~Friday~ I arrived at the city bus stop at 8:16, and I waited on the sunny side of the street (literally, not figuratively) until the bus arrived at 8:25.
The Hot Mess Driver was at the helm, but it wasn’t outrageously hot on the bus—just rageously hot. Library Man was aboard, whom I haven’t seen in a good long while.
I checked my work e-mail from my phone, and then immediately wished I hadn’t. It’s bad enough starting my day when “the clock starts,” much less on the way in.
The guy sitting in front of me kept nodding off, and at one point while his eyes stayed closed, he moved his arm excruciatingly slowly—one could almost say at a glacial pace—up to his face and scratched a little spot just above his mouth and to the right of his nose.
Back to my phone, on Twitter, I began to “unfollow” technical communication people, as I’ve finally accepted the fact that ever since I started following a whole slew of them, I’ve grown less and less interested in Twitter. Although I’m not so sure that’s a bad thing.
I had a very affirming and heart-warming day today in the office, as evidently my Facebook posting about putting feelers out for a new job has made its way around the office, or at least today people decided to talk about it with me.
Jason stopped by to tell me that, although he could certainly understand why I would, he would really, really hate to see me go.
Later I found this post-it note under the mouse of my Mac:
Jen told me that Sarah had written it, but I later found out it was Nick, which I found particularly moving, since I really thought I’d pissed him off earlier in the day.
And then later on, Sarah, one of the peer managers to mine, came in to talk to me about it, and said, “Really, John, you’re the best thing to come here in a long time. I hope you won’t go.”
All that, and with my talk with Jen yesterday, I really do like the people I work with, and I’d really, really miss that if I left. I assured them that I have no plans to leave right now, but that I’m the type to not wait until a situation gets too drastic to start exploring other options that might be available.
I paid Rhonda for my two boxes of Girl Scout cookies—one Peanut Butter Sandwich and one Caramel Delight.
I attended a 1.5-hour meeting for this year’s OIT level of the University Award for Excellence, for which it’s a tradition for last year’s winner to serve on the subsequent year’s committee. It was a very productive meeting, at which I feel I made a substantial contribution, so I felt good about that.
One of the people in that meeting works at the Avent Ferry Technology Center, which is across the street from Mission Joe’s where I was going for lunch, so I asked her for a ride over there instead of hopping on a Wolfline bus.
I met Sarah and Anna to a subdued squeal, although adequate in spite of my comment about it. While Anna took a business call, Sarah and I had a discussion about the connotation of the phrase “head muckety-muck”—particularly about the potential rhetorical situations in which it might or might not be acceptable.
It was a short lunch, as they both had to leave at 12:30, but with those two, it’s always worth the time.
At the bus stop waiting to go home on a late bus, for me, a guy walked up to me holding out a bus ticket and said, “I found this. Would you like it?”
“Oh, no thanks, I ride the bus for free. But, thanks.”
He tried to give it to a couple of other people there, but no one wanted it. After asking me if the #4 had come yet, he walked back into the parking lot above and behind the waiting area, and he held something up to his mouth with his hands cupped around it that looked like a pipe, and two minutes later, I swear I smelled pot.
Since I was catching such a late bus today, as I was walking to the stop from my building, I thought about Ann, who is the person who approached me on the street while I waited for the bus quite a while ago now asking me if I was the person who blogged about buscapades—and initially freaked me out, but that I loved.
Through an exchange of subsequent comments in my blog, I knew that we don’t run into each other waiting for our respective buses, which we do at that same stop, because she takes later buses than I do. So today I was thinking, “I wonder if I might run into Ann today,” followed by, “I hope she says something to me if I do, because I’m not sure I’d remember exactly what she looks like.”
Sure enough, after that guy had retired to the back lot to do something that often gets passed around:
Ann arrived at the stop and said hello! We had a nice, but short, exchange. Always a pleasure, both virtually and in real life.
Do you remember that light dusting of snow that we had for about an hour yesterday morning? Do you remember me talking about in the past how I don’t get direct sunlight in the front of my townhouse? When I got home, this is what my front lawn looked like after the sun shining (everywhere else!) all day yesterday and all day today:
I made myself go to the gym tonight, and on the way I just laughed out loud in the car while listening to the prologue to tonight’s This American Life episode, called Tough Room 2011, on NPR:
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Prologue. Thanksgiving 2002, the Ohm family’s dinner conversation turned to the recent terrorist attacks. Alexis Ohm, the youngest daughter, made a comment that in retrospect she admits was probably the wrong thing to say with her conservative, military-veteran dad at the table…that Osama bin Laden was hot. (5 minutes) |
This made me laugh for two reasons:
- It reminded me of this recent conversation on Traci’s Facebook wall, which also included an affirmation:
- This episode also reminded me of my conversation about “head muckety-mucks” with Sarah today in the context of a “tough crowd.”
At the gym I did 300 ab crunches, followed by 40 minutes of cardio on the elliptical machine. At two different times, two hot guys did exercises near me that involved sticking their asses out or up in the air. To both of them: “Don’t be writing checks you can’t cash!”
A very young guy on an elliptical machine to the front and left of me had interesting sweat patterns form on his t-shirt. The first was his underarm sweat, which started in his armpits and moved out toward the end of his short sleeves and up around his shoulder, until eventually they looked like epaulets. And then sweat started from the very bottom middle of the back of his t-shirt and started moving up.
What was so weird about all of it, I guess, was that the rest of his shirt was totally dry. With most people, most of the time, myself included, the sweat starts forming down the middle of the back and tends to move outward.
Tonight was my friend Paul Finger’s 30th birthday party, which he held at The Borough and did in style. Paul is one of those people with a great joie de vivre and is just plain fun to be around. He went all out with his cake, as you can see in the following few pics:
Tasted As Good As It Looks
(I sensed a hint of pistachio, which I love.)
Cake Cutter’s Hands after Cutting Several Pieces of that Huge Thing
It was a festive, festive night, which involved a short period of time above The Borough, in the penthouse of my friends “Shawn Daddy & Baby Girl.” I used their bathroom, where as I entered they yelled, “Make sure you sign in.” I think this is an hysterical idea, and I loved the entry above mine. Note the date.
