~Tuesday~ I was back on the 8:15 bus today, which was driven by the usual driver, but with unusual hair. Not unusual in general, just unusual for her. It was teased out, and I liked it.
A couple of stops into the route, a plus-sized lady boarded with a turquoise and lime green top on. Under that was another, presumably totally lime green, and longer top that came down lower than the outer one. The outer one said “Glam” across her ample breasts. Now, I’m not exactly sure what glam means, but I’m pretty sure this isn’t it:
I’m not saying her shoes exactly matched her outfit, but they did have lime green in them, and if the ground were ships approaching land in the fog, they might very well have served as lighthouses.
At the next stop, two women boarded. One lady had a baby in a car seat, and the other lady had one in the oven. And it looked like the timer could go off at any moment.
Several minutes later—I never even saw her board—I realized that Logorrhea was sitting right across the aisle from me. I hardly recognized her as 1) her hair looked great, and 2) she hadn’t said a word. I must admit that I glanced at her fingernails to see if “that nice, fat, Chinese man” had done her proud.
If she indeed was the person who yesterday said that she was going to get her nails done, then she’d just had them trimmed. They were nicely manicured, but they were completely dull. That is, there wasn’t any nail polish on them, not even clear. Unless nail polish is like paint, and she chose a satin finish over a glossy one. But I digress…
I had a good meeting with my manager for an hour this morning. Basically, it was our weekly staff meeting, but the other person in our department, my officemate, is on vacation this week, so it was just the two of us.
At lunch time, I took the Wolfline #9 Greek Village bus over to the Carmichael Complex and in the nearby Talley Student Center, I dropped off my $411 check, which is what I ended up owing for the $822 Gulf Coast Alternative Spring Break 2010 trip to Thibodaux, LA in March.
I walked back to my office, and I stopped at the credit union on the way, where I deposited two gift cards—one for $100 and one for $50—which were my rebates for my recent cell phone purchases. Coincidentally, by e-mail today I was notified of my next monthly cell phone bill, with its $50 increase, about which I’m still wildly ambivalent.
I had a productive afternoon, the majority of it spent on Student E-mail Initiative minutes and action items from the last two weeks’ meetings.
I continue to explore my phone, and waiting at the stop for my bus ride home, I decided to check out my Blackberry’s “Voice Notes Recorder.”
While exploring, I caught myself rocking from side-to-side and to that end I recorded the following audio clip. Warning: If you think you might be grossed out or offended by a 30-second audio observation that mentions male genitalia, please don’t listen. Also, if you’re at work or in a public place, you may want to have the volume down or use headphones. 
John’s First Voice Note
I will let you, dear reader, imagine the possibilities of this newly-found feature. Who knows, you might even be “witnessing” bus conversations in the near future.
I had high hopes and good intentions of getting to the gym tonight, but it didn’t happen. I had the other half of last night’s killer spaghetti with chourico and jalapeños in it for dinner, followed by quick instant message conversations with Robert and Joe.
Joe signed off by saying he was going over to the Caribou Coffee at Edwards Mill and Duraleigh, and without stating that I was, I packed up to go meet him there.
Although I don’t have texting enabled on my phone, I am able to do Blackberry Messaging, which is a separate application that allows free texting between Blackberry users. I arrived there before him, and when I saw him come in and go up to the counter to order his coffee, I texted: “Turn around bright eyes.”
Without looking, he texted back, “I see you,” as he had seen my car in the parking lot and had already spotted me before I had seen him. More fun with technology.
Joe left at about 9:50, and I left at 10:00 when the place closed, and headed up Ebenezer Church Road to cut over to 70-W to the airport.
I love Google. For my search argument, I simply put in, “Flight American 4569,” and it not only brought up the current information about the flight, including the estimated time of arrival at the gate, but it let me click on a “Track Flight on Map” link and it brought up Google maps with the route and realtime location of the flight superimposed on it.
That’s what I’d done, so I knew Jen’s flight was going to land early, at 10:08, instead of at its original estimated arrival time of 10:20.
As an aside, there are a lot of Google “shortcut” searches like that that you can do from the Google search field. Here are a few:
| movie Shrek Forever After 27606 ←I love this one! Shows you everywhere this movie is playing in your area. stocks ibm book The Blind Side weather 27609 45 Celsius in Fahrenheit ←You can replace “Celsius” and “Fahrenheit” as desired; for example “5 miles in kilometers” or “4 tablespoons in cups” define antepenultimate And more! Introduction to Google Shortcuts |
Jen and I had a nice chat on the way to her house, and from there I headed to Flex to check out Raven Simone’s Drag Show. I truly wish I hadn’t.
First of all, the 11:00 show didn’t start until 11:30. Second of all, Raven made some comment referring to the audience as “you motherfuckers” as in “I came here all the way from Goldsboro; you motherfuckers better at least clap.” Something to that effect. Basically, highlighting the complete lack of understanding of the tenet, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds.”
And then during the monologues or whatever you call that time when the emcee is talking between either dancing herself or introducing “the next entertainment,” she and Brigner, who was in the back working the sound and lighting, had a pissing contest about who was more “powerful”—Raven asserting herself as the “star,” and Brigner asserting himself by saying, “I can put you in the dark, bitch,” and turning off the spotlights.
Ooooh. Look at the time. Exit, stage right.