~Wednesday~  I drove into work this morning and parked in some 2-hour curbside parking near my office. I parked at 8:40 and promptly set my phone alarm clock to 10:30 to get out there and move it by 10:40.

I happened to look at the time at 10:44 and found my alarm set to 10:30 PM. I hate when that happens.

Fortunately, I did not have a ticket on my car when I got there, and I drove two streets over, where I stopped into the State Employees Credit Union to deposit change I've been throwing on the counter at home for so long now that it seemed worthwhile to cash in.

Truth be told, in my anal-retentive way (Does anal-retentive have a hyphen in it? Does it? Does it?), I took the coins and stacked them into $1.00 piles, so I knew there was approximately $20 worth of coins in the pile. I also had that massive $64.05 state tax refund check with me to cash at the credit union.

This is the first time I've ever used a coin counter, because I've only ever seen them in grocery stores, where I assumed they charged you to use them. You know girlfriend is not going to pay anyone or anything to count her money.

This is the receipt I received from the machine:


That's 8.9%! Who in the world would pay almost 10% of their money to have someone count it for them? That makes no cents [sic]. How lazy can one get? Or, how can one so little value the money one works so hard to earn?

I proceeded over to Kaplan and parked, and picked up the Wolfline bus at the stop with that sign that is in error that I mentioned in Monday's blog entry, and I made a note to send email to gotriangle.org about it when I got back to the office.

On the bus, I sat in a seat next to a partly-Asian and partly-Hispanic student who had his backpack (Or was that his lunch bag?) between his legs. Because the seats on the Wolfline buses are very narrow, this meant that his knees extended out to each side beyond the confines of his seat, which in this case, when I sat down and he didn't move them, our bare legs were rubbing against each other, since we were both in shorts. (That is a long, but well-constructed and well-punctuated sentence, if I may say so myself. And I just did.)

This situation made me think about a number of things:

1. Wouldn't a straight guy move his leg if it was rubbing up against mine like that?


2. If this was a girl's leg rubbing up against mine, would I have given it a second thought?


3. Is this "intimate" even though it's not sexual?


4. If I move my leg up and down to cause more friction, would that be sexual, or at least more "intimate?"


5. What if I did that just to see if he would then move his leg?


6. Isn't it odd that he looked back at me as he was exiting at the stop before mine?

Things that make you go, "Hmmm."

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I had lunch with Myra and Sarah (Ash) today. We ate at Porter's, where I really wanted their Piedmont Burger (pimento cheese, fried green tomato, and barbecue sauce), but chose the healthier Grilled Marinated Portobello (grilled red onion, goat cheese, arugula, red pepper aioli), which was most delicious, actually.

We had good conversation, catching up on each other's summer plans, and had an interesting technology discussion, mostly around Gmail and how we each work with it—noting both its strengths and its shortcomings.

Later in the day, I received this affirmation from Myra via Facebook:

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Back in the office, mid-afternoon, I ate some grapes and raisins, which made me think of a pastiche on "We have met the enemy and it is us."

Grapes contemplating raisins: "We have seen the future and it is us."


Later in the afternoon, I opened the "Saturday" box of Daily Affirmation Gum, and the affirmation was: "You have an agreeable disposition."

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For dinner, I had the Whiskey Steak Healthy Choice café steamer entrée for the first time, and it was pretty yummy. I'm not exactly sure what drew me to try it. Okay, that's a total lie. I know it was not the Healthy Choice part.

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My sister and I have this long-standing inside joke where we say "Wrong major!" when we each spot something we know the other would like but that doesn't engage us ourselves, or if one of us says something that we think is so interesting and the other one finds it just "meh."

I got this email from her today:

Okay—this made me think of YOU this morning—wrong major!!! Love you – V From: Carey, Shavon [mailto:CAREYS@ECU.EDU] Sent: Wednesday, June 08, 2011 7:42 AM To: Announce List Subject: Trisha Capansky Dissertation Defense Announcement  In partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of doctor of philosophy, Trisha K. Capansky, from the Department of English, program in Technical and Professional Discourse, will defend her doctoral dissertation, “The Declaration of Independence: A New Genre in Political Discourse, or Mixed Genres and an Unlikely Medium,” on Wednesday, June 15th, at 10:00 am, Room 1006, Bate Building. Her committee includes Dr. Tom Shields (Chair), Dr. Brent Henze, Dr. Sherry Southard, and Dr. Carl Swanson. Faculty, students, and the general public are invited.

That cracked me up and I replied that I wished I could attend. I just love my sister.

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Dancing was fun enough tonight—good exercise for sure.

Bob cracked me up by—after reading my plaid-on-plaid story in my Tuesday blog entry—showing up with a plaid shirt, plaid pants, and plaid socks on, and the socks with sandals no less. Too funny