Someone around me coughed with a hacking cough that made me think, "Somebody's got consumption."
An older, totally gray-haired lady in a totally turquoise outfit sat up front in the center-facing seat on the side that had her facing the driver, with whom she was in conversation most of the way. When we approached Western Boulevard, she started talking about the Raleigh man robbed, shot while walking home from the store, which had happened nearby overnight.
She said about the robber, "Yeah, he must have had a small caliber gun. He wasn't aiming for his head." I know she got the second part from the story, which said he was shot "in the buttocks." I'm not sure what tipped her off to a small caliber gun. I don't even really know what a caliber implies about a gun and I'm not at all interested in looking it up. It did, however, make me wonder how this little old lady knew so much about the topic. Prolly from Judge Judy.
A man took a seat in front of me and he had this slogan on the back of his t-shirt, "Friends Don't Count Chromosomes," and under it the web site: www.triangledownsyndrome.org
Li'l Dino got off the bus in front of me, but then slowed down to let me catch up to her as we both headed in the same direction. When we were side-by-side, she said, "Did you hear about the groundskeeper that committed suicide last week?"
I hadn't and said as much, and then I asked a couple of people at work, and none of them had either. After some Googling, I think she's talking about this suspected suicide, which I had seen in the news. I think somewhere in one of the several articles I read it said that at one point he was a groundskeeper at NC State.
She made it sound like it was one of the current groundskeepers, and I thought about the game Telephone, also known as Chinese whispers, Grapevine, Broken Telephone, Whisper Down the Lane, Gossip, Arab Phone, and Silent Post. Who knew?
I spent a good portion of my day working on something fun, which was completely redoing a page on the topic of "General Computing Information" that's published in the Campus Phone Directory, which is still printed annually, and sits in great stacks around the campus, as everyone uses the online directory to find people nowadays.
I can't even begin to articulate the fun, fun, fun we had at Salon tonight. Etta bowed out, Kim was Skyped in from Salt Lake City, and Anna, Sarah, Brad, and myself met at Anna's house. Anna had baked most delicious homemade pretzels, and I brought some Velveeta to melt and use as a dip. Sarah brought cookies.
Tonight's agenda, with my answers interjected, was as follows:
1. What's to be gleaned, inferred, deduced, induced, or otherwise learned from the response to me emailing the which-nerd-idol-would-you-rather-do poll rather than posting to the Ning. (Anna) I'm interested in other peoples' criteria for doing this. To me, it's when we're going to discuss a topic that's only of interest to a subset of the group; for example, changing a Klatch location that only three of us RSVPed to attend. 2. Everyone is to bring in a sample of their handwriting. John will provide a phrase for everyone to write. (All) "Handwriting is still very important. It is a symbol of who we are as people." 3. What are the first 5-7 things you do, preferably in the order you do them if they're ritualized, when you get into a hotel room? (Assume you are traveling alone.) (John)
4. What is your writing process (academic/professional/corporate, not personal/journal/blog)? Where/how did you learn it (if you remember)? Has it evolved over time? Have you ever tried to change or improve it?
5. In response to the TED talk Sarah linked us to, how would you answer Conley's last question? What can you count in your life as a means of measuring your happiness? John can lead off... :-) Affirmations, particularly implicit ones. And to this I'll now add congruence. 6. When something "life contemplating" happens what are the top 2-3 places you go to be alone to think? (these can be "exact" places or "type" places -- an example of an "exact" place being Duke Gardens, with a "type" place being gardens in general)
7. Musical interlude: A digitally mediated piano performance by Kim. 8. $650/night for six weeks in France: What John did, who paid, and why
My question was whether the plural is "bourbons and diet" or "bourbon and diets." 10. "Where are you at?" and other annoying phrases with potentially extra, redundant, superfluous words in them. Just hear that all the time now on cell phone conversations. "Where are you?" would suffice. 11. What do you re-read? And why?
12. Trip reports -- Anna on Vienna and Brad on Canada Anna filled the room with a plethora of condoms and other STD-protective accoutrement, each carefully selected for a particular Salon member. She'd even mailed Kim her carefully-selected items. At some point, someone had put their banana-flavored condom over a banana and fellated it. We laughed and laughed and laughed. 13. Characterize the following languages (Kim’s responses noted in parentheses.) German: (Dirty)
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Early in the evening, Robert called to alert me to a full moon, and all of us ran downstairs and out into the parking lot to see it. Thanks, my sweet!