~Tuesday~ A couple got on the bus—the gentleman first, followed by the lady. He put his money into the machine, grabbed his printed fare card, and started down the aisle toward a seat. The lady stood in front of the fare machine, turned toward him, and with her hands on her hips hollered, “What? You ain’t gonna pay mines?”
To which he replied working his way back up to the front of the bus, “Oh, you want me to pay yours?”
“Yes,” she said unequivocally.
About two blocks from the stop where My Three Sons usually boards, I saw a woman whom I’m quite sure was his wife, who was with several other mothers with their children. Daddy was nowhere to be found there, or at his stop when we got to it.
A man with long interspersed gray and blond hair sat in front of me in the center-facing seat on the right side of the bus. He had on a turquoise Miami Dolphins windbreaker, and with what I at first thought was a stamp on the back of his hand. “Did you take a shower this morning?” I thought. And then I realized that it wasn’t a nightclub re-entry stamp at all, but a tattoo—of a tombstone. My bad.
At a subsequent stop, we stayed for a little over five minutes as a person in a wheel chair boarded, which involved the bus driver getting out of her seat after pushing some buttons to make a ramp pop out that is built into the back doorway.
I didn’t turn around and gawk at what was going on, but I imagine it’s part of her job to make sure the person gets in okay and then to help with the seatbelts that are available to hook up to wheelchairs. I did wonder if it was required to secure the wheelchair with the belt or if the person in the chair has a choice about it. I mean, it’s not like anyone else on the bus has to, or even has the choice to, buckle up.
While we were stopped, and I suppose because we were stopped so long, a school bus passed us, which just seemed wrong.
I spent most of my work day finishing up tasks associated with our big project of student e-mail going to Google, which we’re announcing tomorrow.
I also had my first weigh-in with my “motivation buddies,” Jen and Jason. All three of us are tracking our progress on dailyburn.com. I was down eight pounds, which I’m allotting at least three of for a clothing change—from khakis and a sweatshirt to shorts and a t-shirt—from last week’s weigh-in.
However, I usually (as I’ve mentioned before, I’ve started diets many, many times) lose an average of 6 pounds the first week that I start a diet, so 8 pounds is not totally out of line. The important thing is that this first spurt put me back below the most I’ve ever weighed in my life, so that alone is a great psychological boost.
I got to the gym at around 6:30, where I did 40 minutes of cardio on the elliptical machine, as well as something I rarely, rarely do there—I watched TV. I took out my headphones and then reached in my bag for my iPod only to remember that I failed to grab it on the way out of my house.
To that end, I plugged my headphones into the TV jack on my elliptical machine and I watched Jeopardy, followed by the first half of Wheel of Fortune, both of which I used to watch when I had a television.
Hate Alex Trebek. Like Pat Sajak okay, but today he was pretty awful, particularly in the interview part at the beginning of the show. As for Vanna, she seems like a lovely lady and all, but I just don’t understand what she’s doing on that show—although I suspect that lack of understanding about her role has something to do with my being gay. But I digress…
My 40 minutes of cardio resulted in a 730-calorie burn.
Casey had a long work day today, including dinner with a customer at the Angus Barn after work. He got home after nine sometime, and after catching up a little, we listened (well, he listened and I re-listened) to a portion of the This American Life episode called Mind Games.
This is the episode that I want to discuss at our next salon, and to which three salonnières so far have listened, and I wanted to get Casey’s perspective on it. His perspective was very interesting and it added a whole new dimension to the discussion for me, which I greatly appreciated.
Casey and I both hit the sack between 11:00 and 11:30. Before falling asleep, I read two-thirds of my reading assignment for tomorrow night’s class, which was actually minimal, consisting of the introduction to The Wisdom of Crowds and the foreword and the preface to Conversation and Community.