~Thursday~ This morning was not a good time for impatience on the bus. Have I ever mentioned how impatient I am? I’m so impatient that my partner has given me an actual impatience award in the past.
On Gorman, we were stopped for way too long due to a school bus stopped in the opposite direction. In addition to the time spent, the length of the line of stopped cars in front of us was another indicator that the stop was way too long.
When we finally crawled forward to the next stop, someone got on who couldn’t get the fare machine to take his dollar bill. It was unbelievable how long he took trying to make that thing work. Finally, after an excruciatingly heavy sigh, the guy in the closest seat to him, holding out a crisp new bill, said, “Man, try this one.” It slipped right in.
At the next stop, more waiting while a student came aboard and swiped a card to which the fare machine’s female voice said, “Card not valid.” Before he could swipe it again, the driver said, “You can’t use a credit card.”
All uppity and condescendingly the student said, “It’s not a credit card. It’s a debit card,” as if one is supposed to be able to tell by looking these days.
“We don’t take debit cards, either,” the driver deadpanned.
He tried to put a crumpled up dollar in, and the machine wouldn’t take it. He yelled to his friend who’d already boarded and was in the back of the bus, “You got a flat dollar?”
That guy in the front seat that did the swap the previous time through this—and who seemed to be about as fed up as I was with all these delays this morning—let out another dramatic sigh.
The voice from the back said, “Just give it to the driver. You don’t want to hold up the whole bus.” Uh, too late.
Across from me a lady sat, heads down into her cell phone. Her two children, one girl and one boy, sat in the seat in front of her. At one point, the girl put one of her feet up on the seat, and without saying a word, the mother reached over and slapped her leg, which she promptly removed from the seat, but not without a glare at her mother.
I wondered how this woman learned—and continues to believe—that that’s the best way to teach a lesson. But I digress…
I arrived to work to find the movers well into moving my officemate, now my boss, out of our office and into the one next door vacated by Jude upon her retirement at the end of September. I helped her move a few things after the movers completed the major work.
Later in the day, I spent a little time securing a desk with overhead storage that wasn’t being used in another area, and then moving all of my computer equipment to my new work area, which is just on the other side of my current office, to the area vacated by my officemate, and which has two windows instead of one. And one of which faces Hillsborough Street.
This is about the cleanest my desk will ever be, as I hadn’t moved any of the crap over yet, just the equipment.
I was super, super tired when I got home and what I wanted to do—desperately—was take a nap. However, I felt that if I did, it pretty much would have been so long that when I woke up I wouldn’t have been able to do two things I needed to do this evening:
- Purchase 100 paper plates, plastic cups, and napkins for our Frightful Fall work gathering tomorrow, and
- Make a grocery store run.
I was going to run to K-Mart to do the former, but because the light at which I needed to turn left to go there was red (Have I mentioned that I’m impatient?), I went straight across Western Boulevard intending to take a way around that light, but as I approached the Food Lion that’s right there, I remembered that there’s a Big Lots right next to it, so I just pulled in there and took care of all of my business.
Once home, it was too late to nap, so I watched the Rocky Horror Show episode of Glee, which was pretty much as I expected, which is to say, “Meh.”
I predicted that that’s how I’d feel about it for various reasons, including but not limited to:
- I’m not a fan of Rocky Horror
- Therefore I don’t care much for the music
- Therefore I don’t know the words to any of the music
- Well except, of course, “Damnit, Janet!” but everybody knows that, so it doesn’t count
The saving grace, which made the whole thing worthwhile, was seeing “Mr. Shu” with his shirt off in his sexy song with Emma.
Another plus of the evening was a phone call from a 701 area code number that I didn’t recognize so let go to voicemail, which turned out to be from choicehotels.com’s Guest Relations department. They wanted to let me know that they were closing out my complaint about that Econo Lodge Biltmore fiasco in Asheville a couple of weekends ago by crediting my points back to my account.
I was in the bed by 9:30.