~Thursday~ I was at the city bus stop at 8:17. Checking Facebook status updates while waiting, I sent an email to myself with a link to an article called, “Why Some People Have All the Luck,” that my friend Rob Shook posted and commented about.
The bus arrived at 8:20, with The Enforcer at the helm and the air-conditioning flowing freely. The stop after mine is a “sync stop,” and the bus sat there for four minutes, until 8:25, which is its scheduled departure time from that stop.
Two men on the bus, one in the seat two seats ahead of me—with no one in the seat between us—carried on a conversation with a guy in the seat across the aisle from us in the same row as me.
The one across from us received a call whose one-sided conversation sounded like that, “Good morning. I’m fine, thank you. Actually I’m on the bus. Oh? Okay, darling. Well, at least you got me out of the house.”
He explained to the other guy that that was his doctor’s office, which he was on the way to, and it was the assistant telling him that the doctor wasn’t going to be in today. He didn’t seem at all perturbed about the situation.
To which the other guy said, “That’s exactly what happened to me at my doctor’s office. That’s why I’m on the bus this morning. They called me on Tuesday and asked me where I was at, and I said I was on the bus, ten minutes from them. So, I just got off at Sadlack’s bar.”
“Sadlack’s?” the other guy asked.
“Yeah, you know that little bar on the corner of Hillsborough Street where the bus turns left to go to Cameron Village? That one right there on the corner.”
I got a little chuckle out of this as Sadlack’s is the place that I frequent for lunch, and which is owned by my friend David’s mother, and at which David works, and at which earlier in the summer, my friend Susan and I ate several times with the six Groupons we had between us for the place. I think of Sadlack’s as a “sub place,” as its full name is really “Sadlack’s Heroes,” so it was weird to hear it referred to as a bar. Although I know they sell beer and mixed drinks there.
At Gorman and Marcom, the bus got to the left of a car stopped at the traffic light there. There’s really not an additional lane there, so it was definitely “non-standard,” and I of course looked to see what was going on, since I was sitting on the right side of the bus.
The car that he evidently was planning to go around was driven by an Asian kid, and when the light turned green, he shifted into first gear, and immediately stalled out. I don’t know if the bus driver had seen him do this before the light turned red or what, but we pulled right around that car and went on.
So, The Enforcer is also The Aggressor. I like that.
I had my regular weekly meeting of the Google Implementation Team over at the Avent Ferry Technology Center, and since both of the people (Stan and Sarah) my colleague Nick and I usually ride with are on vacation this week, we hopped a ride with another colleague, Franklin, instead.
During my lunch hour I read that article,”Why Some People Have All the Luck,” that I had bookmarked from this morning and then made these comments about it on Facebook:
- Thanks to my friend Rob Shook for sharing this!
- This read is particularly interesting juxtaposed to my current reading of Malcolm Gladwell’s book Outliers, which focuses on the often underestimated factors that Tjan only casually mentions here: “…while there are certain types of luck which you cannot affect (deterministic or probabilistic or elements such as where you were born…)”
- I would argue, too, that all three of Tjan’s “secrets toward a lucky attitude” are influenced by the amount of “natural growth” vs. “concerted cultivation” (which Gladwell also delves into) a child receives from his or her parents.
We had our departmental weekly working team meeting, which I actually remembered to go to at 2:00 today, and it was a productive meeting, complete with a prepared agenda by my boss.
Waiting for my city bus to go home, the Durham Express pulled up rubbing this in:
I was so caught up with that and with looking at my CrackBerry, that it was quite the while before I noticed someone toward the back of that bus frantically trying to get my attention through a two-inch opening in the window.
It’s always great to see Ann, and I walked up to the opening to speak a few words with her. I noticed the guy sitting next to her smiling at our conversation, and I wondered if he knew the backstory of how we met. I also wondered if Ann takes advantage of that free wi-fi on the bus.
I ran some errands tonight, with a first stop at The Readers Corner used book store on Hillsborough Street and then on to Barnes & Noble in Cary after that.
I ended up not getting anything at all at either store—nothing at The Reader’s Corner as I didn’t find anything I wanted, and nothing at the Barnes & Noble, mostly because the one or two things I would have considered were just ridiculously priced. I mean a little book, 5 inches by 5 inches, $14.95? Sorry, no can do.
I’m going to have to rethink a little project I wanted to do, to either find some other low- to no-cost options, or regrettably, abandon the idea.
I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, specifically to pick up some rolls and turkey sausage patties to make some “sausage biscuits” at work in the morning.
In an act that I wouldn’t realize until tomorrow morning when grabbing my wallet for work, I left my credit card by the card reader at the checkout.