~Monday~ I was ready to head out at 8:05, which is about 15 minutes too early for the city bus, so I checked to see where the Wolfline bus was. The GPS service indicated, “Route not in service.” Oh yes, it’s that week after summer session ends, but before fall session starts, so only three of the Wolfline buses are running, none of which service my area.
Not wanting to go out into the heat and humidity of the bus stop early, I used the ten minutes or so to:
- Call my dentist to tell him I took the first two Clindamycin pills on Thursday, and <TMI>started having diarrhea</TMI>, which is a listed potential side effect, on Friday. I took the four on Friday, four on Saturday, and four on Sunday, and I still have four more days worth to take, and I really don’t care for that course of action. I’ve been on a lot of antibiotics over the years, and I’ve never had this side effect, but I’ve never taken Clindamycin as far as I know. In the end, he told me to just stop taking them.
- Change the expiration date of my credit card online in MyVerizon.com, as it was expiring in September and has just renewed.
I arrived at the city bus stop at 8:17, and the bus arrived at 8:24.
Consistently now, for at least the last five days, there have been three young ladies riding the bus, whom I at first thought might be students, but they don’t ever get off at the university stop, at least not mine. They’re already on the bus when I board, and they always sit up front in the center-facing seats.
They were on again this morning, and today had a fourth girl with them. I sat right next to them in order to potentially figure out their deal—not that they had to have a deal, but if they did I wanted to know what it was. By the end of the ride, though, if I’d’ve had to summarize the topic of conversation in one word, it would have been “like.”
I mean, like, if you, like, did a frequency chart of, like, the words used throughout the conversations, the word “like” would clearly have emerged as the mode. There’s, like, no doubt about it.
One of the girls finished an apple early on in the ride, and she held the core, which proceeded to turn brown the rest of the way, in her left hand.
My laptop bag was super light this morning, because it didn’t contain my laptop, only my breakfast and lunch. Since I was in the office until so late last night, I’d just left it there, knowing I wouldn’t need it when I got home.
At work, I called Nationwide insurance to ask them why I received a $32 bill from them about a change to my policy that happened back in March. It turned out that it was “a computer glitch,” and they told me to ignore the bill.
My work day was uneventful, and a typical Monday with regards to not having any meetings. Glorious.
I took a late lunch, since I now know that the post office at Cameron Village closes from noon until 1:00, and at about 20 ’til 1, I caught the Wolfline #8 bus down to the Bell Tower and then walked over to the post office. I arrived at about 10 till, and a line had started to form. Since there were only three people in it when I arrived, I walked down the hallway of post office boxes, and stopped to look in a glass case entitled, “Postal Community Information.”
It contained three sheets of information, one of which was entitled, “Location and Hours of Branches.” I noted that for the very post office I was in, it didn’t say that it closes from 12:00-1:00. Then I noticed the “University Branch” post office, which closed down about six months ago—at least. And then I noticed that the date of the document was August 1, 2005. Six years old. How helpful.
I walked back to the line and got in it just before about six people came in and joined in behind me.
The next person who came in took a look at the line, noticed that the place was closed for lunch, and said, “God bless the U.S. government.”
“Only a government business could shut down for lunch when everyone else can run their errands,” someone else in the line retorted.
“Did you know that the US Postal Service doesn’t use any taxpayer money?” someone sounding like they were defending the post office pointed out.
“I didn’t know that. Really?” asked the guy who made the comment about the errands.
“That’s my understanding,” the postal sympathizer said.
I was in line with two letters that I was mailing, and I only wanted to make sure they were each under an ounce. A lady sticking her head out of a door to the side and back of the waiting area said, “May I help the front of the line over here?”
I couldn’t tell if she was a “full service” clerk or if she only did certain things, so I asked before leaving my place at the front of the line, “You got a scale back there?”
She gave me a “Are you high, Clarice?” look and waved me over.
“I just want to make sure these are under an ounce,” I said handing them over to her.
As soon as she received them in her hand, she said, “They’re under an ounce,” and handed them back to me to put in the mailbox on my way out. Pointing to her hand, she said, “This is my scale.”
I walked over to the nearby Cameron Village branch of the Wake County Public Library, where I picked up my copy of The Hunger Games. I requested this book a month or two ago, when I joined the queue at around number 480 for it.
It’s the next book for our Mostly Social Book Club (MSBC), and it’s one that I hadn’t heard anything about. I had assumed that it was some type of eating, perhaps a self-help, book, which would be in line with the kind of books we’ve read in the past.
I had about a five-minute wait for the bus, and I read the first few pages. Strange book. Nothing like I expected.
And at that point I didn’t know what to make of it. It almost read like science fiction, but I don’t think, in the over 19 years we’ve been meeting, our MSBC, has ever read a sci-fi selection, so I wasn’t sure. Plus, the member who chose the book would be the last person in the group I would expect to chose a sci-fi book.
I resisted Googling it to see what it’s all about—to at least see what genre it is categorized in.
I brought TGIF Mozzarella Cheese Sticks to Jen’s tonight, arriving just before 6:00, and Sarah M. has already arrived. Jen provided pizza, and Sarah had made dessert. We enjoyed the appetizers while the pizza cooked, and then we settled in to watch Stranger Than Fiction.
I really liked this movie. I thought it was cleverly done, and all but the Hollywood ending was engaging to me. It was the first Will Ferrel move I’d seen, and I was impressed with him.
We had Sarah’s delicious brownies for dessert, after which she told Jen and I were made with black beans, which we both hate. Well done, Sarah.
Robert’s flight from Chicago was supposed to arrive at 10:03, but due to bad weather out of Appleton, he missed his connection, which put him on one that the Internet said was arriving at 11:27, but that he said was arriving at 12:45. From Jen’s I went down to Flex, where Scareyoke was going on, and I killed time until checking the Internet again for an update on the flight.
This time it said that the expected arrival time was 2:03. I left Flex at about 1:00, and I drove out to the airport and sat in a hotel parking lot under a light, where I was going to read. I reclined my seat, but was unable to fall asleep, and when I pressed the button to bring the seat back up, the motor made a grinding noise and it came to a halt with the seat still back. Grrrrrrr.
Now it was about 1:45, and I checked the Internet one more time, where I saw the updated arrival time at 3:17. Argh.
I drove home propping myself up and lay on my couch getting in a couple of winks, when Robert called at about 3:15. “Girl! We’ve landed.”
I picked him up at about 3:30, dropped him off at his place in Durham, and got home and into the bed at right about 4:15. Long day.