~Friday~ I caught the 7:45 city bus, which arrived late. I am so ambivalent about riding the city bus lately. If it wasn’t for the potential blog fodder, I’d choose the frequency and consistency of the university buses in a New York minute.
With that said, I used the time waiting this morning to come to a significant decision related to my job. ‘Nuff said on that.
In the spirit of the New York minute, and in honor of the Hilton Wilmington Riverside, I’ll use another idiom to describe some people on the bus this morning—they had ants in their pants, resulting in musical chairs. As I boarded, the guy in the first seat on the left moved to the second seat, and I took the front seat. The bus started up and the guy to my left, got up and moved one seat back. Was it something I said?
Reader Lady boarded and took out yet another Stephen King novel. Let’s see, she’s finished Firestarter and Gerald’s Game so far. Now she’s reading Dreamcatcher. If this list is accurate, she’s got a long, long road ahead of her.
Cell Phone Lady boarded, but she wasn’t on her phone and she never even had it in her hand the entire ride. Instead, she was reading a book, and I mean a serious book, an Anna Karenina-thickness book. Ah Anna Karenina—that 800+ page book with one of the most famous first lines of all books: “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
A somewhat regular rider, who has a physical handicap and usually rides a bike, got on at his usual stop at the intersection of Gorman and Western, and as it usually does, it takes him an extra minute or so to get his bike up on the rack. The driver, who’s one I’ve never seen before —a little old lady with tight, curly, bluish-gray hair—said to the bus-at-large, “Would someone mind helping that man outside load his bike?”
Nobody moved, and I started to say, “He’s a regular rider. He always gets his bike up by himself; it just takes him an extra minute or so,” but I decided not to at just about the same time he got it strapped in. “Oh, he got it,” she said. Yeah, maybe the guy values his independence and isn’t looking for a hand.
My work day started off dreadfully today, with basically a repeat of yesterday’s incident with the same colleague, but taken to a whole new level. Argh.
At lunch time, I transferred that $8.5K I deposited last week as the hold was removed today, and deposited a check I recently received. It always amazes me that in this day and age, I still have to fill out a “Checking Account Deposit” slip when I make a deposit with a teller inside the credit union. How last millennium.
At the library, three of the four Wolfline buses stopped there were out of service—one said “Out of Service” on it, and the other two had their route indicator signs totally turned off. Ridiculous. Finally, one of the ones with its sign off, turned it on and it was actually the one I needed to take to get over to Mission Valley.
I met Sarah over at Cup A Joe for a late lunch, and I tried Anna’s recommendation of their Green Eggs & Ham wrap, which was killer delicious, and quite the value for the money, in my opinion. I’ll definitely be getting that again. Thanks, Anna!
Evidently there was an “incident” in the NC State library on Wednesday—perhaps a psychotic break or a drug-induced rampage. It’s kind of sad that several people recorded him, but it doesn’t appear that anyone offered to help him in any way, by at least saying something like, “Dude, are you okay? What are you doing?”
It’s arguable as to whether that’s funny or not, but what is funny is one of the comments. NC State’s PR campaign this year is: “Locally responsible. Globally engaged.” and someone commented on the video: “Locally responsible. Globally engaged. Publicly naked.”
I caught the last bus home before they were to cordon off Hillsborough Street for tonight’s homecoming parade. A little kid, too young to understand what he was saying, “talked” loudly during the entire trip. He was standing on the seat, next to his mother who never once asked him to sit down or to “use his inside voice,” or do anything else I imagine that responsible parenting would suggest she do.
At one point, after it had gone on so long and so loudly, the lady in front of me turned to look at the kid and the mother laughed, “I have no idea what he’s saying.”
I had to bite my tongue from saying, “I think he said he talks loudly and continuously because no one in his life ever engages with him or teaches him any differently.”
At home, I put some leftover spaghetti sauce in the microwave and let it sit there while I cooked a fresh cup of noodles for it. Nine minutes later, while I drained the noodles, I microwaved the sauce.
When both were ready, lifting up the lid of the sauce to spoon the noodles in, I [finally] noticed that I’d mixed in the left over noodles from yesterday into the sauce before putting it in the fridge. Noodlehead!
Today’s my sister’s fiftieth birthday! Woohoo! Welcome to “da cluub,” sis! I checked in by phone and she was about to be on her way for a four-day getaway to the beach, as a gift from a friend who owns a condo at Wrightsville Beach. My kind of friends!
I stayed in this evening, and completed my blog entries up through Thursday night. Yay for that!