The weather’s perfect, so Stagnant Driver wears a coat; and a potential coke-blowing utensil…

~Friday~  The weather was absolutely perfect this morning at 63° and 65% humidity; although, it’s kind of scary when 65% humidity feels great.

Since I was back on the 8:15 bus, Stagnant Driver pulled up and boarding I noted that she had on a windbreaker jacket, which was zipped all the way up. And although it wasn’t hot per sé on the bus, there just wasn’t any circulation at all. Stagnant. I thought, “Oh my god, it is going to be an absolute oven in this place come winter with this woman. I can just see it now.”

At some point, this lady boarded and took a seat in front of me:


And I had the following sequence of thoughts—way too many probably—that I think reflect both society’s perceptions and biases about long fingernails, as well as my own. I’ll let you decide which ones might be society’s and which ones might be my own.

  • Are those mother-of-pearl colored? Are they meant to match your purse?
  • Are those real? They can’t be real.
  • How much of your limited, valuable time here do you spend on making sure your nails look like that?
  • What kind of work do you do, and how productive can you be with those?
  • Do you blow coke?
  • Can you ring a doorbell?
  • Will you scratch my back?

My officemate and I got the invitation out for our boss’s retirement, and as soon as the RSVPs started rolling in, they came with compliments. Sweet. It’s nice when people notice.

I got a rash of things done at the end of the day, most of them to do with news items that I have to contribute to our September’s OIT News publication.

Right before I left, I sent off an e-mail to our CIO alerting him to the fact that our next University Information Technology Committee meeting is going to conflict with a conference in Wilmington that a lot of his organization—including me, as well as a lot of the IT folks across campus who attend the meeting, will be out of town attending that conference. Not only that, he’s supposed to be at that conference, too. I proposed a reschedule.


At 8:45, I lay down for what I imagined was to be a two-hour nap. Almost twelve hours later, I got up to start my Saturday. If beauty sleep worked, I’d be stunning.

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