~Monday~ Go ahead. Take a minute (a minute and one second, to be exact) to start your day with a giggle:
Shortly after boarding the bus this morning, I was treated to a PSA, apparently for the bus drivers, but being broadcasted loud enough over the bus’s radio communication system that it might as well have been for everyone.
“Remember the 4-second rule. If you allow four seconds of distance between you and the vehicle in front of you, you will not be involved in a rear-end collision. I repeat, drivers, if you follow the 4-second rule, you will not be in an accident. Be safe now.”
I tried to determine if this morning’s driver was courteous or a creep. He seemed to wait for me to take my seat, which I thought was courteous, although I did take a few seconds to throw both of my bags into the seat connected to mine before I sat down myself, and he ended up taking off just before I sat down causing me to fall into my seat.
However, at the next stop, I watched him watch—in his rear view mirror—the person who’d just got on walk all the way back to his seat, and it seemed to me that he definitely gunned it just before the person sat down, making him bump into the side of his seat. Things that make you go, “Hmmm.”
Still not sure: Courteous with a bad sense of timing or a wolf in sheep’s clothing?
At one stop, a lady got on who had “ALSCO” on her work uniform—a company I’ve never heard of. I could only read the beginning of the company’s tag line under its logo, as it was in font too small to accommodate my nosiness. I Googled the company once I got to work [Hover over image if you can’t read the tag line.]:
One of the first items I saw in my work email inbox this morning was a request by my manager to attend her boss’s staff meeting on her behalf, as she was going to be out today to be with her mother who is recuperating from femur surgery. That took up most of my morning, as it’s a 1.5-hour meeting.
During lunch, I negotiated three campus buses to pick up 14 free one-day parking passes that I can use over the next year. This is a perq that I recently learned of that’s offered to employees who take advantage of public transportation to and from work, in case you need your car at work on a particular day now and again. On my way back, I ran into Sarah Ash, who walked by a bus stop at which I was waiting.
I spent a lot of the afternoon on updates and changes for Wednesday’s upcoming UITC meeting.
When I took Joe to the airport yesterday, he asked me if I’d take care of his “Amish Friendship Bread” mix, which had been given to him by a colleague at his work. He handed it to me in a plastic bag, and it reminded me of the slip we used to use when we did ceramics when I was a kid.
While I totally don’t mind taking care of this for Joe on his emergency trip out of town, here’s a note to my friends about what I call “Friendship Bread”—Amish or otherwise. To me, it’s called, “Impose-On-Your-Friends Bread.” That is to say, if someone were to give said item to me, the gesture would not manifest itself to me as “friendship,” but as “an obligation, and not a fun one.”
These things always come with elaborately tedious instructions that have to be carried out over a number of days, starting off with “general” instructions, such as: 1) Do not refrigerate, 2) Keep at room temperature, 3) Let air out of the bag, and so on. This is followed by specific things to do on specific days, and this particular recipe must be from the south Amish country, as the instruction for Days 2-5 orders you to, “Mash the bag.”
If anyone wants to give me “Friendship Bread,” please choose something like one of these from Panera’s “Artisan Bread” selections: Stone Milled Rye, Three Cheese, or their Fococcia—already-baked, deliciously fresh. Thank you for being a friend.
On the inside of one of the flaps of my wallet, there are slots for four credit cards. I’ve noticed in the past that whichever card I keep in the top slot—and you know I always keep the same four cards in the same order in those slots—tends to crack. To that end, I’ve thoughtfully determined which card would 1) not cost me anything, 2) be the quickest, and 3) be the least inconvenient to replace, and relegated it to that top spot over the last several months.
My choices were: 1) my driver’s license, 2) my American Express card, 3) my Mastercard, or 4) my State Employees Credit Union (SECU) ATM card. Today, before the bus arrived, which I catch right in front of the SECU, I slipped inside to order a new ATM card, since mine has cracked along the top, just under the magnetic strip, which means it still works, but it’s only a matter of time before the slit goes all the way across and the part with the strip on it completely detaches from the card.
“There’s no charge for that (free), you should get it in the next day or so (quick), and your pin number won’t change (convenient),” she assured me when I asked. I love when a plan comes together.
As these things often go, this afternoon while waiting for the bus home, I saw a moving van type truck pass by Hillsborough Street with the ALSCO logo on its side—for the second time today I was exposed to a company I’d never even heard of 24 hours ago.
I got some good reading in tonight. Book progress:
