~Thursday~ I got a late start this morning, and after making my breakfast and lunch sandwiches while waiting for my four cups of coffee to brew, I drove over to Gorman and Avent Ferry to catch the Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus.
A cute guy sat across from me reading Why GM Matters, presumably for some business class. To the left of him was a total WASP girl who was reading a book that appeared to be in Chinese.
The guy to my left was doing a good job of using his “inside voice” for his cell phone conversation, which is to say that I could hear him talking, but he wasn’t loud enough to understand what he was saying, for which I was thankful while simultaneously being disappointed that I couldn’t eavesdrop. Gladys Kravtz wants to have her cake and eat it too.
I had one work meeting today, from 10:45 – Noon, in a building across campus. I rode over with my colleagues Twanda, Sarah (who drove), and Nick.
After the meeting, Sarah was kind enough to drop me off at the Cameron Village library, where I picked up my copy of A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson.
In retrospect, it probably wasn’t the smartest idea to reserve the LARGE PRINT edition of a book that was thick enough to begin with. I considered lifting it up over my head and down on my walk back to my office, but I decided it would make a better door stop once I got home.
I stopped to have lunch at Noodles & Company, also in Cameron Village, where I enjoyed Mac & Cheese with Meatballs and a side salad, and dined al fresco.
I read the beginning of the book, and even though I have a fairly good ego (okay, it’s off the charts), I was reduced to nothing in the first chapter of this book:
| Being you is not a gratifying experience at the atomic level. For all their devoted attention, your atoms don’t actually care about you—indeed, don’t even know that you are there. They don’t even know that they are there. They are mindless particles, after all, and not even themselves alive. (It is a slightly arresting notion that if you were to pick yourself apart with tweezers, one atom at a time, you would produce a mound of fine atomic dust, none of which had ever been alive but all of which had once been you.) Yet somehow for the period of your existence they will answer to a single overarching impulse: to keep you you. |
I thought of my friend Jen, who I think I’ll never be able to not think of whenever I eat Mac & Cheese, because I know what a connoisseur of it she is, and it was apropos then and there, because she was the one who recommended that book I was reading.
I caught a Wolfline bus to pick up my car and once there, realized I didn’t have the part of my keyring that has my ignition key on it, so I walked home, changed my clothes, grabbed my spare car key, and walked back to my car. At least it was beautiful weather.
So you may not know my friend, Ann, who lurked on my blog for over a year, and then one day approached me at a bus stop to ask me if I was “that guy who blogs about riding the bus,” which caught me totally off guard. You can read about that day here.
And, then, you may or may not remember that several days ago she commented on one of my entries that she’s carrying around something with her to give to me the next time she sees me. Well, today we made arrangements to meet in or around the bus stop, in or around 6:00, and she blew me away with this gift:
I particularly love the inclusion of that phrase I’ve circled. LOL!
Thank you so much, my friend! I just love it!
At about 6:15, I rode with Stan, my boss’s boss, over to the Talley Student Center, where we were both attending a recognition event for the university’s Alternative Service Break program that we both participated in this year.
The event recognizes and thanks all kinds of leaders in the Center for Student Leadership, Ethics, and Public Service (CSLEPS), and although Stan thought he was (and had prepared to) give a three-minute speech about what it meant to be an advisor in the Alternative Service Break program, he was actually called up to be recognized as a partner of the program over the years. The speech was just a ploy to make sure he was there.
Instead of the typical banquet food of rubber chicken and green beans, this year they saved the money all that would have cost, and served the food that one of the partner organizations, Stop Hunger Now, packages and sends all over the world. While it was a nice gesture, let’s just say that I’m glad they had hot sauce to put on it, and dinner rolls as a side.
For my recognition, I was given—like last year—notification that a donation to Kiva had been made in my name. This year it’s to:
Note: Click on image to see what business she’s financing with her loan on my behalf.
After a 1.5-hour nap, I went to Trailer Park Prize Night, which starred one of the drag queens that was on RuPaul’s Drag race this season, before getting kicked off after “literally tearing out her on hair while attempting to lipsynch… for her life.”
An Unincorporated Community Outside of Lumberton, NC
She performs in the clubs in Fayetteville, and was interviewed for FayObserver.com recently: Matthews talks about Logo’s “RuPaul’s Drag Race”.
My friend, Caitlin, was also in the show as Enrique de la Noche, and just before leaving I had a quick dance with her and showed her two pictures I received today from Erin, the Americorps*Vista leader on the (pretty much) completion of the Habitat house we worked on while we were down there just a month ago!
Just as a reminder this is how it was when we went down there and what it looked like after we did our work:
How We Left It (03/12/11)
And this is what it looks like today, just a month after we left it!
The Rear Today (04/14/11)
My only wish was that one included Alecia, the homeowner. Tracy, our team leader posted the pics to Facebook and the kids’ reaction to it were sweet!