F-ing bus system, F-ing criminals, Reah!

Today started out well. I woke up fron another of my crazy dreams, remembering most of it and being totally confused. It's gone now though, I really need to get out my dream journal again. I had showered last night after my great workout, so I just had to clean up, get in my contacts, eat, and catch the bus.

Catching busses today seems to be as hard as finding needles in a haystack the size of Kansas. I looked at the schedule last night and wrote down when I had to catch the bus (there and back) to get to the Minnesota Department of Health Public Health lab (MDH PH lab) where I am working on my Master's project. I looked at the schedule, I wrote it down - wrong apparently - and that is where my troubles began. I missed the bus by about 1 minute because I wrote down 8:49 instead of 8:46. I had to wait for the next one. I got to the place where I changed busses and had to run to catch my connection. I made it though and went downtown. On the way I got to listen to the bus drive tell a senior citizen that unless he showed picture ID she would not give him senior fare. This guy was OBVIOUSLY over 65. Over 75 too probably. It wasn't hard to tell he'd get the rate, but she made him find his ID. I think he suffered from some form of disability, because he had trouble digging it out for her, or understanding what she wanted from him. Mean woman. The gentleman in front of me and the lady by him started LOUDLY discussing how obvious it was he was a senior, and how they were taught to respect their elders. The mean bus-lady just gave evil glares at them in the rear-view.

At the lab, we worked through the last of the pitfalls and false starts that are new scientific experiments. We had to find new connectors, or this or that, and there were many trips between the upstairs lab and my lab. Finally we were set, we calibrated, we attached, I transfered the first of my samples into the sample chamber, and then...Put Put Arrrg. No more pump. Again, start up, and die. We detached a part of the system to see if that helped, and it did but we need that part or it's not the experiment, so we reattached it after the pump found it's hood-legs (or something). We're working in a fume hood. It dies again. Finally we gave up and reduced the flow rate so that it didn't have to work so hard. Finished that, and labeled my samples for tomorrow and then left. I'll discuss more about what my experiment is and how sweet my setup is later, after I can be sure this first set of samples worked. For now, it's too much in the middle of things, and I'm in the middle of a rant at the bus system.

Back to the rant...So, I get to the bus stop to go home. I think I'm early, but I'm not...I'm a few minutes late, because I had misread the schedule - agian. So, I'm standing there waiting (I think I have 6 or so minutes to wait) when the bus goes by me. Right past. Ignores me completely. I wonder if I magically turned myself invisible in my experiment...but decide that my compounds don't work that way. (Ingested or inhaled in large enough quantities, they may cause the user to believe they are invisible, or more likely invincible, but we have nowhere near those quantities in my lab...and the stuff is scary.) So, I am really really getting grumpy at myself for my inability to read bus schedules, at the bus, for seeing me but NOT stopping, and at the day in generaly because I realized I had read the inside the bus shelter schedule wrong too when I got there (5 minutes before) and I still have 9 minutes to wait. I think to my self: I must have bad bus karma from something...it's just not my day. A different bus goes by. I know it goes to Campus, but am unsure if it goes to my transfer location. (I could have looked this up, I realized afterwards, I had the bus schedule in my bag. But again, bad bus karma and I'm grumpy and not thinking right at this point.) So I wait for the number bus I had planned to take. Get on, sit down, and prepare to be bored and avoid unpleasant situations and smells for the next 17-20 minutes while getting to my transfer. That bus route is rather...lively. About 5 minutes later, we turn onto the main drag of this bus route and see the other bus, the one that ignored me, pulled over by 3 cop cars. Everyone is off the bus, and some people are in handcuffs. I think to myself, "perhaps it's good I was ignored, or maybe that was the reason." So on we go, come to the next stop sign, and see a man run through traffic pursued by another man. Turns out, the second man was a cop and the first trying to escape him. The cop caught him though.

By the time our bus had picked up all the people missed by the first, and all of those for our bus, plus...the bus was late, it was at least 10 min late. We got to my transfer stop and I got off, and waited at the light while watching the bus I need drive off. I had to wait another 10-15 minutes for the next one and in that time I realized that I didn't have my housekeys. That was it. I called to say I wasn't going to be able to make my appointment for the afternoon, called to find out if anyone was home at my landlord's business w/ keys, and then hoped. I FINALLY got back, got keys, and got in the house. I decided to bake cookies to relieve some of the tension.

The cookies helped, as did shoveling the walk, and then eating curry for dinner. Yum. Now I'm cold and tired, and ready for bed. It's only 6:45. Hm. Nap?