— पांच हजार चार सौ उनासी —
Some mornings, everything just refuses to come together.
I somewhat routinely miss my 6:59 bus going downtown via Pine from my building, because I dilly dally just barely too long while getting ready in the morning. This morning, I got down to the bus stop with a good five minutes to spare. And then? The bus just . . . never showed up. I was standing there reading my library book, and suddenly it occurred to me I had been doing so for an unusually long time. I looked at my phone and it was 7:05.
One Bus Away no longer even showed the 6:59 bus, showing only the 7:13 bus as coming next. What the shit?
When my bus is actually on time, and I make it to the stop on time, the timing works out fairly perfectly: I get off the bus at 3rd & Pine downtown, then walk the mile the rest of the way up Elliott Avenue to the office. That usually gets me to the office by 7:30, give or take five minutes or so. Sometimes, when the bus is running late, and a connecting bus is coming within five minutes, I'll hop another bus up 3rd Avenue and get off at 1st & Denny which is about two blocks from the office.
Neither of those options were going to get me to the office close enough to 7:30 by this point. It was near 7:10 and there was still no bus coming, and I didn't want to have to extend my commute even more unnecessarily by either waiting who knows how long for a connecting bus or walking a mile after getting downtown. In the end I might as well have.
I checked One Bus Away for the #8 stopping at 15th & John. At least with that bus, which also stops at 1st and Denny, it's a straight shot and I don't have to transfer anywhere—I just have to walk five blocks to get to it. The #8 was running a few minutes late but the straight shot, theoretically, would still get me to the office faster by this point.
I heaved a heavy sigh and finally gave up on the #11. I started walking up 15th. Then I thought: it's barely misting right now, the forecast calls for partly sunny by the end of the day, why don't I just ride my bike? I'd get there very close to 7:30 by doing that. I would need to get rid of my umbrella, though. I got back inside the building and then changed my mind again. I'm going to a movie right after work today, and I wanted to be able to use busing time afterward for reading, which of course I can't do on a bike, which would be getting ridden while it's getting dark by that point. Not ideal. I went back outside again, and walked up to 15th & John.
And then? The next #8 was fucking ten minutes delayed! Jesus Christ. I'm supposed to be at work at 7:30 and I
finally boarded a bus at 7:27.
When I actually reached my desk it was 7:54. "Supposed" to be at work at 7:30 is a relative term, of course. For many years now, truly nobody gives a shit when I get to work. It's only my OCD tendencies that make me the only one who cares about it. On top of that, post-pandemic (some might say it's still "mid";
covid cases are rising as we head into fall; Amanda returned from Expo East last week with covid—thankfully she hasn't been in the office since returning), so many people work from home these days that I was still the first person in my department to arrive this morning. There wasn't even anyone here to care if they did care!
Why I keep fretting when shit like this happens, I don't know. I guess having a bus delayed ten minutes after moving away from a first bus that never showed up at all, is frustrating no matter how you slice it. What a pain in the ass.
— पांच हजार चार सौ उनासी —
— पांच हजार चार सौ उनासी —
And then: one thing after another has come up all morning. Try to get one thing done, I get asked to do another thing. I even got pulled into a Teams meeting with IT and people from the company consulting on a system upgrade that was only moderately productive for me to be in. Whatever!
Is there anything to tell you about last night? Not a whole lot. I was able to read while walking home again, so that was lovely, especially as I love that book—that being different from the one I was reading in the morning, which I am reading 15 pages of every day for Book Club. I still don't like reading multiple books at once, but if I have to, it sure is nice that I am really enjoying them both. Sometimes finishing a book for Book Club feels like homework, but this one doesn't.
Otherwise, Shobhit and I spent the evening watching TV. This week's episode of
Only Murders in the Building on Hulu; two episodes of season four of
Sex Education on Netflix; one episode of
The Righteous Gemstones on Max. I'd had enough after that and went to wash the dishes before heading to bed, during which time Shobhit decided to yell at me pointlessly because I didn't hear him ask if I heard Rachel Maddow talking about the projected closeness of the 2024 presidential election. He decided to suggest we'll risk losing to Trump because young people spend too much time listening to headphones rather than paying attention to politics, just like me. What the fuck? Is he 90 years old or what?
I then managed to secure an appointment for this year's covid booster, about which Shobhit decided to be equally frustrating. He's convinced it's better to get it done at a hospital or doctor's office than at a pharmacy, even though UW Medicine (which administered our monkeypox vaccines) isn't administering covid boosters right now; Virginia Mason simply refers us to local pharmacies; and purely objectively speaking, it's best to get one as soon as it can be got from whatever source possible. Remember how covid cases are going up, and we have staff at work out with covid right now? I even asked Amanda if she'd had all her shots and boosters, and she has. The one thing she did different that I would not have was fly home without a mask on. She could very well have caught it at the conference she was at and not on the plane, but who knows. Whatever the case, I'm not going to sit around waiting for a booster vaccine unnecessarily like a moron.
If the shot hurts a bit, so be it. As Laney noted, the booster is the same no matter where you get it. I think Shobhit is convinced pharmacy workers just aren't as skilled at giving the shots, but how your body reacts, even with pain at the injection site for a day or two, is just as likely if given at a hospital or doctor's office as it is at a pharmacy.
Honestly, I think it was just that political conversation that had soured Shobhit's mood, and so he then found every opportunity to project his anger, which is fucking crazy making. Neither my AirPods nor the skill of pharmacy staff has anything to do with that. Sometimes the capacity Shobhit has for behaving irrationally is truly stunning.
— पांच हजार चार सौ उनासी —
[posted 12:31 pm]
