Tuesday, July 20, 2004
I don't bother trying to catch the 8:30 AM bus today since it hasn't shown up the last 2 times. It's 8:32 AM when I hear the bus roll down our street. I catch the 8:50 AM bus instead, which is more reliable. James returns from a trip to Europe. His Europe experience reminded me a lot of mine in 2000—London is still extremely expensive (exchange rate is 52 cents to 1 pound), people were friendliest in London, food was really wonderful in the Netherlands, the trains are great. He saw a bunch of opera and theatre shows in London, one of which was Chitty Chitty Bang Bang—I didn't know they made it into a musical! James also brought back gifts for the office: bath salts wrapped in pretty gold paper and ribbon, Belgian chocolates with wrappers depicting famous Dutch paintings, and a variety of teas from London in canisters depicting London things: red telephone booth, Buckingham palace guard, a bobby, a white man in a kilt, white schoolchildren in uniforms holding letters to mail to the post office. CD-ROM DemoShield production. Lunch: sandwich. The blinds installer from National Blind finally shows up to install our blinds after missing appointments with us twice. I'm gone while he does the installation, and when I return the blinds are up, and they're beautiful, but he left boot marks all over my desk and dropped screw shavings into my keyboard which made me somewhat disgruntled. You would think a professional blinds installer would bring a drop cloth. I'm caught up in CD-ROM production at the library and make it home late. Just as I'm ready to leave, one of the women who cleans our offices started talking to me about her problems trying to deal with the Social Security office since she's due for retirement soon. I was not completely without empathy and listened to her for a few minutes, but I knew from the way she was talking that she could have kept me there for hours if I let her. I explained to her that I was sorry she was having so much trouble with them and gave her the best advice I could: talk with someone in human resources. She kept talking, though, and it didn't matter that I told her I know nothing at all about the system. I eventually got out and caught my bus just barely. Dinner at home with Patrick: bow tie pasta and vegetables in a tomato cream sauce. Watched 2 Jacques Pepin cooking shows (The Choux Maker and Brick Oven Bonanza) and 1 Simpsons show (Sweet Seymour Skinner's Baaaadassss Song—a very good episode).