~Thursday~ I woke up at 6:00, and in a rare situation I was unable to fall back asleep. Since I had to catch the 4:00 bus home this afternoon, I got up and caught the 6:45 city bus in, which is pretty much unheard of—as you know, if you’ve been reading for any amount of time at all.
I am not a morning person. And I don’t love morning people either—case in point being a lady who boarded at Gorman and Conifer and after putting in her fare said to the entire bus as if she were vying for a tiara, “Good morning everyone.” “What are you? Miss fucking Congeniality or something?” I thought rather curmudgeonly.
Passing through the Osmanthus stench tunnel, I actually remembered that I needed to use my proximity badge to open the door to my work building, since before about 7:30 or 8:00 it’s locked. But it didn’t open until I realized I was waving my GoPass (city bus pass) in front of it instead of my campus ID card, which is actually what unlocks it.
Continuing in my not-a-morning-person daze, I took my keys out of my pocket as I was going to need one to unlock the door to to my office once I got upstairs, and inside the elevator I went to stick my key in a lock that wasn’t there, when I was supposed to be—once again—waving my campus ID card in front of the scanner in the elevator, which then allows you to press a floor button other than one.
Once safely at my desk, I delved into my coffee. Wake it up!
From 10:00-11:30, we had our monthly OCC Staff Meeting, which is all of the people who report to my boss’s boss, four departments’ worth—or about 22—people.
From 1:30-2:00, I met with my friend and colleague Jen, and our most fabulous intern, Vanessa, for a one month’s check-in type meeting, during which we asked her to let us know:
- How’s your workload been? (too much? too little? just about right?)
- What’s been your favorite/least favorite assignments so far?
- What new things have you learned here so far (business, technical, relational, etc.)
- What’s working and what’s not working (the way tasks are being assigned, the way we’re communicating, your hours, etc.)
And my last meeting of the day was with my new boss, who is currently my officemate, but who will be moving out of my office tomorrow into the office vacated by my previous boss, who retired on September 30th.
I had lunch at Sadlack’s Heroes, where David stopped talking with a customer and watching the television long enough to take my order.
I laughed to myself when I ordered my usual sandwich, because it reminded me of a fun colleague who has named a bunch of programming modules with names that end in “-inator,” such as the injectinator and the removinator. When I returned to the office, I sent him an e-mail telling him that I thought of him when ordering my lunch sandwich from this menu, and asked him if he could tell me which one of two sandwiches I ordered. He did.
While at Sadlack’s, I ran into Brent, who I’ve known for a while now and wrote about in this Another time, another place… entry in 2005, and whom I see fairly regularly at karaoke down at Flex. He told me that he was waiting for his mother to arrive to go to the NC State Fair with her.
As I was walking back to my office, I passed them both waiting for the bus, and I walked up to them, extended my hand to his mother, and said, “You must be the person responsible for this man being on the planet.”
They both smiled and said, “Awww,” and she beamed, “I am.”
And I added before releasing her hand and moving on, “Thank you for that gift.”
Further up the street, I passed by a fair-trade shop called Sugar Magnolia, which has always intrigued me, because a sign out front says that everything inside is $15 or less. I slowed my pace down long and slow enough to look in the door to see if they had any men’s clothing in there and to try and discern whether it was all clothing or other merchandise as well.
You gotta love social media. Shortly after I returned to my desk, this Facebook exchange took place:
Too funny!
I caught the 4:00 bus home, grabbed some papers I wanted to take with me to my 5:00 meeting with my financial advisor, and a coupon for SRI Shoe Warehouse, which is up in North Raleigh, too, so I could make a run there while I was in “da ‘hood.”
I had a good meeting with Nathan, the best news being that three of the financial instruments he put me in have grown as follows:
| Purchase Date | Initial Investment | Value as of 10/20/2010 | Return |
|---|---|---|---|
|
10/03/2008 |
$100,000 |
$121,502 |
21.5% |
|
10/06/2008 |
$50,000 |
$56,391 |
12.7% |
|
10/07/2008 |
$100,000 |
127,790 |
27.7% |
While this is certainly good news, what’s even better about these particular three instruments is that they are all “guaranteed” in such a way that even if, tomorrow, the stock market goes to zero, Ameriprise guarantees me that I’ll get $115,000 of that first one, all $56,391 of that second one, and $119,600 of that third one. That’s comforting.
From there, I ran to SRI Shoes with my $10 off (if you spend at least $50) coupon, where I bought a $59.00 pair of Nike tennis shoes.
My last stop was to use my $7.99 haircut coupon at Great Clips. After negotiating way too much traffic—a combination of regular rush hour traffic, compounded by NC State Fair traffic—I got in line at the Avent Ferry Great Clips with one person ahead of me. He was an adorable kid with an Alternative Spring Break (ASB) 2010 t-shirt on, and although I wanted to ask him what trip he went on last spring, I didn’t.
I looked at the college kid currently getting his haircut from LaToya, and I thought about his jet black hair: “Enjoy that while you can, my friend, because as soon as you get one gray hair, it’s going to glow in the midst of that.” How do I know? Been there, done that:
Another guy came in and checked in. LaToya finished up the black-haired wonder, and took the guy with the ASB shirt on. It took a very long time for the other stylist to finish with the person she was doing, and when she finally did, her customer came into my view to pay for his cut. His hair looked horrible. It was a very short cut, but it was sticking up in places and just looked wrong.
I tried to very quickly assess the situation, “Do you just have a lumpy head with unruly, unmanageable hair, or has she whacked the hell out of it?” I couldn’t decide, and I wasn’t about to use my haircut to find out.
The fact that she had taken so long to cut his hair made me leery, too, as if maybe she didn’t know what in the hell she was doing, so I stood up with my phone to my ear and I said to her, “I have to go take this call. You can go ahead and take him next,” indicating the guy who had checked in after me.
I went outside, still with the phone to my ear and then just left. I didn’t need a haircut that bad, and my coupon is good for a long while yet. Tomorrow, or this weekend will be fine—or whenever that stylist is off next will do.