Bus Quote - 22 June 2009

Great quote from the bus:

"I don't get this whole CIA phone tapping business. There was once a time when they just took care of business and we never had to know. Now they're all getting lawsuits for phone tapping terrorists. I mean really, it's like reading a guy his Miranda Rights on the battle field when it should have just been a guy shot and killed on the battle field"

Oh yea . . . I'm Pushy

Oh yea ... so I rode my bike to work yesterday. I left work late which means I caught the train to East St. Louis to catch a bus. E. St. is not the best place for a girl to go alone (especially at night in my skin). Never stops me! So yesterday, a woman sneered at me, turned to her pal and whispered (rather loudly) "cracka". So it was obvious I was unwelcome by at least one individual. It's disappointing that I can be fair to most, but do not receive fairness back. Instead I'm judged.

But what I thought to myself for those few moments was how defiant and pushy I am. I toe the line, I push the barrier back millimeters at a time. I urge people to challenge me. I'm always looking for a fight, and am always, ready to fight. I'd get my arse kicked to smithereens, but I'd do it anyway! You have to stand up for what you believe, no one else will do it for you!

Other Transportation - National Bike Month

For National Bike Month, I plan on riding to work tomorrow. Well, actually, I will be riding my bike to the bus station and then catching the bus the rest of the way. This is my route to the bus station . . . 1.6 miles [2.57 km]



If I were to ride to the grocery store, this would be my route . . . 1.2 miles [1.93 km]



If I were going to ride to my mom's house (about the farthest I would safely venture), I would take this route . . . 9.5 miles [15.29 km]

Yep, Busy Busy Busy!

I'm going to start this blog off by tracking back in time. A time I call . . . "yesterday"!

I left work late to get a couple of extra hours in since I won't be at work on Friday (going to KC Fri-Sun). As it usually goes on evenings that I don't have an automobile, I took the Metrolink to the 5th & Missouri East St. Louis station. The bus to Collinsville shows up about quarter to the hour. I get there a bit early to ensure I don't miss it. While sitting there, Eva calls to tell me there is a major drug bust at the meth house just a few houses over from her house. We are talking about the SWAT truck, SWAT team with guns aimed, and PERCUSSION GRENADES! PERCUSSION GRENADES!! Damn the luck of my profession; I want to use percussion grenades!

Anyway, for those of you who may not really know who I am (and even for those people that do); I used to live at Eva and Jami's place in West Granite. That is West Granite City, Illinois. Now, it's not the best part of town. It's considered "the other side of the tracks", literally it is the other side of the tracks. But I liked it well enough, still do. It's the same atmosphere as any town/city. You have the wealthy, you have the poor, and you have everything in between. West Granite just seems to house most of the drug producers. Meth makers. Duane. Duane got his ass some percussion grenades yesterday!

Now, back to the bus . . . I was waiting with a large group of people for the bus. I've done this often. I've never felt scared, awkward, or in danger. Yesterday changed that!

The bus arrives, we all stand to get on, one by one filing onto the bus offering our tokens for a ride. I offered the fellow by me the "next in line" spot, he declined and said, "after you". I thought it was polite, thought nothing else of it. I got on and went to my well chosen seat. I put a lot of thought into the seat I choose (shown below).

This particular seat has a plastic thingy behind it so that no one can reach over the seat. I can sit in the aisle seat and set my belongings in the window seat. The only major downfall to this seat is that the seat across the aisle faces my seat. This is where the "polite guy" sat (see below). From now on, "polite guy" is now "weird guy".

I had headphones on, which I thought was the universal signal to say "I do not want to speak". I guess he took it as "I am just listening to music until someone bothers me, please come bother me". He started his line of questioning, "how was your day", "how was work", "what do you do", "what does that mean", "how long have you been doing it", "does it pay well", "do you like it", "where did you go to school", "where did you grow up" . . . etc. I seriously started to feel as though this were the East St. Inquisition. There was finally a break in speech. I turned my head, put the headphones on, turned my body so it's language said "leave me alone", and pretended to be busy with my cell phone. Yep, busy busy busy.

Then he lightly touches my arm which scared the crap out of me. What is much more scary is that when I turned to see what it was that he wanted, he was standing, rather haunched next to me watching my every move with the cell phone. I think he got close to smell me or something of that nature. He kept touching my arm despite my uncomfortable inching away from him. This is a major violation of my personal space for sure! Thankfully he got off at the horse racing track which he referred to as his "second home". Before exiting the bus he grabbed my shoulder, held it for what felt like hours, and told me how great it was to talk to me.

Ugh!

Anyway . . . so now fast forward to this morning. I took Metrolink today, but completely bypassed the bus option (imagine that)! I had to run to catch my train; that's okay. Nothing like a brisk run to get your heart rate up in the morning! And alas, here I am, at work, blogging. Yep, busy busy busy!

But tonight I will be taking a tour of St. Louis' largest recycling plant. I am very excited. I would take some photos to share, but that's not allowed.

I have a few things I wanted to comment on this morning. 1) Yes Drew, magnets would be a good idea, and surprisingly some one else mentioned it yesterday, jokingly though. It would be great if we embraced what is natural to make structures, roadways, etc. In this case, no chance of magnets. I will have to come up with something much more clever to make my stair float, yet withstand gravity and lateral loading. This is going to take some Voodoo, if anyone has any suggestions, I am totally open! 2) Fuck, Becky, warn me by saying "These images are not suitable for Stephy's eyes". Ugh! 3) Mike, you shall be amazed by what I will learn about soccer. I'll make you proud! Oh, and from Chris, "soccer's for girls". 4) Watch Amélie, it's one of my favorite movies, and I watched it yesterday. 5) I will be in Kansas City Friday through Sunday to visit Erika and family as well as to catch the English Beat. I will try to blog, but I might have to disappoint Mike by not blogging more than once. Sorry friend!

I will leave you now with the word of the day . . .

downchuck: the opposite of upchucking. When you vomit a bit, and you accidentally swallow it. Leaves a nasty taste in your mouth and can often happen many times if you are hungover. [Editor's note: gross]

Snow Banks

I always begin to wonder on days like today if I can get crabbier. I know I can, it’s silly to think otherwise. I’ll rewind for you so you can see why I’m crabby.

Yesterday started out good. We had snow, I wore my cute snow boots, I started a new blog.The day was fair enough; cancelled lunch plans so no one had to walk in the snow, but I hung out at my desk and read blogs. I sent out a set of shop drawings and started the next set. My friend lost her job and got a new one all in the same day. My sister is getting back online. The day started to go downhill at about 3:30 pm. I had to leave early (I came in early to do so) to catch the bus so Chris could come pick me up before the washing machine delivery guys showed up at the house. I had somehow managed to lose my bus pass on my desk. It costs $2.00 to ride the bus home from St. Louis. I had $1.00 in my hand and told the bus driver I needed to dig the change out of my purse, so he kindly let me stay on the bus. After feverishly digging in my purse I could only find half of what I needed. With tears welling up in my eye sockets I asked the other bus passengers if they could spare me $0.50 cents to get home. Some very kind man gave me the change (probably couldn’t handle watching me cry). I paid my fare and sat at the back of the bus where no one would see me sniffling. I dug through my purse and found the rest of the change that I couldn’t find earlier and stumbled along the moving bus to pay the nice man back. Once we arrived in Collinsville, I gave Chris a call to tell him I would be arriving at the bus station only to learn he wasn’t giving me a ride home in case the delivery guys showed up. I think he could have spared the 10 minutes to get me, but instead, I walked home. Normally a brisk walk would be fine. We have 6+ inches of snow on the ground so I wasn’t so ‘fine’ with the situation. What could have been a potentially fun walk was miserable. I was stepping in unshoveled snow banks that came up to my knees or higher. In some cases I was barely straddling the snow bank to climb over. This let snow and ice into my shoes which in turn made my toes numb and wet. I slipped twice and fell once; fell really good. A car finding so much humor in this honked and waved as I was sitting on the ground. The tears that had once only welled behind my eye balls were now pouring out at an alarming rate. The tears froze on my eye lashes. The runniness of my nose also froze. I was pissed that people won’t shovel their sidewalk. I was pissed at the people that thought it was funny. I was pissed at Chris for not sparing me 10 minutes. I was pissed at the snow plows that piled snow so high I had to climb it like a mountain. I was pissed at the salt that melted the snow that turned it to ice. I was pissed at my knees for hurting so bad. I was pissed at my toes for being numb. I was pissed at my tears for freezing. I took some deep breaths before walking in the house to calm myself so I wouldn’t breathe fire at Chris. I stepped in, and slipped. I was at a delirious point in the night where instead of crying I laughed. This is a dangerous moment, when sadness and anger turn to laughter, it means I’m at my breaking point and will hit as hard as I can and not recall doing any of it. I removed all my wet and cold clothing, dunked my feet in warm water in the tub and then sat and laid by the heat register. Feeling slightly warmed I put on warm pajamas and sat at my computer, the one thing that can soothe me. Weird things happened there, but I’ll skip that part and fast forward to the delivery men finally showing up. It was about 7:30 or 8 pm. I took the dogs to the bedroom and let Chris handle everything. Fast forward to after everything is in place and installed. Chris ran a test wash, it worked. HOLY CRAP! It showed up and was working. But alas, as one might guess, still a problem. With this new fangled washer, there is a tray for detergent that is missing. Yea, missing, as in not there, just NOT THERE! I couldn’t take it anymore, I went upstairs to take warm shower so I could promptly drug myself and cry myself to sleep. Chris, not realizing he was an idiot at this point, started a load of laundry (yes, it is possible to do laundry without that tray, but that’s not the effing point here). This made my warm shower cold. I let my warm tears warm my face to finish my shower. I got out, barely dried myself, threw on pajamas, took a lot of Tylenol PM and quickly cried myself to sleep. I don’t recall anything of last night except waking a couple times glad to see a warmed half empty can of Diet Coke to drink from. So here I am today, with no major problems, a bus pass, and more Diet Coke. One might venture to guess I would be in a better mood, but, the bad one carried over, so let’s hope for less negativity, more Diet Coke and good picture for my newest blog. I’ll be nice and apologize to Chris for calling him an idiot, I do know that if he had come and picked me up, the effing delivery guys would have showed up then, and he didn’t know the washer was going to suck all my heat, it never has before! He did at least heat up some Arbogast Cheese dip for me!

And now onto the urban slang word of the day:
fake take: Pretending to enter and store someone's phone number into your moblie phone after they generously offer up their phone humber and say "Take my number and give me a call sometime."

In use:
Girl 1: Why did you take that loser's number and tell him you would call him?
Girl 2: Don't worry, it was a fake take!

Totally deflated, angry, and freezing!

Top o’ the morning with the word of the day . .
Narsty: Something nasty that’s actually kind of cool or strange. Combination of “gnarly” and “nasty”. Also spelled “gnarsty”.
In use: The gal over there with the 5 o’clock shadow sure is narsty.

So yesterday was a compelling day full of anticipation, excitement, and let downs. If you were anywhere in the United States yesterday, you were likely watching the inauguration. If you didn’t watch it, you heard all about it. I could probably write all day about that topic, but that would lead to some sort of political discussion that I just don’t want to get into, mostly because I don’t discuss politics. So after getting back to work yesterday after my hour hiatus to watch the inauguration with my coworkers; it was lunch time. The Structures group had our staff meeting; we had Vito’s pizza, so really a highlight of my day. One can never go wrong by serving Vito’s pizza. In this meeting I learned I had sort of been ‘demoted’. I’d like to emphasize that I wasn’t in any form physically demoted from what I do, rather my title. Well, I don’t know, I do care, I don’t care, I’m still deciding. I went from being an Engineer to an Engineer Technician. No change in pay, no change in tasks, just a name. I had to laugh though, because in my self evaluation that I have to perform yearly, where this title comes into play, I was a green (highest standard) in all categories. I rock! I openly told my group that I rocked it. I had marked greens everywhere; there will be no need to change me back to an engineer when I am doing this awesome. I did tell them it could have likely been my flamboyant ego flapping its brilliant wings. Well, the day goes on, even in my demoted state, and I call home to find out that the washer and dryer we recently purchased is being delivered! Yea!!!! The excitement has been flowering since we purchased it on January First! I was so eager to get home and use it that I left to catch the earliest bus that I could. Realizing it was already time to leave; I threw my stuff together, only turned off half of the gadgets at my desk and flew out the door. I ran to the bus stop! Alas, I will soon be home; but then 10 minutes go by and I realize that my bus is not coming, I had missed it! Just then my phone rings, it’s Chris, he’s going to cheer me up with great washing and drying news! No. Not it at all. The washer doesn’t work. It’s broken. And I have missed my bus. So there I stand in the cold, with all the excitement and anticipation shot out of me like air firing out of a balloon! Totally deflated, angry, and freezing, I just stood waiting for the next bus. Once home I decided my day deserved a good crying movie, so I put in P.S. I Love You and got it all out. This morning I woke up, and life is still going. I guess I’ll just have to function!

I Don't Think I Blog Too Much

I told you I'd be blogging more, but really, for those of you that think I blog too much, well too bad! I'm bloggy these days!

Okay, so for my slang word of the day...
hella: 1. Very, totally. 2. Lots of. Short for "a hell of a lot of".

I'll be using it this blog...keep your eyes peeled and ready! By the way, the "Urban Dictionary" street slang is courtesy of Andrew McMeel Publishing, LLC, Kansas City, Mo.

So I think it would benefit everyone to blog, as I've mentioned before, so why aren't you? No one has to read it (or at least I will be, I need reading material). Badger and Becky could have home improvement blogs. Mike could do alcohol! Eva could do gross body stuff! Maureen could be writing about brain disections and psychology! Shane could write about Ireland. Tyler could blog about skateboarding and his journeys in Japan! Oh well, I don't want to force you to write, it's not fair; I'll just be hopeful.

So I am at work today and tired. I couldn't fall asleep so I dozed off at about 2:30, got up at 6. I feel dead, soda and music are helping. I caught the bus in today instead of catching a ride with Chris; all the regulars were there, nice to see them. New bus driver though. I have hella work to do today with deadline on Monday. It won't all get done, which I am sad to say is expected!

Anyway, on to my list of little things that get me by everyday...
-Diet Cola
-Internet access at basically any time I want it
-Pulling the wire on the bus that indates a stop is needed by a passenger

Earth Day

Today is the big day, it's Earth Day. I took the bus (but that has become my normal routine). I will be a vegetarian for the day also, but that doesn't stray far from reality for me. I eat meat on occasion (including some forms of beef). The problem, is that for the most part I am conscientious about my acts, I use reusable grocery and shopping bags, I avoid using my task lighting at work, I close down my computer at the end of my day, I recycle most of my waste, I use reusable cups and dishes. I take short showers, and wear jeans a couple of times before I wash them. Chris and I are now going to start making our own biodiesel! It's not that I am perfect, or that I have all my ducks in a row for conservatism, but you know, when you do everything you really can most days, it's hard to think of a step further that you can take. I should have worn my T-shirt made of recycled plastic bottles today. Oh well, hindsight is as they say, 20/20!