~Friday~ There were no regulars on the city bus this morning, but there were more people than usual, so I sat further toward the back than I usually do. A lady in the first seat, a center-facing seat, so she essentially was facing the driver and speaking to her on and off. She wore a lightweight denim jacket and a bright pink head scarf with some things (sequins?) glittering in it up around the crown of her head.
An older black man, with the salt beginning to encroach on the pepper in his short curly hair, sat about two seats in front of me. We were also in center-facing seats, so my view of him was of his side. He switched his walking cane to his other hand as he reached into his pocket to address the song that began to emanate from it. Loud—the song and the ensuing cell phone conversation.
“HUH???” [short pause] “WHAT’D YOU SAY???” [longer pause] “WHERE YOU AT? I’M ON THE BUS! WHERE YOU AT???” [short pause] “YOU’RE WAITING ON THE BUS?” [another short pause] “WELL, YOU BETTER GET YOUR BUTT HOME!” [click]
This bus must have had exactly zero shock absorbers either in it to begin with, or left. Every time we went over a bump it felt (and sounded) like I was sitting on a piece of plywood that would bounce up and slam back down flat on an axle. I’m just sayin’…
First thing this morning, I met with Kaitlin, our new intern (fellow classmate in Social Media and Technical Communication, and whom I’ve started calling Kristin by mistake for some unknown reason), and showed her how to use Drupal to create news releases, calendar events, and rotating dynamic entries for our home page.
From 10:30-11:45, we had our Student E-mail meeting, which I’d classify as a cautionary celebratory meeting. My boss’s boss, Stan, had brought in a sheet cake to celebrate our launch of Gmail for student e-mail, which we all were desperately hoping would actually happen by the end of the day.
My friend Steve called me to wish me a “Happy Anniversary.” We met—we think it was 10 years ago this year—on Maundy Thursday. He was at Wrightsville Beach with his friend Jodie, and while we were on the phone, he screamed all of a sudden. A pigeon had flown over them and shit on them. Nice.
The Google beta launch did indeed happen, late in the day, and I was happy to still be in the office between 5:00 and 6:00 when it happened. A lot of good people have done a tremendous amount of work over the last eight months on this endeavor.
I caught the 6:00 city bus home, and there was such a loud ruckus of mess going on that I put my ear buds in to ignore all of it. I was toward the back, and three our four guys were having a “discussion” that was “escalating,” and at one point one of them got off and walked in one direction for a second, and then turned around to walk in the other direction.
I heard through Aretha Franklin’s absolute screaming (because I made her do it) rendition of Laughing on the Outside one of the other guys, “I never seen that bro not drunk.”
I had a big old salad for dinner tonight, and just chilaxed. I actually got to bed at 11:30, which is unheard of for me, really, especially on a Friday night. Saved some calories and cash, though. So, that’s good.