~Wednesday~ I was at the bus stop a few minutes early, which did not bode well with the combination of cold temperatures this morning and the lateness of the bus. It got to the point where I looked around for a very wide tree that I might stand aside in such a way that it would block the wind. Fortunately, before I had to, the bus finally arrived at 8:30.
Today’s bus was definitely not a kneeling bus, and in fact as I boarded I said to the driver, “Whoa, this is a tall one,” to which she replied, “It sure is.”
Logorrhea boarded at her usual stop and in passing the person sitting immediately to the left in the center-facing seat, she said, “Oh hi,” and then took a seat next to her. Of course she spoke—and loudly, as she’s wont to do—and it was very obvious, from the body language and the one-word answers, that the other person really didn’t want to.
Of course, Log didn’t notice this herself, as she sat there with a plastic container on her lap that looked like one of those black frozen dinner trays, but with a lid over it, spewing forth, “I’m donating today, so I got liver. You ever seen liver?”
Meanwhile behind me, two men were talking about some truck that sets up at lunch time outside of their workplace, and they laughed together as one said he always thinks of it as “meals on wheels,” to which the other replied, “Funny, I always call it the ‘roach coach’ in my head.”
I drifted for a minutes and then caught one of them saying, “Yeah, I promised myself I was gonna cut down this year,” and I thought he was talking about cigarettes. He went on to say, “Then at lunch time I was in the store, and I told myself I wasn’t gonna get none, and I come out with ten.” I wondered how you could buy only 10 of them, as of course they come in packs of 20.
He went on to clarify for me, “Yeah. I bought ten, and only one of them have $2.00 on it. Scratch off nine more, and not one of them had anythin’ on ’em. Nine of them, with nothin’ on ’em!”
Logorrhea reclaimed the spotlight with what was now the kind of conversation about a topic that makes everyone around her either roll their eyes or want to strangle her. She said this to a man sitting in the first front-facing seat, “You know what I learned in church on Sunday?” God only knows, I thought.
“He say, the pastor say, ‘When a family fight, it mean He gonna come out on top.” Alrighty, then. Check, please!
I didn’t mention this yesterday, but I could definitely tell that I’d increased my ab count on Monday from 225 (15 sets x 15 reps) to 300 (15 x 20). I could still feel it this morning when I moved a certain way.
I had another day of no meetings, which I just relished.
I rode the bus home before going to class, as I like to drive to class to have my car afterwards, especially since tonight I’d planned to go to the gym with Jen before going dancing. Parking is free after 5:00 in a lot across the street from the building in which I have class.
I was engaged in class tonight. During the discussion of our assigned reading about wikis, we talked about the participation it takes in order for wikis to thrive, with Wikipedia (of course) figuring in to the discussion.
We talked about the perception that “the whole world” is keeping that thing thriving, which reminded me of a very, very interesting slate.com article I’d read addressing that notion, “The Wisdom of the Chaperones: Digg, Wikipedia and the Myth of Web 2.0 Democracy.” The articles notes that “1 percent of Wikipedia users are responsible for about half of the site’s edits.” It also talks about different models that various wiki sites (Digg, Wikipedia, Slashdot, and Helim.com) use to encourage and reward contributors, which was quite germane to tonight’s discussion.
It didn’t occur to me at the time I read that slate.com article in 2008 that its title was an allusion to the textbook we’re reading for this class, James Surowiecki‘s The Wisdom of Crowds. It all tracks back.
A quick stop in the gym yielded an upper body workout for a 369-calorie strengthening burn. Jen was there doing cardio, and mercifully Bubba was nowhere to be found. I passed Anna’s husband, JR, on the treadmill as I was leaving.
The bar crowd was extremely light tonight, but we had a good number of dancers, and I got a good cardio workout in if nothing else.