Raindrops on Roses...

And whiskers on kittens. Yada yada yada...



I'm starting a new job this week, and am trying to keep an open mind and stay positive. However, the universe seems to have other plans for me and my happiness/sanity.

First, there are the commuting woes...

Tuesday morning I missed my Caltrain due to bad traffic and had to wait 1/2 hour for the next train.

Wednesday morning I decided to take bart to Milbrae and transfer to Caltrain. Seems like a reasonable idea, right? One would think. However, this is how the rest of the morning commute went.

• made it to station in time to catch bart train
• train went into tunnel and power went out
• we proceeded to sit sans power for 5 minutes. Now, I only had a 9 minute window in which to catch the Caltrain, so I was starting to sweat it a little bit.
• we get to the SFO station and are informed that the train is having technical difficulties. We proceed to hold for another 4+ minutes. Also at the same time the train operator keeps using the train PA to ask "Dave" if he is there. "Dave, if you're there let me know. Dave? You there?"

Basically, you can guess what happened next, but just as we were pulling into the station my train (and everyone else's who was still on that godforsaken train) left.

At this point I had two options. I could either sit there and wait 1/2 hour for the next train (side note: the caltrain does run more than every 1/2 hour, but during commuting hours lots of the trains are express trains and only make certain stops. So, approximately every other train stops near my office.), or I could take the train in 10 minutes to the station before my stop and walk 1.3 miles to my stop.

What would you do?

I chose the latter. On the plus side, it was a good way to break in my new walking shoes which cushioned my feet in slipperlike softness during the walk. However, I was also carrying a bulging laptop bag full of software and laptop etc.(a story for another time) and it was awfully heavy.

Basically, I ended up making it to my normal station just as the train I could have sat on my butt and waited for arrived. So I didn't save ANY time.

On the plus side, I got a little exercise.

On the minus side, even though I had gotten up at 6am and left my house by 7:15 I didn't get to work until after 9am. Which meant I had to stay late.

It was so frustrating that I actually considered driving today to avoid the public transit nightmares. But I didn't. This morning I smoothly made my early express train and it all worked out.

When I was pretty irritated yesterday, Griffin IM'd me the above photo of a box o' kittens. So, Nootsie, this one's for you. It's hard to be miserable and sad when you're looking at a box o' kittens.