~Monday~ Another rare occurrence sharing my bus stop with another person, or in today’s case, other people. An African-American couple, he with a pair of ladies hosiery, either beige, nude or tan I’d guess, wrapped around his head, and she with a pair of shiny, black vinyl boots with rainbow-colored polka dots all over them. He had her take a couple of pictures of him with his camera phone, and she took them landscape orientation as opposed to portrait.
When the bus arrived, they let me on first, and I walked on to a completely empty bus. I don’t think that has ever happened before. It was the 7:45, instead of 8:15, bus I took today.
At a subsequent stop, three African-American ladies got on, one a plus-sized girl and on the phone. She talked walking up the stairs of the bus, while putting her money in the fare machine, and continued on while taking a seat right under the sign of things not to do on the bus, the first being, “Please refrain from cell phone use while boarding.”
I must have missed the memo about it being National Ask the Bus Driver a Question Day today. Both an Indian woman and an Asian man had involved questions for the driver, presumably around where to get off to catch connections and that sort of thing.
When the lady on the phone finished her conversation, she moved across the aisle to the seat behind the two ladies she boarded with, whom I was sitting in front of, so her voice had a clear channel to my ears.
“I’m so glad my kids got me out the bed and made me go to church on Sunday. Oh, girl, I didn’t tell you, I got asked to speak there on the 21st. Yeah, girl, it’s been 7 years, and they want me to talk about it. I was at their worship and praise service, and girl, they was singing.” And then referring to someone they all knew, she continued, “Girl, she can sing! People were shoutin’! Babies were shoutin’! Girl, it was powerful. The power of faith!”
I am so not a fan of 9:00 meetings, and even less of a fan of 9:00 meetings on a Monday. The only thing worse than that would be a meeting right after that one, which is what happened today. Actually, they were scheduled kind of oddly, the first one from 9:00-9:45 and the second one from 10:15-11:15.
Both meetings had the potential to be explosive, but they both actually went relatively smoothly, and were what I’d consider productive.
Class was interesting enough this evening. I had a nice chat with J.D., who was tonight’s presenter of the topic of “Tags and Tagging,” as we were both in the English department’s computer lab, having arrived too early to get in the room for our class.
After our discussions about tonight’s readings, J.D. gave a very organized, and well-delivered presentation, which is always a plus coming from someone studying to be a technical communicator.
Jen and I beelined out of there at precisely 7:15, as we had to be out in Cary for Shag Beginner II lessons starting at 7:45. Jen took the prerequistie Shag Beginner I classes, in which she didn’t have a partner and got stuck dancing with the instructor, but only when he was teaching. While he walked around and assessed everyone trying to learn the dance, she’d sat out. For these lessons, she was determined to have a partner, so she talked me into going and faking having the prequisite.
I was parked near the Bruegger’s Bagels on Hillsborough Street and I waited on the side of the road until I saw her car coming up Hillsborough Street so I could pull out and follow her. There was a Wolfline bus behind her, so I had leeway to pull out between them, but needed to do it quickly. Just as she passed, I gunned my car only to find it in reverse, but stopped before hitting anything behind me.
I slammed it into gear, and peeled out (yes, including making the noise that goes with that activity) determined to get behind Jen, but ahead of the bus. I successfully pulled that off, but once my heart stopped moving so fast, I noticed that my car wasn’t, and that’s when I noticed that not only was it in Second gear instead of Drive, but my emergency break was on as well. Bless my aggressive driving mess.
Jen is a totally aggressive driver, and we both drove way faster than we should have out there, and at least two—but I think it was actually three—times, I had to go through an “orange light” (way more into red than leaving yellow) to keep up with her.
I had a great time taking the lessons after getting over my initial nerves at being discovered as a “fake” who really hadn’t taken shag lessons at all, but had simply watched “tapes” of “Sue and the heterosexist Randy” a mere 18 hours ago.
It was a lot of fun both laughing and dancing with Jen. She’s a good dancer, and I caught on well enough to complete the steps in and on the beat, if not as elegantly as a more experienced dancer might.
Our biggest accomplishment was learning “The Pivot” tonight, and next week we’re going to learn some fancy schmancy leg work, well at least on the part of the lead. (That would be the “men’s part” for those of you living and learning in the majority paradigm.)
Walking out, one of the ladies in the class made a comment about my:
t-shirt saying, “Wow, I haven’t seen one of those shirts in years. You must have found that way in the back of your closet.”
To which I responded laughing, “On no, this shirt hasn’t been in the closet for years,” which I’m pretty sure went right over her head.
I stopped by the grocery store on the way home, the Harris Teeter by my gym, and I used the self-checkout scanners, which I rarely, rarely do, especially when I have produce, which I did tonight. However, there was only one staffed register open, and the person that I’d’ve had to have gotten behind in it had a full cart full of stuff.
At home, I had a short, albeit nice, instant message chat with Robert, played a little online Scrabble with him, had an on-and-off chat with Joe, and then had a delightful phone conversation with Sarah about our upcoming Salonathon.
I saw this video referenced in a tweet today. Actually I think it was one of Ellen’s tweets. I just love her.