The Penalty Box

Often when I travel on the bus and obtain a seat, I usually stare out the window.  My thoughts take me elsewhere, so I am not really looking at anything.  Andy calls this “some kind of zen state.”  I recently decided to people watch on the bus instead, thinking I might be missing something.  I saw the following:

• A fat guy reading a book about Jabba the Hutt.  Sorry mate, you’re not getting a girl to prance around in a golden bikini for you.  Unless you’re rich.  Given your B.O., I don’t think that’s the case.
• A little Chinese lady who looked about 70 doing her best impression of Chris Pronger.  Since she only stood about 4′10″, the only person’s head she hit was the poor sap sitting next to the door.  Otherwise a small jab to the midsection with some pointy elbows and a 7Up bottle was her way of saying “excuse me.”  Or maybe it was “7Up yours.”
• A guy who couldn’t stop changing seats and opening windows.  He also told everyone beside him how much superior the 160 was over the 135.  Except he didn’t change move greater than a 4 seat radius for 20 minutes.
• A woman who wouldn’t stop chewing gum with her mouth wide open.  I swear she could’ve caught flies.  Good thing I had my noise cancelling headphones on.
• Because the bus had to break hard to avoid hitting a car that cut it off, a few people who were standing were thrown around a bit.  One particularly disgruntled woman started screaming at the bus driver from the back door, spewing forth various obscenities and questioning the driving ability of the man behind the wheel.  After getting off at the next stop, she continued yelling at the bus as it pulled away.  Anger management issues much?

I don’t think I’m missing anything.  Zen it is.

So this story in the Vancouver Sun means the next six weeks at the office are going to suck comfort-wise.  Already today the lights went off (which isn’t such a big deal given the giant windows in the office) and we have to shut down our computers at the end of the day.  The most annoying part: the air conditioning has to be ratcheted down, which means the office could regularly hit 26 degrees C instead of the usual balmy 20.  Given the giant windows letting in streams of sunlight, it’ll raise the office temperature another degree or two.  And of course, the six weeks (or more) that it’ll take to fix this blown transformer is pretty much the hottest part of the year, and thus the only time the A/C is heavily needed.

Good thing it’s going to be 37 tomorrow! *puke*

I was on the 160 coming home from work today, and since it was one of the older buses, the driver decided to see if the old clunker handled well at high speeds.  I can really see no other reason why he would go along at 70 kph, passing cars.  I didn’t mind, it just meant I would get home faster.

Problem is that when I got on the bus, I had to sit in the middle seat at the back.  Normally, this wouldn’t be too much of an issue, but you see, buses don’t have seatbelts.  When you’re sitting on any other seat on the bus, you have at least something to hold onto.  Not me.  To avoid T-boning a car running a red light, the driver had to go from 70 to 0 in, oh…really goddamn quickly.  I was essentially launched out of my seat, with only my feet somehow moving fast enough to prevent me from headbutting a standing passenger in the crotch.  That would’ve been slightly awkward to say the least.
Physics really sucks sometimes.