~Wednesday~ Another day of rain, and another day of lugging that big-assed red-and-white IBM golf umbrella around. I tried to give the continuing rain a positive spin: “The rain is inconvenient, but the drinking water’s nice.”
It was fairly empty on the bus, and there wasn’t one regular (that is to say a buscapade) character on board. At one stop, we had a “piggy-banker,” who evidently doesn’t save any coin greater than a dime. We waited while he dropped at least 20 dimes into the fare machine. There may have been more coins, some nickels in there in the place of a couple of dimes. I’m quite sure the machine doesn’t accept pennies.
At another stop a guy got on who was probably 25, but looked 35. He had no rainwear on and no umbrella with him, and it was raining pretty steadily outside. His hair was a tangled mess, and water just dripped off it onto his face, which looked half-asleep.
I’ve mentioned before that with most of the fare cards people have, they can either slide them horizontally through a reader or they can insert them into a slot, which sucks them down and then ejects them once they’ve been validated. I’ve also mentioned before that one of the drivers once directed me to the slide when I was heading for the slot, which I knew would work because I had used it that morning. The only conclusion I can come to there is that that’s what he prefers. Talk about control issues. This morning’s driver took this to a whole new level. He put his hand over the slot reader to make it unavailable, forcing the people to use the slide reader.
At a later point in the ride, the lady sitting in front of me fished through her purse, took out some change, and waved it toward a person of ambiguous gender on the other side of the aisle and one row behind me. At first I thought it was a woman as she was with two little kids. (Not that men can’t be with two little kids, but it’s rare on this bus, that’s for sure.) However, the person looked more like a man-boy, but it doesn’t really matter other than in choosing a pronoun to tell this story.
Thinking the lady with the money was offering the other person some money for fare or something, I was surprised when she got up, handed the person the change, and received two cigarettes in return. Strangely, the first thought that popped into my mind was, “Aren’t cigarettes prison currency?”
Today was the “second Wednesday of every other month” on which our University Information Technology Committee 1.5-hour meeting is held, which is an official university meeting at which I have to take the minutes. A last-minute change to the agenda by our CIO, who runs the meeting, caused a little scramble (I hate last minute shit!), but it all went off without a hitch.
I walked across the street to get lunch in the Brickyard Atrium, and one of the regular bible-thumpers, who for the most part only draw people who like to heckle or challenge them, was just screaming to no one around him while holding a big black umbrella in the hand that wasn’t holding the bible. When I returned to my office I tweeted:
| The eternal flame of the fire and brimstone going down in The Brickyard is being lightly doused by the steady rain. #MannaFromTheRealHeaven |
to which my friend @hughlh, whose Love Wins ministry espouses the polar opposite of fire and brimstone, replied with this tweet:
| @nematome I am thinking about getting a sandwich board and a bullhorn and telling all passers-by to love each other. |
Afternoon brought another meeting at which I take minutes, our Student E-mail Implementation Team meeting, which runs for an hour and fifteen minutes, but today ran over by 20 minutes.
Before leaving for the day, I started on a small editing job for my boss of a report on our organization’s progress toward “going green.”
I was not at all engaged in dancing tonight. When I arrived, right at 9:00, Michael, Geromy, and Van already had half of this week’s Indy crossword puzzle done. Yes, Van who just two weeks ago prohibited us from doing them any more, was helping out. Upon my arrival and Carl’s, we finished the entire thing in about 10 more minutes—actually before dancing even started.
The bar was absolutely empty tonight, and I found two credits on one of the arcade game machines in there, and after playing two free games of Dojo, I left at 10:13. Only Ernie and Wayne were around, the others I assumed were out on the smoking deck, so I asked Ernie to tell them goodbye for me when they came back in.
I stopped at the Food Lion grocery store on Avent Ferry Road on the way home, and as I got in the express checkout lane with my four items, the power in the store blinked about three times with really louad pops and then went out. It wasn’t pitch black in there or anything as some emergency lights stay on up front over the registers and by the doors.
Two co-eds screamed when the lights finally went out after “sputtering,” and then they had a giggling fit about screaming when there was absolutely nothing to scream about.
There were five people in the express line I was in—three in front of me, and one behind me. The cashier announced, “I can only take cash as the registers will keep working for 15 minutes with the power out, but the credit/debit card readers go out instantly.” As soon as the word “cash” was mentioned three of the five people in the line let out a loud groan, as if it had just been announced that they were the weakest link, or however they announce people have been eliminated on these new-fangled realty shows these kids are watching today.
For the record, that last sentence was written with tongue firmly-planted-in-cheek to sound like an old fogy. I’m just glad I get out $100 a week in cash, so was easily able to make my $10-ish purchase as the next person in line once the dropouts cleared away.