~Wednesday~ I caught the 6:45 bus, which was so on time that I would have missed it if I’d’ve run back to my house to get my phone charger that I’d forgotten, like I’d thought about doing.
When I got on, there were two other people already aboard at this god-awful hour, including an older woman with gray hair and holding a clipboard with a pen poised over it, and my first, quick glance at her had me thinking after I passed her to take a seat, “Did that woman have a white beard?”
Once I sat down, I glanced over there again to find that she had bandages all about her chin, and the irony didn’t escape me that what I thought was a beard might very well have been trying to cover up recent chin whisker laser removal. She made little ticky marks on whatever was on her clipboard and I surmised that she probably works for the CAT system in some capacity. Either that, or she’s doing some ethnographic study.
The bus driver actually stopped at the Gorman and Kaplan stop, which is a sync stop, exited the bus, and either made a call or checked her voicemail, and then texted something to someone.
There ended up being a lot more people on this early bus than I thought there’d be. The morning looked so visually crisp as the sun rose.
Today was my two-year anniversary of working for the State of North Carolina at NC State University. My boss gave me the following postcard with this inscription on the back: “Congratulations! And many thanks for two years of good work and excellent company! Fondly, Jude.”
She also gave me a huge grain of salt. She has one too, and instead of her past habit of saying, “All disclaimers apply” before sharing some things, she lately has just pointed to that grain of salt on her desk. And now I have one, since she’s retiring at the end of the month.
I posted a link to that picture on the web, both on Facebook and Twitter, and I had a funny little exchange about it with one of my followers on Twitter:
For those of you who might not know, TWSS = “That’s what she said.” Too funny!
I got a haircut after work, as today was the expiration date for my $7.99 coupon. I got LaToya again, and we had a fun conversation during my cut, as usual.
I told her I was done with that shampoo study, and she ran her hand through my hair a couple of times, and said, “Well, it really did good. Your hair is so soft.”
I told her that in the final survey I had to fill out about it, they’d asked me to guess what brand the shampoo was, and that I had indicted “Herbal Essence,” just because I liked the fragrance. I really have no idea what company would be making that shampoo.
The only other stylist in there finished her customer, and with just the three of us left in the shop, she joined in on our conversation. I said, “Yeah, there were some weird questions on that survey, such as, ‘To what extent does this shampoo make you feel young?’ to which I retorted, ‘I’m 52 years old. It’s going to take a hell of a lot more than a shampoo to make me feel young.'”
The other stylist shared that she had treated herself to a serious massage when she turned 50—one of those that included hot stones on her back—and she said she couldn’t walk the following day. “He said I was so tense.”
I said, “Lady, you got 50 years of tension all stuck up in there,” about which we all had a laugh.
Dancing was fun enough tonight. For Carl’s (which was last month) and Bill’s (this coming Friday) birthdays, I brought two dozen mini-cupcakes and two cards with a “nun theme” to them, as Bill and I have had this running nun jokes thing going on for quite a while now.
Bob was in attendance, and we caught up, as he’s not been out for a while, at least not at the same time as I have.