(no subject)

I got on the wrong bus this morning. That hasn't happened to me since junior high. The feeling of panic and disorientation made me all nostalgic.

Chicago has this setup -- I assume most cities do -- where buses that share portions of a route, even if they don't share all of it, have the same number. Usually, I find, the stop I am at is the one where the buses diverge routes. So I got on the right numbered bus, going in the right direction, but to the wrong destination. It's all kinds of fucked up and it kind of pisses me off, but buses in general do that -- don't get me started on the archaic map system that assumes an encyclopedic knowledge of the city in which they operate and the fact that no bus website anywhere seems to list fare rates.

I don't like riding on public transit that has no rails, because Christ knows where the bus will go next. I've been on buses that have just plain taken wrong turns, and had to argue the bus driver into turning around.

Anyway, I got off the bus in the middle of what I would call a Seriously Depressed area of town, crossed the street, caught the right bus going in the other direction (which actually circled past the stop where I had originally got on the wrong bus before going in the right direction) and here I am at training. Again.

Fortunately when I go back to work this afternoon I get to take a cab. It will be the maiden voyage of my corporate credit card, so we'll see how that adventure pans out.

(no subject)

And home.

The office did not catch fire in my absence, but I came back to find that I had been tasked with a certain complex database search thing that's going to eat up some time tomorrow, so today I took care of all the Things people had left on my desk: catering menus (subtle hints about where we should get food from next time, I suppose), credit card reciepts, requests for can openers -- no, really, I got a written note about can openers -- and invoices I'd been looking for.

I did have time also to write a post for Extribulum: Things Go Terribly Wrong Sometimes. I'm considering writing a novel just to use that as the title. It sounds like it would be one of those dreadful navel-gazing literary pieces about alienated people drifting aimlessly through life, but I bet I could write something funnier than that.

I once had a conversation with juniper200 about how the Nobel committee only awards prizes to Important books, and not to books with hijinks in. I took this as a personal challenge; someday I'm going to write a hijinks novel so important that nobody can ignore it.

I'm a highly competitive person who doesn't actually like to compete, which has turned me into someone with a deep well of subversion in my soul.