~Wednesday~ On most of the city buses, just under the place where all the pamphlets of the various CAT bus routes are kept, there is a plastic plate under which sheets of paper and postcards can be slipped. Almost exclusively, this spot touts ads for local churches. I wonder what that says about targeted and/or captive audiences.
Today’s ads included: (1) “Please come worship the LORD with us,” from one church, and (2) “Expect A Miracle!” from another. The third ad’s font was too small to see whose it was, but what was visible on the page was an opened bible with a crucifix laid across it.
It seems to me the second ad is setting expectations way, way high. I mean could you really deliver on a miracle every week? And speaking of churchgoing, which reminds me of sinning, this is a very interesting blurb from Wired magazine called, “American Vice: Mapping the 7 Deadly Sins.” But I digress… Back to today’s buscapade…
There was an interesting phenomenon—and a first, actually—on the bus this morning. When I got on, I took the first seat available behind the six people who were already on. At that point all of us—the entirety of the bus—were in the first three rows. How cozy.
The two people ahead of me on my side were two plus-sized white ladies who were talking to each other. One of them mentioned something about getting $800 in tips for some period of time that I couldn’t hear, and I thought, “Maybe use $2 of that to get, and then use, some shampoo?”
The other one answered a question with, “Last time I seen her, she weren’t working.” In a subsequent conversation she noted that she had her GED. I wondered, “Is there an English course requirement in that program?”
Bless my uptight, pedantic, hoity-toity mess. Oh well. I’m just me. What did you expect? A miracle? If you did, you know where you can go. For directions, see the ad on the CAT bus.
My friend Casey (cpeel) posted in his blog today, in reference to a posting in one of his friend’s (Renee’s) blog, on the subject of life transitions.
Casey wrote, “Renee posted a blog entry on Transitions earlier today which was pretty thought-provoking for me. I made a lengthly comment on it and thought I’d massage my thoughts into a full blog entry. The gist of her post was about how many of her friends are encountering frustrating and/or confusing transitions in their lives right now.” Take a moment to go read it right now if you want to.
Casey articulated his thoughts on the topic in a posting on his blog, to which I add these thoughts:
| What an interesting post—both hers and yours. I suspect that there is also something in play that has to do with the fact that as you get older, typically, you begin to recognize that the set of “things you don’t know you don’t know” is much bigger than you ever thought it was. And what that can do is make you cognizant of the fact that even though there are still a few set things that can/might/will happen (e.g., a changing body, retirement, a possible second career, grandchildren, senior discounts), you know, and sometimes fear, there are a lot of things you know you don’t know that might happen, too.
As for being 50 (I’ll be 52 in a couple of weeks), these are the thoughts I most often have whenever I do think of my age:
Thanks for the opportunity to reflect on this, Casey. |
I attended a two-hour work meeting this afternoon, which was a town hall type meeting in which a team from our organization was seeking input and feedback from folks around campus with regards to an upcoming technology change.
The meeting started off somewhat tenuously, and could have easily disintegrated into a bitch session, but someone on the team rose to the occasion of taking on a facilitator role and precluded the potential derailment of the meeting.
Afterwards, I applied for one of our organization’s T.O.A.S.T. awards, printed it, ran next door to FedEx/Kinkos and had it laminated. Since he was gone for the day already when I brought it up to him, I taped it on his door and sent him an e-mail about it.
My friend Ginny Skalski did a blog entry called, I will not be trying the bus during the Triangle’s “Try Transit Week”, in which she gave a shoutout to my blog:
| Another Raleigh blogger, John, is a daily bus rider and he seems to enjoy it. Best of all, he embraces the people-watching and blogs about the characters who board his bus. With names like “Sci-Fi Fantasy Man” for the guy who loves his paperback science fiction reads to “Waffle House Man” for the guy who boards the bus after his shift. His blog is a must read for a snapshot of buscapades (as he calls them). |
I met my friend Steve for dinner tonight at MoJoe’s, where I had their Inferno Burger, and he had their Blue Burger. (I think that’s what it was called. It had blue cheese on it anyway.) It’s been forever since we’ve seen each other in person and it was a perfectly lovely time sitting out on the patio and catching up. Good Bloody Marys, too.
Returning to my car I found a gift on my windshield from the Raleigh police department—Parking in a driveway: $30 fine. I thought that the white markings on the pavement marking the back of the parking spot on one side of the driveway and the ones marking the front of the parking spot on the other side of the driveway were delineating the spot I was parking in, and since I thought it was a legitimately marked-off spot, I didn’t even notice the unpaved, narrow driveway that went up between the two nearby buildings. Oh well.
Dancing was a lot of fun. It was fairly crowded in the bar—reason unknown of course—but it always makes it more fun when that’s the case.