Today, which seemed rather arbitrary, the bus turned left on Hillsborough Street where it never had before, totally bypassing my stop. Right before this happened, I heard the bus driver saying something to someone, which I couldn’t understand, but I saw her pointing ahead. This made me suspicious enough to go ahead and get off at the stop before my stop. Good thing.
Later in the day, the CAT Bus Schedule was updated to reflect this change.
It was a quiet day in the office. When I arrived there was an incredible breakfast sandwich on my desk—an egg-cheese-and-sausage croissant sandwich from Cafe Carolina—from my officemate, and it was out of this world.
In return, I shared my cream cheese danish that I bought last night at Food Lion. Needless to say, our team has a “culture of food.” Perhaps our team motto should be: “Working our way to the 2011 70/30 Health Plan one dish at a time.”
I attended an interesting presentation this afternoon from 2:40-3:30, which was called, “Pedagogical Facebook and Twitter? Using Social Media for Academic Good.” The presenter is using Facebook and Twitter in teaching two classes, one an undergrad course and the other a graduate course.
For the undergraduate course, she’s basically using Facebook to “introduce” the class members to one another and using Twitter for some community building as well as to announce class assignments and deadlines.
She is teaching the entire graduate course solely on Facebook. Very interesting presentation.
A serendipitous event happened at the end of the presentation. A guy who also runs a university twitter account (@NCSUEngLibrary) who is following the university twitter account I run (@ncsu_oit) came up to me on the way out and introduced himself. Two things are cool about this:
- We’ve been planning to have lunch together to meet each other, as I want to pick his brain about working in a university library in the reference section helping students with their research (5-10 years down the road in my career), and
- He didn’t even know about this presentation I was attending and found out about it from this tweet that I sent right before heading over to it: “Attending “Pedagogical Facebook and Twitter? Using Social Media for Academic Good,” 2:40PM-3:30PM, ITTC Lab. #ncsu_oit”
He works in the library, so it was a no-brainer for him to just zip over there, attend the meeting, and then he introduced himself afterwards. I love technology.
I walked to the (new) bus stop to catch the bus, and on the way I passed a bench on which sat a homeless person. “Hey, man,” he said as I walked by, to which I replied, “Hi, how’s it going?”
“Thank you for acknowledging me, man. Most people just treat me like I’m invisible. I am so hungry, man, I’m just looking for, like, $.50 to get a hamburger.”
At this point I started reaching into my pocket to check my change purse, which I eventually opened to find two nickels and three pennies in, while he went on with a story in which the stakes got higher and closer to the truth.
“Yeah, man, just like a dollar or a dollar fifty. I want some fries, too. I’m so hungry.”
I reached into my back pocket for my wallet, which wasn’t there, and remembering it was in my briefcase, I started to open that.
“I’m not going to rob you or anything. Yeah, man, like two or three dollars, and I can get a good lunch, and maybe a cold one. I’m not gonna lie to ya. I’d love a cold one.”
I gave him a dollar, and proceeded down to the corner on which I thought I could catch the re-routed bus. I was on a side street, Brooks Avenue, instead of the main street Hillsborough Street, and when it got to be 10 after 5, I called the bus dispatcher to be sure the 5:00 Outbound Method was coming down Brooks.
Five minutes after her telling me that it was, it came up Hillsborough Street, and I had to cross the side street to walk back over to the stop on Hillsborough Street. Obviously, the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing.
This bus had problems, not the least of which was a grumpy bus driver. This incredibly ear-piercing noise kept coming and going, which sounded like it was coming from some communication equipment in the driver area, and finally “Lowers” (we seem to be on the same schedule these days) yelled, “Hey, can you get that noise to stop?”
No response from Grumpy. Some loud clang happened in the back of the bus as we went over a bump in the road.
Lowers: “Man, this is the bus from hell!”
Shortly after arriving home, and saying hello to Casey, I ran down to Mission Valley to get a haircut. In my mind’s eye it was all a very quick, uneventful errand. That was not to be. Read on.
At Great Clips, it was diversity day with four people ahead of me: two Indian (and in the inimitable words of my sister’s Indian friend: “dots, not feathers”), one Asian, one woman, and then me, the queer.
There were two stylists, and I hoped beyond measure to get the woman and not the man. The man, who I’m quite sure introduced himself to his next client as Scott and later heard the other stylist call Scott, had on a lime green shirt that stretched over one of the most enormous bellies I’ve seen. (He later shared that it was a 60-inch waist.) He was “a big-boned” guy and tall, too, but all of his fat was in his stomach. A heart-attack waiting to happen, as they say.
At one point he asked the other stylist, “Do you know how to trim eyebrows?” She answered that she did, and he said, “You’ll have to show me some time.”
I made a mental note that if I ended up with him as my stylist not to end my haircut with my normal question, “Would you please trim my eyebrows?”
So, of course, I ended up with “Scott” as my stylist, whose cosmetology license said, “Steven.” As he moved around me, his stomach hit me, and he said, “Excuse me. My stomach’s so big it hits things and people.”
I looked at it, and my cut hair, which was piling up on it like on a shelf, and he said, “Yep. I used to weigh 225, and then all of a sudden I blew up to 400 pounds. Stuff happens. I knew things were getting out of control when the ‘Big’ part of the ‘Big and Tall’ store didn’t even work for me any more, when I moved into 6XL shirts.”
I really didn’t want to hear this or move the discussion forward in any way, so I didn’t respond. Instead, I moved my eyes from his belly to his face, where I saw eyebrows that were as curved as the infamous golden arches, obviously plucked.
The other thing about Scottsteven was that he was obviously a “sistah.” I guess he felt compelled to let me know that in an extremely tangential story about being in Myrtle Beach recently with his partner, but I was already way ahead of him, having completed my analysis during my first few minutes in his chair: Walks like a duck. Talks like a duck. Sleeps with other male ducks.
At the end of my haircut, I reached into my back pocket for my wallet only to remember it was at home in my briefcase, recently bereft of a dollar bill over on Hillsborough Street, presumably making its way toward a “hamburger, fries, and perhaps a cold one” by now. Remembering my “emergency fund” that I keep in the console of my car (typically $20-$30), I stepped outside to retrieve some of it.
Just outside the door, I looked up the sidewalk of this little strip shopping center, and lo and behold, whom do I see coming out of the ABC (liquor) store, but the very man who had imposed the loss on my wallet. I guess the “cold one” won out.
At home I showered, and then Casey and I went to The Borough for dinner. As expected, the place was teeming with queers, which is a good thing.
After dinner, we went back to my place for a while, and later met Joe at Flex at about 9:30, where a night of ridiculous alcohol consumption ensued.
Being Friday night is free pool night, Casey, Joe and I played a few games of cut-throat pool. Then Steve H. arrived, and we played a few games of partners (Joe & Casey against me & Steve) until someone put their name on the list to “play the winner.” We just abandoned the table when we finished that game.
We went over to Legends for the drag show, where it was über-crowded, and frankly, hard to see from where we ended up standing way in the back.
Once again, especially tonight, I was grateful to have a designated driver with us.