Liz found Grama's scrapbook from when G. attended private school as a teenager (circa 1928), and it's full of photos, private notes, cutouts, and so on (weighs about eight pounds). Turns out that this respectable, upright citizen I've known all my life....well, I really don't know her. There are some empty cigarette packages and three or four dance cards, all filled up with boys' names. She had her poetry published in the school newspaper, acted in numerous plays and portrayed Friar Tuck at one point. What's unnerving is how much she looked like my mother, Aunt J., and Letty when she was a teenager. I probably shouldn't have been startled to see that, but there she is.
Sitting here, burning CDs for my class because WNCC Computing Services won't give me the keys to unlock the hard drives at the prison, so I'll be copying twenty frickin' data CDs for my classes. Until the keys thing gets resolved, I'll have to hand out these data disks at the beginning of class and collect them at the end. Needless to say, I'm in a peachy mood about that.
Doesn't help that I let myself get irritated by a rude person today. After working on papers, I hit the road to burn off some cabin fever and rode north on Roop (not for the faint of heart) and Winnie. As I was crossing the strip mall north of Safeway, this car was reversing out of a parking spot. As the driver was pulling out, the rubber "debris deflector" (?) under the front bumper snagged on something and was hanging off. I yelled at the driver to to stop because the deflector would go into the axel or engine when the car started forward. The driver turned out to be an elderly lady with more makeup on her face than common sense between her ears, it turned out.
I crawled under the car to find that the deflector was hanging onto the car by a single screw. After explaining the situation, she said to go ahead and pull it off because the car was messed up anyway. It was probably her husband's car, anyeay, but I gave the thing a good pull and it came off. She then said she was just going to leave it there, which she did. She got in her car and drove off without any sign of appreciation or gratitude and left this large piece of molded rubber right in the middle of the parking lot. I picked it up and took it all of twenty feet to a dumpster.
Someone once told me about the "Safeway Syndrome." You'll be in Safeway picking up groceries, and the sad fact is you have no idea what kind of life the stranger next to you is having. It's very possible this woman was having the worst day of her life and I have no way of knowing that. I suspect, though, I saw her as her normal self and I'm willing to bet big bucks she wears gloves when she takes a crap so nothing touches her dainty self.
After riding up to Big 5 Sporting Goods and finding nothing I need, I meandered on home in time to catch the end of the Red Sox game (10-1!) and their celebration over their entry into the baseball postseason. Their victory forces the New York Yankeees to travel cross-country to meet the Angels in Aniheim. My Cubs sucked and finished the season with a losing record, the first one in three years, and my fantasy baseball team will probably finish in second place. Not too shabby.
I left some important class stuff at the office and while I was out, I swung by McDonalds to pick up some parfaits for the family. I'm almost willing to sell a kidney or a daughter to anybody who can tell me where I can buy the yogurt they put in their parfaits.
Distance: 6.40 miles
Time: 37.07 minutes
297 calories burned
16 Days until the USN
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