~Friday~ I was late getting to the city bus stop, but did stand there long enough to witness Riley’s half-hearted response to his “mother’s” half-hearted toss of a stick for him to fetch. This little vignette sort of saddened me a bit, as I interpreted her half-halfheartedness as not really being into Riley, and attributed Riley’s half-halfheartedness to the potential onset of arthritis and old age.
Library Man was on board the bus this morning, and he was reading a trade newspaper magazine.
In a rare occurrence, a white guy sat in front of me whom I found attractive—albeit in a “rough trade” kind of way. I resisted the urge to take a picture of him, as there wasn’t really any way I could have done it discretely.
Reaching the intersection of Hillsborough and Brooks, where I used to depart the bus in the morning, there were four—count ’em four—Raleigh police cars surrounding a van they’d pulled over to the side of the road. They all had their blue lights flashing, with one car in front of the van and three of them lined up behind it. For a minute, I wondered if someone had robbed the credit union again.
My first duty of the day was to put the final touches on the text of that e-mail that’s going out to ~27,000 students today, and I felt relieved when it was done and I had shipped it off to my colleague who was going to send it out.
There was some managerial churn today about that little unpleasant exchange that had happened at the end of my work day yesterday, and although these things have the potential to get awkward, I’m happy that my management is interested in addressing it, in spite of no insistence on my part at all.
I attended our Friday Salon Coffee Klatsch at Cup A Joe Mission Valley, catching the Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus to get there. Anna was the only one there when I arrived and I greeted her with a hug, as she was emotionally involved in a news article about the recent Rolling Stone-McChrystal political drama.
In a surprise and delightful occurrence, Etta arrived for Coffee Klatsch, for the first time ever if I’m not mistaken. Not long after, Sarah arrived with both Jonah and Ella in tow. As always with the salon members, the company was good and the conversation rich.
I ended up having to leave before Brad arrived, and I felt like I entered into a Public Transportation Twilight Zone trying to get back to my office.
As I stood on the Mission Valley side of Avent Ferry Road waiting to cross to catch the Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus at the stop across the street, it went zipping by on that side of the street. Drats!
I executed Plan B and walked up to the Avent Ferry and Western Boulevard intersection to catch the Wolfline #7 Wolflink Shuttle. Due to a bunch of traffic turning left from Avent Ferry onto Western, I got stuck in the island halfway across, and just as it cleared for me to cross, the Wolfline #7 Wolflink Shuttle went zipping by the stop just on the other side of the intersection.
I began to feel like some character in a book or movie plot involving something monumental or tragic happening to the protagonist that starts off with fate intervening to critically alter the steps of his intended course of events leading to the plot climax.
I kept walking on campus and made it to the Carmichael Recreation Complex stop in time to catch the next #7 Wolflink Shuttle. I got off that one at the Student Health Services stop, and as I was waiting there for the Wofline #9, #8 or #5 to take me to Scott Hall, which is across from my office, a pick-up truck drove by, stopped, and the person inside motioned me over to get in.
It turned out to be one of the managers in my area, and when I got in, he said, “You’re just the person I wanted to talk to,” and we had a brief discussion about “the incident” on Thursday evening.
Jen gave me a ride over to Sammy’s after work where we met several of our co-workers for some drinks. Good people. And always a good time. On the way, Jen said, “I’m so glad that you’re my friend.” Ditto.
I had every intention of taking a nap when I got home and the going out. At 7:30, I set my alarm for 10:00, and when it went off, Joe and I had a brief BlackBerry text message exchange, during which we both decided to stay in tonight.
My friend, Hugh, tweeted this today and it made me laugh out loud thinking about people looking for my buscapade characters out in their real lives:
| @nematome just saw the lil dino store on campus – was looking for lil dino the buscapade character. #Buscapade |