Observations on public transportation:
On the bus on the way to work in the morning (14A), I have taken to reading other people's reading material. One up one over (seatwise) usually works best for the unintrusive viewing. I can't concentrate on my own book or newspaper or whatever, so I just look around at everyone else. Some interesting ones:
Last week a woman was reading a magazine that had a very steamy love story in it. I read along with her for a while until she finished and closed the magazine to put it away. Romance Writer's Monthly, it was called. She then pulled out another publication: JASNA, the newsletter of the Jane Austen Society of North America. This pleasantly plump woman kept me quite amused most of the way downtown.
On my way home later that week, I was standing right behind a "lady of a certain age," who was looking through a tourist's guide to Pakistan. She was quite taken with the GLBT travel destinations (in Pakistan?!)....I could tell, as she read that part over and over again throughout the bus trip.
Now, there is a lady who catches the 14 with me every morning at 7:50, and is often there in the evening, too. She was there this summer too, so it is nice to know that she has not been fired. We have only recently begun exchanging pleasantries, such as "I heard it's supposed to get colder again this week," or nodding our heads at each other. I call her "red hat lady," because that's what she wears. Even though that's not at all what she wore this summer. But right now she is easily identifiable by this trait. (Yes, I am calling it a trait.) Anyway, her behavior has begun to confuse me.
The 14 does not stop at every intersection once it reaches downtown (most buses do not). Although it announces Marquette, it does not stop there...goes straight from 2nd to Nicollet. I get off at 2nd every day and continue on my way to my office building. She gets off at the stop before me, and oddly enough, after my taking the bus longer (so that I can walk a shorter distance, logically) and walking 3 blocks, we ALWAYS bump into each other at the intersection of 2nd and 5th. Why did she get off the bus a stop early? Does she just want a longer walk in the morning? And if a longer walk, for the love of God, why outside on some of these mornings? There are SKYWAYS for that!!
Well, I will just continue to be intrigued. We had a conversation of about 3 sentences the other day that ended with an uncomfortable awkwardness, so I am not going to start up again (although...given my new plan...(more later)).
My building plays classical music very loudly on outside speakers. It caught me off guard the first day, but I've come to really like it. It is sort of a soundtrack to my life. Or at least I pretend it is. And I walk towards the bus after work imagining myself in a TV show about me. And it is kinda fun. ("Like seeing your life up there, on a big screen...and you're watching it!")
Later: My new ambitions, LOST, and more people notes. And perhaps some overdue political commentary regarding the State of the Union, Cindy Sheehan, and a TBD topic (NOT wiretapping, that's been talked out for me. In the space of about 2 sentences.)
