6:00 - the alarm goes off for the first time. Mmm? Oh. The alarm. Wow, that's kindof cool how they started a new song only two seconds after the alarm went off. I hit the snooze button.
6:07 - the alarm goes off for the second time.
6:08 - I peel one eye open and look at the clock. Mmm. Okay. Lots to do today. I really need to get up now. I hit the snooze button and start rubbing my eyes to get the sleepy-gunk out. Just one more...
6:14 - the alarm goes off for the third time. What? Crap. Fell asleep again. I turn the alarm off and sit up.
I slip my shoes on. Wait. I made dinner last night. That means it's... My turn to make lunch. I pick up my pajama pants and pull them on slowly. Weird dream. Why would school buses pick people up in an Applebee's? Bizarre. Maybe I'll write about it in my journal. No; there's not enough of a beginning to the dream for it to make even nominal sense.
I go down the stairs. Maybe I should go back to the doctor about this damn foot. How absurd is it that I have to go down the stairs every morning like this, one step at a time? Though he can't really do anything. I should remember to take some of those foot-pills with me when we go to DC.
I make it to the kitchen and open the garage door. Laboriously, I descend the three steps into the garage and pick up the cat's water dish. Hello, Spud. Damn cat. Why couldn't you have waited another half hour this morning, anyway? Catfood... How come Matt never gets out of bed first? Damn. I can't tell if this is a third of a can left, or two-thirds. Do I give him all of it, or half of it? Shit. I'll give him half of it. He won't starve. Get your head out of the way or I can't put the dish down, idiot. There you go.
Lunch. What's for lunch? Leftovers are easy. Put some extra cheese on... Damn, this tupperware is stu-! There we go. Cheese... cheese... Oops, dropped some. Okay. What all do I have to do today? Lunchboxes... Go to the bank during lunch. Deposit check, set up the direct deposit... Apple or orange for Matt today? Orange, I guess. Gotta get that stupid signature thing. Oatmeal package for me, Nutri-grain bars for Matt. Damn, I hate the way these things crinkle. Mom and John are coming up for lunch with me and Dad... Do I need to put a fork in here? Nah, I think Matt has one at work. Slice off a couple pieces of leftover poundcake, that'll be a nice treat. Wasn't there something else I needed to do today? Was was it?
I start zipping our lunchboxes shut, and suddenly realize what I'd just thought. Lunch out with Mom and John. I look down at the two neatly packed lunchboxes, and sigh.
Well, Matt won't have to pack lunches for us tomorrow morning.
Yesterday, I was talking on IM with Matt and Braz, and Braz suggested that he and his wife Kris meet Matt and I in Washington, D.C. for a concert on June 14th. I was all for this until I realized that the 14th was a Wednesday.
But the concert sounds like fun, and Matt and I never get to spend enough time with Braz and Kris, so I considered carefully and decided that I could work some extra time in order to get part of Wednesday off for the drive, and part or all of Thursday off to sleep in and recover, so I told them to go ahead with the plans.
Then I started to panic. Not badly. But a bit. I hate driving in D.C. Actually, it goes a bit beyond that. I loathe driving in D.C. I can never find anything. And I just knew that when I asked for directions, I'd be pointed at an internet map-generator, and those things haven't yet worked correctly for me in the D.C. area. I asked Braz to give me the name and phone number of the theater so I could call and get decent directions.
He obligingly did so, then suggested that we use the Metro. On the surface, this sounds like a good idea. There are a ton of places on your way into the D.C. area where you can park your car and ride the Metro the rest of the way into the city. I've seen signs for them on my several business trips up that way.
Only one tiny problem. I grew up in this area, which doesn't have any public transportation to speak of. Blacksburg had a fairly good bus system, but I didn't live anywhere near the bus routes, so I never used that, either. In fact, I have never used public transportation when I didn't have someone more experienced with me to tell me where to go and what to do. I don't know how to tell which bus or train to get on, or how to tell the one I want apart from all the others. I don't know how to buy tickets or tokens or whatever is needed, or how to decide where to get off, or how to know when I've reached that point.
Whenever I've used public transportation with someone else - be it train, subway, or bus - some of those things are fairly obvious to me, but there's always at least one thing I can't figure out at all. I suspect that's because the more experienced person I'm with is doing things so quickly I'm missing steps, or they're doing them when I'm not there to see. When we were in Chicago with Matt's mom, for example, I couldn't figure out for the life of me how to tell which train we were supposed to get on to go home. The only signs were numbers. I figured out later that Jill had probably been told when she went to buy the tickets which track our train was on.
But I panicked anyway. Use the Metro? Instead of driving? I mean, I hate driving in D.C., but... The Metro? Really?
I got myself in hand. Thousands of people use the Metro every day. Statistically speaking, I'm almost certainly smarter than at least half of them. (Maybe more. These people are dumb enough to spend significant amounts of time in D.C., after all...) Surely I can read directions and figure this out. The line from the remote station into D.C. is only going in one direction, after all.
Braz made it even easier for me by suggesting we make a day of it and do tourist things. I wouldn't have to stress over my stupidity making us late for the concert in that case. I'd have to work the weekend before the trip to make up the extra time, but I thought it might be worth it. (Right at this moment, as I'm writing this, I still have no idea whether this suggestion was ever made via Braz or myself to Matt. I simply can't remember. I was panicking too hard. So, um, sweetie, when you read this: I think the day-trip is a good idea.)
I'm still a little skitterish at the thought. I'm such a baby. But I managed to travel via plane without help. Surely I can handle a train. Right?
Word of the Day: noisome - noxious, offensive to the senses (esp. sense of smell)
According to the mailing I get these words from, noisome is more closely related to annoy than noise. Which makes sense, given the meanings.
Words fascinate me. I love to know where they came from, what they used to mean, and why they changed. I took three years of Latin in high school, and four semesters of German in college, and what I loved most about both languages was tracking the similarities between the vocabulary and words I know. The changes are astonishing and wonderful and extremely rapid. (Just as an example - Shakespeare wrote less than five hundred years ago, and his works require a great deal of translation for those not familiar with the language.)
I was surprised when I learned - after all the similarities between English and Latin - that English actually evolved from the Germanic languages, not the Latin. (Part of the reason English has such tortured structures is that it began as a Germanic language, and then was heavily influenced by Latin and Latin's children (like French, Spanish, and Italian).
If there were a machine that would let us look into the past, watching without influencing, one of the first things I'd want to study would be language. I've always wondered whether there is a single root for all modern languages, or if speech developed separately and spontaneously in multiple locations. There are a number of scholars and arguments on both sides of the debate. I'd love to see the beginnings of speech - how it began, how it grew, how it spread, and how it changed.
No comments:
Post a Comment