Snoozed and loozed, missed buses, a productive work day, bad Mexican cucumbers, and dancing…

~Wednesday~ I snoozed enough times this morning to miss the 8:15 city bus. I killed a little time online, as I watched the progress of the Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus on the online GPS system that tracks it. When I thought it was close enough, I hopped in my car, and drove down to Gorman. However, as I was parking on Kaplan near the intersection of Gorman, it went by. I said, “F*ck it! I’ll drive to work.”

I parked in the two-hour free curb-side parking zone behind my building, which is particularly easy to get over the summer when school is out, and I set the alarm on my BlackBerry for two hours. When it went off, I rushed to make it in time to park on Gorman, but I didn’t make it in time for that one either. Not my day for public transportation.

I killed some of the time before the next one (they run about every 20-30 minutes during the summer instead of every 10-15 like they do during the school year), by running to the nearby grocery store, where I bought the “Smart Mix” lunch sized baked chip snacks and a 12-pack of Diet Pepsi. Back at the stop on Gorman, near Avent Ferry, I waited about 10 minutes before the next one came.

I worked through my lunch, since I killed close to that moving my car. I had quite the productive work day today, reorganizing my weekly status report format to match the categories in my annual appraisal, which will streamline the annual interim and appraisal processing for my boss. I edited a document, striving it understandable to non-technical people, about a policy change our organization is proposing to make. I also spent some time cleaning out the mountain of papers that had accumulated (as if they did so totally of their own volition) all over my desk, and I devised an email to the directors of one of my “reporting beats” suggesting that we meet about his newly-formed organizational unit.


I caught the 6:00 Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus home, and I ran back to that same grocery store, where I bought a green pepper, an “American” cucumber, celery, sliced mushrooms, tomatoes, raisins, and pineapple tidbits.

I noted that the cucumber was “American” because a worker there, a woman who looked Hispanic to me, was stocking the vegetables at the same time I was reaching for some. Looking through the regular cucumbers, which is what I always buy, I made a comment that they didn’t look very good. They seemed on the verge of wilting to me.

She reached over and grabbed this very long, skinny cucumber that actually looked more like a zucchini to me, and which was wrapped in cellophane, and holding out toward me said, “This American cucumber is on sale and is much fresher. Those (indicating the ones in the pile I was contemplating) cucumbers are from Mexico.” She emphasized the word Mexico and made a face of disgust at the same time.


Back home, I diced up most of those things to make enough salad to have all week. Then I made one for tonight, adding three ounces of cubed extra sharp cheddar cheese, two servings of Cape Cod Toasted Sesame and Soy Ginger dressing, and I sprinkled some leftover Hoo-Mee chow mein noodles on the top.

I finished eating at about 8:15, and Robert checked in by phone, since he’d been robbed and his computer was stolen, precluding our normal instant message check-in.


Dancing was fun. We had a decent number of dancers, and I got some good exercise in. The Indy crossword puzzle was ridiculously hard tonight.

At home, I made my lunch sandwich for tomorrow, and set up the coffee pot, putting it on “Delayed Brew” to start at 8:00AM. That should help me out in the morning.

Leave a Comment