EVERYTHING RIDES THE TRAIN

I am back at work today. I will only be here half a day tomorrow because I am taking the National Customer Service test in the morning and then have my follow-up Dr appt in the afternoon. This means that after I take the test on Wednesday I have Thursday, Friday, and Monday to rework the curriculum before class on Tuesday. This would seem like a daunting but doable task. However, I realize that I will be doing no work on Thursday because it is out Annual Recognition Luncheon at work where we all get together and sit and eat and people who have been success stories through my work speak. It is a day of tears always. I think they purposely pick people to speak that will elicit tears from as many people as possible because it helps the cause. Everyone loves a hard-luck story gone right. The mayor is coming. That is funny to me. The point is I only really have two days to rework my curriculum and I will be damned if I take work home with me. We’ll see how much gets done.

I mentioned seeing stars and vortexes in my last post. This morning when I got on the train I momentarily thought I had graduated into full-fledged hallucinations. Why did I think this? Because as I went to sit down in my seat I saw something moving by my feet and as I looked down my eyes recognized it to be a pigeon. I have seen some strange things on the train before but this was insane. The fact that there was a pigeon politely walking up and down the aisles just as calmly as could be was odd enough, but the fact that no one but me seemed to notice or care was what had me thinking that I must be seeing things. So I didn’t sit in the seat all by myself that I really wanted to be in, I moved away from where the pigeon was.

Now, I get on the train at a time when it is relatively empty because I am close to the end of the line. I was on a little earlier train than normal so there were only about ten people on the car. However, wouldn’t they be a little on edge knowing a pigeon was also riding the train? See my fear was that something would startle the thing and it would start flying about and run itself into windows and then freak out more and hit people on the head and cause a general ruckus. I was eying that thing for any slight movement and expected that everyone else would do the same. So as I am sitting in utter paranoia, the pigeon starts coming closer and closer to the populated area of the train so I politely get up and move to the one seater in the back where I had wanted to sit in the first place. I still kept an eye on that bird. Occasionally someone else would look up and notice it but then go back to what they were doing. I was planning to run back and forth on that car avoiding the pigeon, which of course would be likely to incite the thing to fly but we will ignore that fact. I just was scared. Once stop passed and the bird did nothing. I contemplated getting up and going to the other side of the train by the intercom to let the driver know that he needed to stop at the next stop until the bird flew off the train. However, that would involve me crossing the pigeon’s path and I was not having it. Luckily, at the next stop the thing flew out the door at the last possible second. I was quite relieved.

It is almost 4. I want to go home and pass out I am so exhausted. I think that I will make it through this last hour. Maybe I’ll just try to go through the piles of paper on my desk that make no sense to me. I have to find some papers in the pile anyway. Let’s shuffle it out.

House of Jealous Lovers, The Rapture- This song starts off sounding like some crazy house music form the old days of house. The next thing you know someone is screaming in your ear like an odd mix of PJ Harvey and Perry Ferrell. It’s pretty good.

Tainted Love, Soft Cell- Nothing bad can be said of this song. Everyone knows it and everyone should love it. I think that maybe I have met some people who don’t love it but I think they are probably insane. I mean sure, it’s overplayed and what else did Soft Cell ever do but can you help but tap your feet? I can’t.

Writing to Reach You, Travis- I had a friend who convinced me that the album The Man Who by Travis was a really good album. For a while I believed this to be true. I don’t really anymore. It’s not awful, just really common sounding. At the same time I kind of enjoy it once in a while. I never claimed to only like fantastic non-derivative music. At least this is one of the better songs on the album. I do like their Baby One More Time cover. I like any version of that song. I am sick and have a problem.