A rush of buscapades this morning:
- This is the first time, since I’ve been riding the bus for seven months, that another person at my stop in the morning was smoking a cigarette while waiting for the bus. I stood about 20 feet from him.
- Just as the bus pulled away from my stop, two college kids were walking toward the nearby park on Kaplan Street with Frisbees in their hands, and I thought, “Who plays Disc Golf at 8:00 in the morning?” Thin people, I noted.
- At the next stop, a lady was waiting—and as she usually does whenever we’re riding at the same time and I see her—she began crushing out her cigarette when she saw the bus coming. Sometimes it’s on the back of the bench that’s at this stop. Sometimes it’s on the bottom of her shoe. And sometimes it’s on the pole holding the bus stop sign. She got on the bus holding her un-lidded, steaming coffee, and took a seat under the, “There’s no drinking, eating, smoking, or profanity on the CAT bus” sign. The bus driver said, clearly working her, “And where’s my cup of coffee, sugar?” And I thought he was going to tell her she couldn’t drink on the bus. Just as she sat down, she dropped the stub of the cigarette she had extinguished before getting on the bus (she never wastes any of her cigs), promptly picked it up off the bus floor, and stowed it away in the pocket of her backpack that is made to hold cellphones. I thought of one of the classic lines from Sordid Lives, “You eat with that mouth, too?”
- Pulling away from this stop, there was an Asian man, I’d guess in his late 30s, early 40s, walking on the sidewalk pushing an empty stroller. Several people did a double-take, craning their necks to confirm that yes, it was indeed empty, and I wondered, “Did you lose the baby?” or “Did someone steal it?”
- A young person—a female college student I would guess—sitting in front of me, was reading Gone With The Wind. Who says kids don’t read any more? And classics at that.
- A couple of stops further along, and “the phone lady” got on. It’s been a while since we’ve ridden at the same time. She, of course, had her cell phone glued to her ear, was talking when she got on, talked while putting in her fare, talked walking down the aisle taking a seat four rows back and on the other side of the bus from me, and talked the entire way to my stop, all at a volume loud enough for me to hear every word she said, some of which was: “I went to his house. He’s very open to suggestions, so that’s good. I wrote the introduction and the ending. He wrote the middle. He likes capitalizing stuff…” The only thing worse than helping someone cheat is bragging about helping someone cheat and criticizing your co-conspirator.
- On Gorman Street, getting close to Hillsborough, we passed a white woman on her morning jog, steamrolling a double-stroller in front of her. I looked to see if maybe she had an Asian baby in one of the seats.
I love this blog entry by my friend GinnyFromTheBlog: Nine Simple Things You Can Do to Make Yourself (and Strangers) Smile More. I do five out of nine on a regular basis. And I smile a lot. Go figure.
An affirmation from Jay, who Joe and I met while down in Key West. He’s the one we met at the bar, and he followed me on Twitter, so I could follow him back once I got online. I really didn’t expect him to read my blog, much less like it, so it made my day.
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jriether@nematome LOVE your blog. Don’t ever change. 😉 |
My day started off with a great one-hour meeting with two colleagues who work in an entirely different group from me, but in the same overall organization that I work in.
I worked with Verna and Ciearro to devise some content for some of their web pages. Very productive, and fun, which is always a bonus.
As a total, complete aside, I wish Ciearro’s first name had a “u” in it to cover all five vowels. Oh well, at least he has a “u” in his last name.
An affirmation via Twitter by my friend Abby, who is a singer (among a gazillion other talents). I saw that she was performing the Verdi Requiem in a concert, and tweeted to her that I would have gone if I didn’t have a prior commitment this evening (see next item). And the reason I’d’ve gone was because the Verdi Requiem is one of the two CDs slated for my memorial service. She tweeted this back:
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abbyladybug@nematome If it helps, I’m on this: http://tr.im/k4Cr. Maybe I can sing along for you some time – hopefully while you’re still alive!! |
That is the exact CD that I own! Freaky!
Today was my dad’s birthday. I checked in with him by phone at around 6:00PM. He sounded really good and was in good spirits. Mom had gone to Bingo. Life is good.
Tonight 12 people that I work with, and I, volunteered to be “servers” at tonight’s night of NC State’s Night Owl event that they do at the end of each semester during exam week. The dining hall opens from 9PM until 11PM, and the staff (of the University, not of the Dining Hall) volunteers to serve the students food in the cafeteria-style serving lines. There is also some kind of entertainment going on each night as well.
I ended up being the greeter at the door, where I gave each person entering a half of a numbered ticket saying, “We’re drawing free prizes every 15 minutes. Good luck on your exams.”
Whenever a group of two, three, or four came in together, I asked, “So is anyone done?” A couple of times there was one of the group that was, and I gave them a high five and said congratulations. After about the third one of those, I had this sudden thought, “OMG. I wonder if these kids still do high-fives. Maybe I should be doing the Obama bump or something else!”
Oh well, they all did it back, even if they might have been thinking, “A high-five? Okay, let’s humor the old man.”
Here I am greeting a student:
Here’s my boss, Jude, nonchalantly watching some toast burn. The smoke doesn’t show up very well, so there was actually more than it looks like:
This is my boss’s boss, Stan, working the line:
