~Tuesday~ Due to my early retirement last night, I was up at 5:30, and on the bus at 6:15. Well, I was out in the rain at the stop at 6:17, and I waited in that rain until 6:24 for the bus. The bus was surprisingly crowded for the first bus of the day and so early in the morning.
At the next stop, someone tried to use a fare card that evoked, “Card not valid,” on all three tries, which seems to be about the average number of times people swipe an invalid card before they accept it as reality. The guy behind that person took at least three tries to get the fare machine to take his wrinkled dollar bill.
For some unknown reason, there was a fare card just taped to the fare machine that the driver had to lift up and turn to the left a little in order for the fare card the person was buying to be able to come out of the slot. Time after time, after time, after time, the driver lifted and turned that taped card so the person paying could take the card printed for them. Why???
At a subsequent stop, a man boarded with his child whom he evidently thought was too young to have to pay a fare. After paying his own and walking back to a seat, the driver called him back up to pay for his child. It always amazes me—especially when traveling with a child—when someone doesn’t have one more dollar to put in the fare machine. Someone else on the bus offered him a dollar to pay the child’s fare.
At the Gorman and Burt stop, Temporary Alice and her daughter Word Search Lady boarded. It looked as if they had shared an umbrella, and not well. Word Search Lady‘s hair was soaked, and mom straightened out daughter’s collar in order to drain the rain out of, and away from, her neck.
Hillsborough Street was absolutely deserted this morning and this is what it looked like as I walked up the dark, quiet, and wet street to my office:
That’s my building in the shadows in the upper left corner of the photo.
While waiting for the elevator after entering the desolate lobby of my work building, I wondered how long it would take for someone to find me if I had a heart attack right then and there. And then I had this interesting thought, “Even if I went right here and now, I’d be good with that. I’ve had such a great life.”
At work, I completed my edit of the program being printed for UNC CAUSE 2010, edited the NexGen Implementation Charter, and completed the minutes of two meetings, one of which was from a meeting held over a month ago.
From my office, I watched a live streaming of the chancellor’s installation—which was a lot of pomp and circumstance—going on in Reynolds Coliseum on the other side of campus. When it was first announced, a month or two ago, I had intended to attend it in person, but I didn’t feel like traversing campus in the rain today, and some would probably say that I wasn’t dressed appropriately to attend.
Picture the notion, “Happy days are here again?” Now think of what the opposite of that would look like. That’s about how it is with work for me lately on at least three or four fronts, and I don’t see most of them getting any better any time soon. Albeit, “this too shall pass…” eventually, as the heart always goes where it’s nurtured.
Since I was in so early, I caught the 4:30 city bus home, where although I was determined to get to the gym tonight, I didn’t. I’m not going to get into the fact that I’m disgusted with myself on this front, because as my doctor said the last time I complained about my weight once again not being where I wanted, she said, “So in another words, you’re just being you.”
I’ll address it soon enough as it’s starting to affect other aspects of my health. ‘Nuff said.
At about 10:00, I checked my work e-mail, where I found more “unhappy days,” with essentially a public appraisal in an e-mail by someone who’s frustrated. Woohoo.
Shortly after reading that e-mail, the final copy of the UNC CAUSE 2010 booklet came in for an edit, so I worked on that from 10:00 until 1:00 AM. Yee-ha.