~Thursday~ I rode the Wolfline bus in this morning, as I had a meeting in the Talley Student Center from where there are two bus options home that run more often than the city bus at that time.
The bus wasn’t very crowded when I first got on and I took an inventory of the six people sitting close to me:
- Closest to me to the left was a girl who looked Scandinavian to me and was on the phone speaking in a foreign language that I didn’t recognize, dressed in an all black-and-white outfit—black pants, white jacket, black and white blouse, black tennis shoes, but the kind with those tubes in the heel part, which were white.
- Three people—one girl and two guys—were heads down and fingers on their smart phones.
- One man was cupping a shiny red apple in his hands on his lap and he, subconsciously I believe, rubbed one side of it the entire time with his left thumb.
- One girl was heads and pen down answering homework questions in a notebook.
- The girl directly across from me had a bottle of water that was about three quarters full and said “Smart Water” on it, and she contemplated a tube of lip gloss, rolling it between her fingers and thumbs.
That bottle of “Smart Water” made me think of two things:
- It’s somewhat ironic that, in essence, the smart water was attending college courses, and
- It made me think of one of those “Overheard in NYC” items that said, “Two women were looking for bottled water in a store, and one of them found some. ‘Over here,’ she said to her friend. The friend came over looking at the water said, ‘Oh, I don’t like that brand of water. It’s too watery.'”
I didn’t capture this yesterday, but after the passionate exchange about eye wear in the comment section of yesterday’s blog entry, through which I learned a couple of important things, I called my eye doctor’s office to see if I could cancel the order I had put in for Tuesday. I exchanged voice mail with the guy who’s usually in the lens area (although he wasn’t when I was there on Tuesday), with his first message saying that they get started on the orders pretty quickly, but that he would try and reach them to stop the order before he left for the day—which was in about 10 minutes.
A follow-up call about 5 minutes later said that he was able to stop the order and that I should call the office tomorrow and talk to the people in billing about reversing the charge on my credit card. So, I did that this morning. Sweet. Early next week, I’ll either e-mail or call them and ask them to mail me my prescription to have it filled somewhere cheaper and employing all the advice from Dan and Scott. Thanks, guys!
Today I tweeted that this 47-second video is one that always makes me laugh:
To which my friend Nick tweeted, “I see your 47-second video and raise you a 46-second one in the same vein.”
And finally, this Facebook update from one of my friends made me laugh today:
| I just spent 30 minutes looking for my phone. Turns out my … stout… kitty was laying on it! |
Work was uneventful today, with our working 1.5-hour department meeting only running a little over an hour, and that late afternoon meeting across campus at the student center, which was an Alternative Spring Break Trip Leadership Team meeting between Jackie, Tierza, and myself.
My assumption, that there were two good Wolfline bus choices from which to get home after that meeting, was proven wrong due to a route change for many of the buses due to a water main burst affecting one of the main bus route roads on campus. I’m subscribed to the Wolfline listserve, so I was aware that the buses were detouring.
Not the case for everyone though. The girl sitting next to me was on her phone, and I heard her one-sided conversation as we passed the turn the bus usually takes, “Hmmm. Weird. The bus is going the wrong way. I mean it didn’t turn where it was supposed to. I think I’m on the right bus.” Then she turned to me, “This is the Avent Ferry bus, right?”
“Yes,” I said. “A water main burst and we’re going around it.”
“Oh, thank god,” she said and returned to her phone conversation.
Once home, I grabbed my coupon for a $6.95 haircut at Great Clips where I found the place totally empty with one of the stylists slumped down in her chair, head back, and with her eyes closed.
I burst in the door, and said, “Wake it up! You have a customer!”
She laughed seeming genuinely glad to have something to do. She tried to sell me some shampoo, but when she asked me what kind I use, instead of honestly saying, “Head & Shoulders” like I usually do and which is usually followed by a sales pitch to buy their brand, I said, “Crew.”
“That’s what we recommend,” she said and I feigned surprise as if it were news to me.
As I left, she said, “You need another bottle of Crew (which is $11 a bottle and a price I would never pay for shampoo), or are you okay?”
“Oh, I have about three-quarters of a bottle left,” I said. I think I’ll have three-quarters of a bottle of Crew shampoo for a long, long time.
My next stop in my long day was the gym, where I did cardio tonight—a 40-minute, 750-calorie burn on the elliptical machine while listening to Podrunner music at 139 BPM. I saw, and said hello to, JR while there.
After my workout, I stopped next door for groceries, where surprisingly there were no checkout lines considering the ridiculous amount of news being reported about the winter storm coming through here this weekend. However, by the time I got through the store and got to the registers, there were lines.
I got behind a couple who “had a complicated order” using food stamps, I think, and trying to cash some kind of payroll check to boot. They started off with the woman asking the cashier if she could ring up five or so of their items separately. That finished, the cashier started on the items in the basket of which there were about 15, with the woman meanwhile running back into the aisles to get a forgotten item.
The cashier finished ringing up the remaining items before she got back, so we waited for her with everyone twiddling their thumbs, and me tapping on the face of my watch. When she got back, something had gone wrong, and they had to take all of the 15 items out of their bags and re-scan them.
My order came up to $81—”You saved $14 on your order today, Mr. Martin”—and I paid it with a credit card the first time through, being the model customer that I am.
On the way home, I heard part of Fresh Air and the story on it absolutely boggled my mind! I just can’t believe what’s going on in what’s called “The Carbon Economy.” It’s a 25-minute investment, but I found it riveting. It reminded me of the time when I learned about options trading—how this whole other layer of trading was going on behind the regular stock market trading.
I got home at about 9:45 and made a huge salad of cucumbers, onions, mushrooms, broccoli, and celery with some shredded mozzarella cheese on it, all mixed in some sesame ginger dressing. I supplemented that with a cup-and-a-half of cottage cheese. Yum!
After a short instant message with Robert and a couple of Scrabble moves, I wrote this blog entry and then hit the sack. Long day.