Jen wasn’t expecting me there, I’m quite sure I would have talked myself out of going.
I did the lower body strength circuit workout, and then 30 minutes on the elliptical machine for 555-calorie burn.
I saw that Flex was playing 80s music tonight, so I went down there for a couple of cocktails. There were 11 people in the entire bar, and two of them were these two older guys (and when I say older, I mean older than me, so at least late 50s, early 60s) who stood for pretty much the entire hour I was there, kissing each other and what looked like tweaking each other’s nipples. Get a room.
Chris (Zinnian) had seen my tweet about going down there and he arrived shortly after I did. I spoke with him a bit, and played a game of pool with Jim, before heading out after a total of two cocktails and about an hour of being there. Sad for a Friday night.