Happy Hump Day

How does one find herself going from a nice, cool bed under a soft sheet to a smelly bus stop with a deranged pregnant woman singing along with her iPod and digging at her crotch? Answer: slowly. Painfully, dreadfully, slowly.

This morning started like any other morning: the wind was blowing softly through my open window, my ceiling fan was merrily circulating the air throughout the room, and – of course – my alarm was going off. The only variable today was that instead of riding in with my father I would be driving myself.

I only do this if I must, mind you. Since two of my classes run past the normal four o’clock departure time, I now have to drive my Jeep in to Oakland on said days. Now, back to the alarm clock.

Instead of waking up at 5:30 like I typically do, I decided to live a little and sleep an extra fifteen minutes. But rather than hit the snooze three times, I opted to change the alarm time to 5:45. What I didn’t realize in my sleepy stupor though was that I accidentally changed it not to 5:45, but to 6:45. That’s right, a whole hour’s difference. This would be the mistake that would alter the entire morning for me. As I tomahawked myself out of bed and got dressed, I carefully made sure that I had packed everything I needed for the day. I bolted down the stairs and was about to run out the door when my mom yelled down, “Don’t forget to pack some food!” Throwing on the breaks, I circled back around to the kitchen and chucked a few items into my bag.

These items were: a yogurt tube, a cheese stick, a bag of red grapes, and a foil-wrapped piece of perogie pizza from the night before. I tell you this because it will play a part later in this post. Okay, resume in three, two, one…

Ready to leave a second time, I jog up to my Jeep and hop in. I’m half way down the street when I realize that I’ve left my cell phone. I throw the Jeep into reverse and back up my road to my house. After retrieving my phone, I am now ready to leave yet a third time. As I drive back down the road, my “low fuel” light comes on. Great. Another stop. Fifteen dollars later, I’m back on the trail that is Route 28.

This is where the fun starts, people, so buckle up.

The drive up until the RIDC exit had been the usual stop-and-go traffic one sees every morning on the inbound commute. I’m following a rather large SUV when out of nowhere, a doe leaps from the grassy area on the other side of the highway. I embellish not when I say that this SUV obliterated that deer. I for one was easily cruising at 80 mph, so the vehicle in front of me was probably going the same. The chunks that flew from the front of his car were the size of basketballs. I slammed on my breaks to avoid crashing into his backend then had to veer off the road to avoid getting rear-ended myself by the car behind me. Panting from the adrenaline that was now rushing through me, I came back up onto the road to press on.

The ride only got worse. Once I made it to the Fortieth Street Bridge, traffic slowed to a stop. Once I made it across the Bloomfield Bridge, I found myself trapped behind a street cleaning machine. The traffic opposite me was too steady to cross the line and go around it, so instead I had to move at 15 mph along a 30 mph road. At last I was in Oakland. I made it into the parking garage with no issues, unless you count not being able to find a parking space until the fourth tier an issue. After parking, I opened my door to allow the overhead light to come on so that I could see the mess that slamming on my breaks had caused. My lunch had spilled out of my bag onto the floor of my passenger side feet space. To aggravate me further, the keys in my ignition were making my car ding. DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING DING. I pulled the keys out slightly to stop this.

Pay attention now, because if you do you’ll catch what I did not. Ah, the advantages of spelling things like this out – you see the mistake before it even happens.

Another two minutes, and everything was back in its place. Closing the doors, I made my way to the elevator, rode it to G1, and started walking down to the nearest bus stop. As I turned onto Fifth Avenue, I saw a bus about to stop at the end of the block. Technically, I’m not yet cleared to run, but I’ve been able to jog lightly…you’ll never learn to fly unless you jump out of the nest, right? So I took off in a sprint towards the bus. Bad idea. My knee twinged, and I staggered into a light jog, and finally into a limping walk as the bus blew by me.

I know you’re thinking it, so let’s just all say it once together: FAIL.

Five minutes later, I was on a bus heading towards my office. I got off at the stop nearest to my building and walked down the hill awkwardly. I knew Caribou was at the end of the block, and I just had to stop. I felt as though I’d earned it this morning. I walked in, set my bag down on a table, and began rooting through the front zipper section for my wallet when it hit me: my keys. Where were my keys? In the ignition of your car a mile away, you blithering idiot. Crestfallen, I stepped to the counter – knowing full well what I was going to have to do after purchasing my size small, four dollar specialty drink – and placed my order.

Fact: perhaps the only thing that had merited a smile the whole morning was that coffee. It’s September 8th and any Caribou addict worth her salt knows that this means the fall line of drinks come out. Therefore, instead of my usual small, skim white chocolate mocha, this morning’s order was a small, skim pumpkin white chocolate mocha. And yes, it was incredible, thank-you-very-much.

I picked my beverage up at the end of the counter, sleeved it, exited the comforting confines of my favorite coffee shop, and walked across the street to the bus stop in order to catch yet another bus that would take me back up to my garage. Those keys and I had some reuniting to do.

For those who do not know me especially well, I think it might be a good time to note that I am not a particularly paranoid person; actually, I consider myself so laid back that I may very well be in the horizontal position at times with my easygoingness. But leaving my keys in a Jeep – even if it IS in an underground garage – is just a little too much for me to let go. Had I headed to my office, I would even now be playing scenes in my head pertaining to some hooligan roaming the lot looking for a car with the keys still in the ignition then hopping in and driving away with my precious volleyball in the backseat. So yes, my Jeep may have been perfectly safe the entire day, but I did go back for the keys. Don’t judge me.

Ironically enough, across the street from the Caribou coffee shop is a Starbucks coffee shop. Don’t ask, it’s Pittsburgh. After maybe two or three minutes of waiting, a colossally pregnant woman waltzes out of the Starbucks, drink in one hand, iPod in the other, singing along with it to beat the band. She’s wearing a shirt that barely covers her bulging, infant-toting stomach along with a pair of jeans even I couldn’t fit in. To make matters worse, these jeans were giving her a serious case of the scratches, because she was quite literally clawing at her crotch to get the itch. To top it all off, she reeked of rotten eggs. I made it another three or four minutes before I decided it just wasn’t worth dying of stench inhalation and started walking to the next block’s bus stop. Suddenly, I was going toe to toe with the street cleaner again. He was hogging up the right lane and spraying the road and sidewalks with blasts of water. An extremely petite oriental girl was walking toward me, looking nowhere but down at her feet, presumably trying to avoid getting her shoes wet. Being sandwiched in on all sides, I tried to push my way past others to avoid a head-on collision with this completely oblivious girl. Instead, we clipped each other, and she managed to spill some of her drink on me. The lightbulb magically appeared above her head as she realized she’d plowed right into me; instead of an apology though, I got a shaky “No worry, it’s white tea,” and she shuffled hastily away. With my back wet with sweat and my torso wet with white tea, I stood waiting for the bus.

Incidentally, thirty seconds after the tea run-in, the last block’s bus came.

Ten minutes later, and I was on one of the campus’s buses getting shuttled over to the Cathedral of Learning. I made it off the bus first and elbowed my way through the impatient crowd of students who were trying to get on while others were still trying to get off. Up the hill I hiked, then down into the parking garage. I circled two levels before I realized I’d parked in section G3. Classic. I jogged to where I figured my car must be, praying that it would still be there or that, at least, that I could get a good look at the car thief as he pealed out of my stellar back-in job. Thankfully, Casper (the friendly Jeep) was still there, as were the keys. I paused for a moment, sighed, then ripped the keys from the ignition and stalked back to the elevator.

Walk down the hill, catch a bus, get off, walk to the office. Rinse and repeat.

I made it to my building without injury and took the elevator to my floor. When I came in and sat down, I decided to open my bag and take out my lunch. Keep in mind, I’ve been roaming all over Creation and the bag has been on my back the whole time, along for the ride. I loosen the drawstrings of my pack and am immediately punched in the nose by the most eye-watering odor of onions. My perogie pizza. In addition, my cheese stick is smashed into a mashed cheese strip and my grapes look like some Italian grandma has been squashing them in a wooden basin with her bare feet. But hey, even though my bag smells like onions and sweat, I can at least say that I smell of a quite fragrant blend of white tea and, by God, I’m really going to enjoy my yogurt tube.

Happy Hump Day, readers.

Retiree

So this morning went as usual: I arrived at work around 7 a.m. with my small, soy white chocolate mocha in hand. I entered my office, turned on the computer, and logged in. But when I tried to open the office's network email, I couldn't log in for some reason. I decided it must be a fluke and instead tried to open one of our database systems to enter some data. To my surprise, I couldn't use that either. I figured the server must be down or that the computers had been updated and thought it might work better if I just restarted my computer. I did so, and was shocked to find that now I couldn't even log on to my user's account. Even more astounding was the a notice window popped up saying "Your account has been disabled. Please see your administrator for help." So when one of my co-workers got in, and paid her a visit and told her my problems. She pulled up a program and found my name. After a three-second pause, she said, "Huh, that's funny."

"What?" I asked.

"It says here that you're retired," was her reply.

I leaned forward from my seat and craned my neck around to view the screen; sure enough, I was listed as retired. It turned out that when I was changed from a "temporary employee" (through a group called Temp. Services) over to a "Pitt student employee" (same thing, but paid by someone else), the computer system was never notified and therefore decided my time here at UPMC had expired. I still can't figure out why it chose to do it that way though.

While I was waiting for my request for an account to be processed, I decided to walk down to the hospital and collect some data for the study. My dad, who works there, happened to be just leaving his office, and we had a chance to stop and talk. "So guess what?" I asked him, "Apparently, I'm retired!"

"Wow," was his response. There was a pause, then, "sooo....do you get a pension?"

I laughed and explained to him what had happened and that it was being taken care of while I was out. He sighed, and with a laugh said, "Sure wish I could retire!"

So now I'm back to work. Nothing's changed, just what the computer says. Though I feel a bit of that rush that Brett Favre must have felt the x-number of times he's come back from retirement. LET'S DO IT AGAIN!

The Walk

(experimenting with some second person perspective writing…)

She stepped onto the escalator marked “DOWN” and, due to state of her sopping (and now sagging) pant legs which had worked their way underneath her shoes, nearly missed her footing. She steadied herself by grabbing on to both sides of the moving staircase and thought to herself That was a close one – I have a feeling rolling down these steps would hurt much worse than tumbling down the wooden ones at home. She was having a relatively good day, all things considered, and not much was going to get her down that Friday afternoon. Pittsburgh’s wintry weather streak had finally been broken and that day and the previous one had been a comfortable fifty degrees. For Friday, however, there was some off-and-on rain tacked on to the forecast.

She reached the bottom of the last escalator and exited the Victoria Building. As she did so, she flipped open her phone, scrolled down through her list of previously called numbers, and hit “SEND” when she reached the contact “Dad.” After a short wait, she heard the cheery voice of her father on the other end. “Hello, Sammi!” he greeted. “Hey, Dad, how’s it going?” she asked.They chatted back and forth as she walked, heading down towards Fifth Avenue. About a minute into the conversation, she cut herself off mid-sentence: “Oh crap, wait a minute – it just started raining out of nowhere.” She dug deep into her tote bag, if one could even call it that anymore. It was more like a threadbare, faded, stained sack with an “Alice in Wonderland” theme in silver on its black canvas body; but it was her favorite. Her fingers stumbled across the parachute-like object that she recognized as her umbrella and yanked it out of the depths of her bag. “Man,” she continued, “it’s been really off and on today, the rain. One minute, it’s fine; the next, it’s a torrential downpour.”

She wrapped up her conversation with her father then pocketed her flip-phone so that she could better grip her flimsy, two-dollar miniature umbrella. The wind whipped all around her as she turned left onto McKees Place. Denying it the pleasure of doing it for her, she rested the thin pole of the umbrella against her forehead to keep the wind from sending it back and hitting her in the face. She looked down and examined herself as she trudged through the rain: her brown velour pants were now even more wet than before, soaked all the way up to her knees. Just my luck again, she thought. Every time I wear these, it rains. And every time, the material sops up all the water like a sponge. She also noticed that she not only picked the wrong pants to wear, but also the wrong shoes. Her green plaid Chuck Taylor “lo-tops” – also canvas, like her shabby tote – were absorbing just about as much of the rain as her pant legs, as though they were in some kind of strange competition. She rolled her eyes to herself as she reached the revolving door to her office building. As she made the half-circle to enter, she let out a sigh of relief, knowing that within a few moments she could rid herself of her wet shoes. She boarded the elevator and rode it to her floor.

She proceeded to her office suite, unlocked the door, and headed straight for her office. When she finally stepped through the doorway, she tossed her bag onto the chair nearest her, rolled up her pant legs, pulled off her shoes and socks, and plopped herself into her own seat. Bending down, she turned the knob to activate the little fan she kept underneath her desk for the summertime and aimed it at the wall next to her; then, feeling resourceful, she propped her shoes against the wall, draped her socks over them, and adjusted the fan so that it was angled in her footwear’s general direction. Then, leaning back in her chair, she began to type.

The only instance in which laziness pays off:

I absolutely love Caribou, but I don't like using my debit card there because the receipts are so large and therefore difficult to cram into my wallet for safe-keeping until I balance my checkbook. The solution? 'Bou Bucks, of course! It's like a refillable gift card for yourself. Problem is, I drained mine two weeks ago and haven't gotten around to refilling it yet. So last week I was like the typical alcoholic, not wanting to drink but not being able to help it when passes right by the bar (or in my instance, coffeehouse) each day on the way to work. And dang it, my wallet is stuffed full now of these mile-long receipts that I have to plug in now to my checkbook. (In Caribou's defense, they're only long because either a.) there's a survey code at the bottom or b.) they're attaching a coupon, so it's very nice of them to be so thoughtful, but it gets bothersome after awhile.)

So to address my drinking problem, I've had to come up with an alternative route to work so as to bypass Caribou completely to avoid temptation:



As you can see, my new route (in purple) takes me through the creepy alley behind Caribou. So much better. But hey, I've done it the past two mornings, and I'm still making it to the office $3.48 richer each day than I would have been had I gone my usual route.

See how laziness saves you money?

Today's Rant: the USPS's Approach to Returning Mail

I work for a research study. One of my jobs is to send out a professional mailing to different area doctors to promote the various studies for which we are currently recruiting in the hopes that some of the DRs/RAs/MAs/nurses will refer some of their suite's patients to us. Technically, it's a "monthly mailing" but in reality - because a life and a million other tasks that are much more important - it's between a bi-annual and a tri-annual mailing. As of the last time I did the mailing, I was still working part time as a full time student and the addresses (of which there were well over 300) were having to be hand-written. You can imagine how long this took me since I was only working four-hour days PLUS juggling the other tasks they would throw my way AND what I was already doing (recruiting, data inputting, scheduling, etc). Now, we have over 500 names on our mailing list, but at least we've come up with mailing labels to save me time. No matter what though, it's always a pain to assemble these. It's perfunctory and very time-consuming stuff.

What really gets my goat - glazes my donuts - harshes my mellow - however you wish to put it - is when the USPS returns our packets to us looking as though they had to tether-sticker it down from breaking free and fleeing. They do this to not only the packets, but also to any boxy item I try to send. If I've been given a faulty address or the person is no longer at that practice, the mail gets sent back to be COVERED in "RETURN TO SENDER," "INVALID ADDRESS," and my favorite "UNDELIVERABLE AS ADDRESSED" stickers. As you can see, it must be like art class when someone gets the chance to return our stuff. They get really creative in where they can put the stickers and stamps and sometimes even draw all over the front of it, crossing out the address, drawing a line through the auto-presorted stamp, whatever they can think up. Anything goes. And this picture isn't even the worst I've seen, really. It just happened to come in today. Usually they've written all over it with a "HE'S NO LONGER HERE" or some such thing in big red letters; the top is often half-ripped as well as if they wanted to take a quick look inside! Which really makes me mad, because I'm all about not wasting; and when they give me one of those giant mailing envelopes back in this condition, it makes me want to slap somebody because there is no way I'm going to be able to salvage it for a second attempt.

*FUMES* But I digress.

In other news, I squashed a cockroach this morning that was the size of a small child. Okay, more like a cell phone (no kidding on this one). I was standing in front of my building's lobby's elevators waiting for one to come down (which is absurd since there's no one in the freaking building that early, but today there must have been because...) when a girl standing next to me nudged my shoulder and muttered, "You know you godda giant bug on yo shoe, miss." Reflex caused me to kick my right foot out violently at this new-found knowledge and I jumped back into almost a crouch. I looked down to see the thing crawling towards me again (Lord, those things are fast!). I've never liked squashing bugs. I don't like the sound, and I REALLY don't like the guts that go everywhere when you do it. But this thing was going to eat me if I didn't act fast, so I took the front cover of my Pitt newspaper, threw it over top of the little nasty, and stomped down as hard as I could (the thing looked practically armour-plated, so I gave it some "oomph"). I pulled the newspaper back to find a splatter of green slime the size of a coffee mug on the marble floor. Where did it GO??? I flashed over to the underside of the paper where I found the little monster. Dead soldier.

Now I'm walking around our suite with extra caution, quickly scanning the room and its corners for critters then slowly proceeding, eyes ever roaming. I'm sitting on my desk chair Indian-style to keep my feet up off the ground. All was going well until about 30 minutes ago when I reached for my jacket and realized it was not on the back of my chair, but on the floor. I grabbed it and immediately started shaking it like a red-headed step child. Then, not wanting to have my hand bitten off, I peeked inside the pockets to see if any little monsters had hidden inside. Fortunately I was safe. Still though, I can't relax. Bugs are so disgusting. Any and all bugs. I hate them all. And I will judge you, by the way, if you've got them. If lice was good enough to be one of the seven plagues in the Bible, then roaches should've been in there, too. And I will avoid you like the plague if you've got either (and especially both). Lice and roaches = filthiness. I'm sorry, it's just the way I am.

Okay, now that that's out of my system, I think I'll go take these data sheets to the back...and I'll be watching the ground the whoooole time...

Ode to Office Supplies

I'm not ashamed to admit that I often use office supplies for more than their original design while I'm at work. For example, I frequently use those smaller binder clips as hair barrettes when I need to pin my bangs back. Also, I have once or twice turned a giant paperclip into a safety pin when necessary. Even though these basic office materials come in handy for everyday "me" malfunctions, I would never venture into the realm of body piercings by way of these means. I didn't really have an option, though, this morning when I picked up the corner of a stapled sheet of papers only to find that the "arms" of the staple hadn't folded. No, instead, they bit their way into my left index finger. Luckily, I'm not a bleeder, ha. Still, how did that happen? Hopefully I won't start frothing at the mouth or anything.



Reminiscing about this reminds me of the time I was (yet again) sporting the binder clip bobby pin and forgot I was wearing it when I left the office. Since my dad and I work within a block of each other, it just makes sense for us to carpool. So each day, I leave the office at 4:00 and wait outside for him at an Exxon across the street from my building. That particular day, he was uncharacteristically late, so I waited outside - with my fancy little hair accessory - for a good fifteen minutes. When I hopped in the car, he glanced over at me and stopped mid-"how was your day" to comment, "Oh. Nice hair clip."



"What? OH!" As if there were others in the car who might see it, I quickly yanked it from my hair. It was too late though. And here I was thinking everyone at the gas station thought I was having a smashing hair day and just couldn't look away! Sigh...



By far though, my favorite utensil at the office is my PAPER MATE© red pen. Old faithful. Unlike my other pens, it's the only pen that doesn't "stutter." Plus, it's great for sticking behind my ear to hold my side bangs back. Come to think of it, I went out in public with my pen behind my ear once, too, though that's not quite as embarrassing if you ask me. Maybe I should ween myself off of doing this? Or I could just eliminate the temptation by getting real bangs, that's always an option.



On our next episode of "Other Useful Uses of Office Supplies," see Sam decorate her room in post-it notes!



...juuust kidding.