~Thursday~ It’s official. The muffin is gone. Completely. Including the wrapper, which wasn’t even on the ground around the pole.
I got totally engrossed in my BlackBerry and it’s an absolute miracle I didn’t both jump and scream when a wet snout followed by fur rubbed between my legs down on the inside of my calves. That Golden Retriever that I mentioned a little while back—the one that was trying to maintain its dignity while being regular-on-demand for its owner—had come up on the sidewalk behind me to say “hello.”
Just before the bus arrived, that geek (70%)geek-(30%)military guy who was reading John Le Carre‘s Our Game a couple of weeks ago, walked up. When the bus arrived, he indicated for me to board before him. When he took a seat nearby, I noticed that he wore a band of gold.
At the Western Blvd / Gorman Street exit, a plus-sized girl boarded with significant thighs absolutely crammed into gray stretch sweat pants. When she lifted her arms to put in her fare, her belly was exposed, with the sheer weight of it down-turning the waistband of the sweats. The jewel in our porky princess’s crown was when she sat down and flashed spaghetti-thin strings presumably leading down to a bright fuchsia thong that surely had its work cut out for it.
Someone tweeted, or it could have been a Facebook status, “It was the third of June, another sleepy, dusty Delta day…” and I noted that today was June 3rd. I liked that, and from now on will think of this as “Ode to Billy Joe Day.”
I had no morning meetings, which is always a positive addition to my work day.
In the category of the opposite of a positive addition to my work day, at around 10:30, I spilled some coffee on my white t-shirt. To that end, I took the bus home during lunch to change and to have lunch while home.
The 11:30 bus had the rulesiest bus driver ever on it. A guy got on eating some kind of sticky bun or something and he and the bus driver got into a pissing contest over it.
Driver: There’s no eating on the bus.
Guy (walking down the aisle to a seat not looking back at the driver): You can’t tell me what to eat. I’m a grown man.
Driver: You can’t eat that on the bus. Do you want to get off the bus?
Guy (stuffing the rest of it into his mouth): Well, I ain’t throwin’ it away.
At the next stop, a guy got on who was on his cell and he walked back and stood in the small exitway in front of the rear door. The bus driver, looking at him in his rear view mirror said, “Sir, you can’t stand in the doorway.”
The guy didn’t hear him as he was totally engaged in his conversation, and the driver tried again. Still no response. Since I was sitting right next to the guy, I waved my hand to get his attention, and then pointed him toward the driver, “He’s talking to you,” I said.
I’ve only officially named one other bus driver, and that was Wrong-Way Willie, who—if you recall—earned his name this way. If I were to name this driver, I think I’d go with The Enforcer.
In the afternoon, I attended the NC State Web Developer group’s meet-up, during which my friend and colleague, Nick, did a presentation on Google Analytics, which I found very informative.
You may recall from this blog posting that I am quite fastidious about keeping my tires rotated, which is a requirement to keep their tread wear warranty valid.
It was that time again, and I spent about an hour (about 30 minutes longer than I’d hoped to) at Just Tires in Cary taking care of that. Even though there is a sign there that says, “Now Free Wi-fi,” I didn’t see it at first and when I asked the guy at the desk if they had it, he replied, “No. Well, we’re supposed to have it, but whenever I tell anyone we do, they usually come back up here and ask me what codes and passwords to put in, and I don’t have any of those.” Something about heads, sand, and being buried came to mind, but I let it pass.
Taking a seat I saw that sign, and if nothing else, the man had accurately set my expectations. There were two networks with “strong” signals, neither of which had an SSID that could in any way be associated with JustTires, both of which I was able to connect to without entering a password, but neither of which, once connected, ever rendered an HTML page.
After that, I had a quick Mushroom and Swiss burger from Hardee’s for dinner and dropped into the nearby Family Dollar store to buy some Bit-O-Honeys. When I brought them to the register, the checkout lady said, “Oh my goodness! Bit-O-Honey! I haven’t seen those in years. That takes me back to my childhood.”
“They’re killer,” I said. “I come in here and usually buy out the whole rack, which I did by the way, so you might want to put in an order for more if you don’t have any in the back.”
“I remember them being so good,” she said smiling.
“Open a bag, and have one,” I said and she laughed.
“Really. Open one. And remember,” I insisted.
“Thank you, I believe I will,” and as she opened one of the five bags, she said, “This is so gonna remind me of my grandmother. Thank you!”
At home, I put those aside to take to work, and enjoyed instead, one of Robert’s incredibly delicious homemade caramels. Out of this world! Thanks, my sweet!
I did a little bit of volunteer work for Manbites Dog Theater, played some online Scrabble games, and devised Wednesday’s blog entry.