~Tuesday~ There were two peeps at my bus stop again this morning, once again an African-American couple, but not the same couple as yesterday. No pictures—portrait or landscape orientation—were taken. They both boarded before me and both said, “Day passes, please,” which is a requirement before putting your $2.00 in the fare machine so the bus driver can push the correct button on her panel to print day pass fare cards.
There was a perfect storm of buses at the corners of Gorman and Conifer streets: a CAT city bus, a Wake County Public Schools bus, and a university Wolfline bus. A vision of a bus convention came into my mind.
Evidently I didn’t get the memo that today would be an odoriferous day, instantiated once in the morning and twice in the afternoon—the morning instance on this bus and one of the afternoon instances at work, with the other on the bus on the way home. This morning’s instance involved someone sitting in my immediate vicinity sporting cologne or perfume that I can only describe as either “Eau de Coppertone,” “Banana Boat Bouquet,” or “Hawaiian Tropic Tinge.”
Logorrhea got on, and immediately pumped up the volume speaking to the person sitting across from her. “I ended that flu before it got started. My head felt like someone was pounding nails through it. But I wouldn’t let them go through. Wouldn’t let it go through.”
And later, “You know you got to wait two weeks to get your driver’s license now? Down at the DMV, you can’t even get it there. Got to go through the mail. Got to keep checking your box for it. I have a new UPS man. He stay out where I live.” And leaning forward in a whisper, which for her means as loud as regular people speak normally, she added parenthetically, “He a Mexican!” I immediately glanced around to see if anyone of Hispanic descent was in the vicinity. Too bad Grumpy Boy wasn’t around.
On she went, “Yeah, my boy caught him trying to get into our boxes. My boy say to the UPS man as he tried to take my mail, ‘That my mama’s.’ That’s right. Gotta wait for your new driver’s license and get it in the mail, where someone might take it.”
In a bold fashion move (I said bold, not smart) the very plus-sized woman with the Dolly Parton-sized breasts to whom I’ve referred before, boarded the bus wearing lime green tights (stretched to the max) and one of those tops that is like a shirt, but comes down beyond the hips almost to the thighs and is gathered around the bottom. Hers was bright, bright yellow with swirls of lime green in it. She toned it down with calf-high, white boots and a tannish-brown vest that was a little furry; it looked like a lining that had been removed from a jacket or something. She had her absolutely adorable daughter, complete in pink, in tow.
First thing at work this morning, Jason, Jen, and I weighed in. I returned back to the biggest loser status, with a 5-pound loss for this week, which is really not as big a deal as it sounds, since I’d (technically) gained three pounds last week, when I thought there was no way I could have. With that factored in, this week’s loss was essentially a two-pound loss, which I’ll take. Who’s counting and rationalizing. Oh, I am.
That’s a 20-pound loss since starting this endeavor on January 12th. That averages out to 3.3 pounds-per-week, which is better than the 2 pounds-per-week I’d planned on.
I had two work meetings today, both in the afternoon, and back-to-back. The first was my department meeting, at which the only food appearance was Golden Oreo Fun Sticks, which I brought. They’re fairly decent for a 90-calorie treat, although the reviews of them aren’t stellar.
The second meeting was an hour-long call with one of the Google Apps Education Edition reps about a communications plan around the launch of our move of students at NC State from NC State Unity Webmail to Google Apps @ NC State, which is imminent.
In the middle of that meeting, we received a broadcast e-mail to all occupants of our building. It was the second odoriferous instance of the day, and it went like this:
| Subject: Bad odor in building
All, Sorry about the foul odor in the building. Facilities staff are already here working to track down the source of the problem. Seems to be in the plumbing. More information as we receive it. -Tony- |
I caught a late bus—the 6:30—home, where I experienced the third and final odoriferous instance of the day—someone around me smelled like they’d been working at the King Burger all day.
There was a guy, who I’ve mentioned once before when I rode a late bus home, who is totally family (or if he isn’t, he exhibits every stereotype associated with the phrase “gay as a picnic basket” anyway) who sat with a lady friend of his, with whom he got to just a-cackling and to that point of laughing where you have to put your palm up as if to say “Stop!” while you catch your breath.
This happened a couple of times, and when they’d just stop laughing, one of them would add some other little retort that would send them both into hysterics again. They were quite amusing to watch. When she got off (the stop before him), she said, “I so enjoy talking with you. Have a good evening.”
I had a late dinner, as I was late getting home, and then I went to the gym. I stopped at K-Mart on the way to pick up my Nexium prescription, which wasn’t ready. Turns out my insurance company is requesting an authorization from my doctor because I’m not using a generic brand instead of Nexium. This would make sense if I hadn’t already refilled this prescription once and they didn’t ask for an authorization then. Also, if they checked my history before my last Nexium prescription, they’d see that I tried both Protonix and Omeprazole, having success with neither. Gotta love our health care system.
It was unbelievably crowded at the gym for 8:00 at night. I did my upper body routine, not in my usual very prescribed order (let me put a look of surprise on your face), but randomly as various machines came empty. Otherwise, if I’d’ve waited to use my machines in order, I’d’ve been there an extra 15 or 20 minutes, I’m sure.
Following the upper body work, I did 300 (15 sets of 20 reps) ab crunches. I’ve mentioned before that I use the five televisions in the vicinity of the ab crunch machines to help keep track of my set count. While doing set one, I watch the TV set labeled “1,” while doing set two, the one labeled “2,” and so on. I can only really see five sets from the bench, so on the sixth set, I start back at “1,” as I do for the 11th set.
At tonight’s time of night, the third TV set, which is tuned into MTV, has their show on called 16 and Pregnant. I’m in simpatico with the girl of the week when my stomach bloats out while I lift up for the crunch during sets three, eight, and thirteen and see the gratuitous shots of the 16-year-old’s stomach two weeks before delivery.
Back home, I had a nice, albeit short, instant message conversation with Robert, and then a somewhat arduous one with Joe, not because Joe’s hard to talk to, but because we were doing frequent flyer point balance comparisons and checking various flights for our April trip to Key West, and between trying to coordinate using points for a flight, arriving and departing at acceptable times, and the ridiculously varying flight prices, it all gets complicated.
Speaking of “problems of coordination,” tonight’s homework reading for The Wisdom of Crowds talked about that very issue. What defines a coordination problem according to Surowiecki, the book’s author, is “that to solve it, a person has to think not only about what he believes the right answer is but also about what other people think the right answer is. And that’s because what each person does effects and depends on what everyone else will do, and vice versa.”
Our Conversation and Community reading was about “real-world” events associated with social media, with way too much time (in my humble opinion) spent on Book Sprints, which I’d never heard of. I mean, I appreciate learning about them, but the topic went into detail about organizing them that wasn’t specific to organizing book sprints per se, but just event organization in general, such as things to think about with regards to transportation, accommodations, and food. It came across as “filler” to me.
One thing I liked about this chapter was the reference to “the gift econmy,” which I knew of, but hadn’t thought of in quite a while.
I finally got to bed at a decent hour tonight, which was definitely needed. I’ve been somewhat burning the candle at both ends lately.