~Thursday~ I rode the #9 Greek Village Wolfline bus in this morning, where the only thing of note, really, was a missed perception on my part. A handsome lad had to run for the bus, and when he got on, he put a large box he was carrying with him in the seat next to him.
He sat a such an angle to me that the sun lit up the side of his face that was away from me, and he looked down reading. After a few minutes a drop of snot glistened like a tear drop at the end of his nose, and I watched bemused with a couple of thoughts: 1) what is he waiting for to wipe it, and 2) at what point will it drip off the end of his nose if he doesn’t.
Just then, he wiped his nose with the back of his hand, and I looked away. Looking back a minute later, another drop was beginning to form there, glistening in the sun, and this time he took out a tissue and wiped it. And then he wiped up the side of his head, and I realized that it was sweat streaming down the side of his face, culminating at the end of his nose.
I had two work meetings today. One was to prepare a group of us who will be staffing a table out on the Brickyard over the next couple of weeks advertising our now-live beta offering of Google Apps @ NC State student e-mail. We’ll be answering any questions that people have and encouraging them to migrate over from Unity/Webmail, while they can still do it on their own. Some time after school ends and before fall semester starts, everyone will be forced to migrate over to Gmail.
My afternoon meeting was over in the McKimmon Center, and it was with anyone who considers themselves “campus communicators,” and it was run by our fairly new Chief Communication Officer for the university, Joe Hice. This was my first time in a meeting with him, although I have been reading his blog on and off.
From there, since it’s so close and I was expecting the arrival of my house guest at an undisclosed time, I worked from home. I appreciate having a job that allows me to do that, and a management team who supports it.
I only had an estimated arrival time of “this afternoon,” and at 5:00, I fell asleep. At 6:15 my phone rang. It was one Marv Hoffman telling me they were in bumper-to-bumper, brakelight-to-brakelight traffic on I-40. We arranged to meet just down the street on Avent Ferry Road, where one of the other visitors was staying, so I could pick up Xolani.
I drove up to a van with several people in it, around from which Marv appeared and introductions were made. I was relieved to see that Xolani was not much taller than I was, because the bed I have for him has a foot board on it, which makes it not too conducive to tallness.
After settling in just a little, we went downtown to MoJoe’s for dinner, where we both had their club sandwich, and we split a basket of fries. We got to know each other a little bit better, and I was struck by one of his comments around his going “home,” which he said was about 20 kilometers from where he lives.
“They live in somewhat of a high-crime area, and whenever I’m home, there’s less of a chance that their place will get broken into.”
They’d had a long day, a good chunk spent in travel, and he was off to bed fairly early. I took advantage of that and got to be early myself.