~Tuesday~ The 8:15 bus was once again commandeered by the outdoorsy loud hello bus driver—who I actually like in case you can’t tell.
I think I’ve mentioned these two Hispanic ladies before—they each have a child, and they always sit across the aisle from one another as opposed to in front of or behind each other. Also, there is always (at least as long as I’ve been observing) at least one—if not two—seats forward and back of each of them. All that is to say is that they are often speaking over and across people between them and they have to speak pretty loudly to hear each other—and they pretty much talk non-stop.
One of them, the one sitting about three seats in front of me, took out moisturizing lotion and pretty much did her entire body, including removing her sandals and doing her feet, while riding. I guess I thought she was just a little heavy, but when she finished, her blouse had ridden up on her stomach, which was a taut, perfectly round butterball that looks like it might “pop” any day now. At one point, she sort of massaged it around the sides and grimaced a little as if a tiny being might be restless in there.
Her son sat next to her, who I’d estimate to be about three (but with that said, I have no reference point whatsoever for estimating children’s ages and it’s usually just a wild-assed guess), and he sat with his one leg practically fully wrapped around his other one. It’s unusual to see little kids sit like that, at least it is to me (but with that said, I’m hardly ever around little kids—see related parenthetical comment above), so maybe they sit that way all the time.
It must have been “kids day” on this bus, as at a subsequent stop, an Asian lady got on with two, and they took a seat that put one of her kids right across the aisle from that little Hispanic boy I just described. Early upon sitting down, the little Asian girl locked eyes with the little Hispanic boy and it was fascinating watching them visually engage.
They just stared at each other, their eyes moving up and down each other’s face as if taking it all in, and at times one or the other’s head cocked a little as if trying to figure out something. I’d’ve given anything to have had access to each of their thoughts at any given time during this visual assessment match.
I snapped out of this wonderment, at the intersection of Gorman and Western Boulevard, when the driver slammed on the brakes. We were waiting in the lane to go straight across Western Boulevard, and when the light turned green, a pickup truck in the left-turn-only lane to our left, which has a red light, darted in front of us in that middle lane, and then in front of the right-turn-only lane to our right, and on to Western Boulevard heading into downtown. Crazy.
My officemate, and boss, was out of the office all day in a class.
At lunch time, I went to the “Admin Services III” building to get my free flu shot. It was in room 124, which according to a sign in a window near the main entrance to the building, you had to get to through room 120. I entered room 120, where there was a desk facing you at which an admin-type person was working, and then a choice to go down a hall to the left or another one straight and to the side of that desk.
I had no idea which way to go, so I turned toward the left hall, and the lady at that desk said, “Flu shot? It’s down this hall.”
I said, mostly to myself, “Oh, how would I know?” as I changed direction and passed her desk to head down the correct hallway. As I passed by her, she pointed to a sign drawn on a flip pad resting on an easel that said, “Flu Shots,” with an arrow after it pointing down the hall.
I said, while motioning with my hands, “It’d be better if that sign faced this way,” indicating toward the front door instead of toward her own desk, since she already knows the information it’s trying to convey to the customer who is coming in the front door from which they can’t read said sign. I left off the snarky thoughts and comments, as well as the mentally-added appositive, “bitch.”
My shot hurt while the nurse was squirting that stuff (eggs and latex?) into my arm, but I took it like society’s idea of a “man.”
With thanks to my friend Susan Katz, I found this TED session absolutely fascinating. It’s described as follows:
| Advertising adds value to a product by changing our perception, rather than the product itself. Rory Sutherland makes the daring assertion that a change in perceived value can be just as satisfying as what we consider “real” value — and his conclusion has interesting consequences for how we look at life. |
It’s “video embed day”; I love this—both the idea and effort to do it and the song:
I had two Alternative Service Break Gulf Coast meetings tonight—one with the entire team at 8:30, and a short one with the co-advisor and the student leader ahead of that meeting at 8:00.
The ice-breaker that we did involved looking at several photos of the scene at Katrina shortly after the storm hit, and then each talking about which one “spoke” to us the most.
I chose one in which people were walking around in water up to their knees, which reminded me of the trauma of Hurricane Fran in 1996, where my partner and I lost about 40 trees in our back yard and we had about 8-10 inches of water in our basement for a week.
Back at home, I watched the Grilled Cheesus (Season 2, Episode 3, from October 5, 2010) episode of Glee. OMG. I love when Rachel does Barbra Streisand songs, and her rendition of “Papa Can You Hear Me” from Yentl was no exception.
Without a doubt, however, the situation with Kurt and his father in this episode tore me up! (Let me put a look of surprise on your face.) Kurt’s rendition of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” was heart-wrenching, and I adored the flashback pictures of him and his father throughout the entire episode.
This episode dealt a lot with religion, touching on themes such as: homosexuality and religion, believers and non-believers, and coincidentally with the most recent news in the nation, the separation of church and state.
Two of my favorite quotes from the episode were:
- The infamous Sue Sylvester was haranguing Will Schuester about letting his kids sing religious songs in Glee Club, and she said, “If your kids want to praise Jesus in class, I suggest they enroll at Sweet Holy Mother of God Academy on I Love Jesus Street. But not here.”
- Toward the end of the episode, Kurt went to church with Mercedes and as they were walking up the aisle to take a seat—arm-in-arm and Kurt wearing a “church lady” hat, complete with a feather swirling out of it—he looked around at how everyone was dressed to the nines, and he deadpanned, “I’m very impressed with everyone’s Sunday best. It’s so… Christ-chic.”
I was tempted to immediately watch last week’s episode, Duets, but by then it was after 11:30, so I resisted. I hope to watch it some time later this week.