Incubator?...I hardly know her

There's a building in Tacoma that is rather large and nondescript other than it's got the word incubator written in large letters on its front. Anyone know what they incubate?

life in a different carpool lane

For a special treat, thought I'd cut & paste an email I received from my friend Rachel about her morning commute. This being a commute-related blog I figured it was relevant, even though it didn't happen in the van, but in a bus headed from Seattle to Tacoma. In Rachel's words:

So this morning I hauled my entirely decaf, somewhat hungover self onto the
bus, only to accidentally sit down in front of a talker. It took me awhile to figure out what the guy was talking about, but at some point it became apparent that he was preaching some message or another. As the people around him began to decline to interact (sleeping, pretending to sleep, flat saying no – I had my iPod in), he resorted to spreading his message via cellular towers. After semi-listening to him discuss his
message to the poor person on the other end of the phone, I heard him say, “People are totally obsessed with consummation, possessions, and money…” At this point, the guy next to me (who was apparently only pretending to sleep) snorted, and I laughed out loud. I can only assume he meant to say consumption, but hmm...

I guess this serves as fair warning that if you email about your commute it could end up on the world wide web.

Xzibit we need you

I really want to submit the van to "Pimp my Ride"(if it's still in production). We seriously need personal DVD players, flip down TVs, a refrigerator and some sort of water body running through the van. Oh, and more comfortable chairs.

So, a lot of the men on the van talk about cars. a lot. One guy, Tom, has an old Jag (I think, but it might be a different British car) that his wife drives. It apparently needs a lot of repairs, all of which have to be done by hand.

Yesterday, he went about detailing all of the repairs that the car is currently undergoing or has undergone recently to Jamie, the guy who always sits shot gun. Other than the upholstery being patched, I don't remember what all of the repairs were but after every single one Jamie would say, "I bet they have some special machine for that, right man?" And every time, Tom would respond, "no, Jamie they all have to be done by hand." The conversation went like this over and over and over again as every repair was discussed in detail. I was seriously questioning my sanity by the end of the dialogue, and am pretty sure I would have snapped and yelled something like, "DON'T YOU GET IT, JAMIE. IT ALL HAS TO BE DONE BY HAND. EVERYTHING. BY HAND. ALL OF IT." had it continued for much longer. But, it didn't and I didn't.

don't look down

When I got to the van pickup this afternoon Fred, my social worker coworker from the previous post, told me that "under no circumstances should I comment on Kristi's footwear, no matter what she's wearing." Hilarious.

the story that started it all...

As many of you may know, I ride in a vanpool for my 60-mile commute to work each day (120 miles roundtrip). Since I tend towards carsickness this affords me lots of time each week to observe some truly odd behavior from my fellow vanpoolers. Most of the time, the stories don’t translate well from witnessing to storytelling, but I thought yesterday’s was too good not to share.

First, some background. There are 12 of us who ride in the van, although not everyone shows up every day. One of the women, Kristi, gets off and on at the same stop as me; she’s also the principal of this story. I’m trying to think of the most succinct way to describe Kristi. Oh yeah, I’ve got it, she’s odd. She talks to herself, has inappropriate facial hair, sports off-season outerwear (parka yesterday, denim work shirt in the winter), etc. She's odd.

One time the driver of the van had the audacity to jokingly ask her why she was late and Kristi became unglued and launched into a bitter diatribe, complete with ethnic slur, for 5 minutes about her boss. She and I have subsequently had a free and frank discussion about when it’s appropriate to use the term “jewing", i.e. never. I also once woke up to hear her praying to herself via song while she was asleep. It wasn’t nice singing, it wasn’t even full-voiced singing. It was one-little-girl-singing-to-herself-alone-in-the-scary-movie-so-you-know-something-bad-is-about-to-happen singing. Freaktacular.

So, anyway, 2 strange things happened with Kristi yesterday. First, on the way down, despite employing my urban commuter defense, Steve Job’s gift to people (like me) who don’t want to talk to others, aka my iPod, Kristi started talking to me about halfway through the drive. For those of you who don’t have to ride in a van for 2 and a half+ hours a day. You may be unaware of the code that we vanpoolers stick by. That is, if you have to talk to someone, make any calls, or otherwise disrupt the quiet, do it at the beginning or the end of the commute -- don’t interrupt nap time. I’ve heard that some vans even have strict no talking guidelines. Mine doesn’t; but most of us still stick by this unwritten (and certainly unspoken) code. So, not only was it weird that she was talking to me while I was clearly listening to music (and sort of dozing), she was also breaking the code. I thought it might be important, but no, she woke me up to ask me whether professional baseball players are as Christian as professional football players….All of you know me, and all of you have seen me in some sort of un-caffeinated state, so you can imagine how impressive my restraint was when I replied “I don’t know” rather than the “I don’t give a f@#$” I was thinking. Apparently “I don’t know” was insufficient, because she then went on to explain her basis for thinking that NFL players are Christian and to disagree with my feeble suggestion that perhaps some of the Latino MLB players are Catholic. Apparently, I should know the religious composition of the pro-sports leagues and I don’t, I know that’s a disappointment to you all.

Then, yesterday afternoon as we’re waiting for the van I made the mistake of looking at Kristi’s feet. She was wearing red, beaded, platform flip flops with those socks that have individual spots for all of your toes (striped, natch). Better still, the big toes of each sock were embroidered with smiley faces. She wore these to work. After staring at her feet for approximately ten years, I could tell that I had crossed over the line of when you have to comment on what you’ve been staring at because otherwise it would be rude. So, I said something bland like “that’s some footwear you’re sporting.” She responded (I’m not making this up), “blinky and blanky say hi; oozle and doozle say hi; binder and blinder say hi; sigfried and roy say hi; etc…” for the remaining 3 minutes until the van showed up, all the while giggling at the hilarity of her own joke. She then continued in this vein on the van until my coworker (a social worker in the Mental Health Division) told her that she had to stop. Seriously.

I’m sorry for the length of this email about my commute, but I couldn’t sit on these stories any longer. My sister has been telling me for a while that I should blog them, but I don’t think I’m ready for that type of commitment. In the meantime, I hope you enjoyed this little window into my daily life.

I hope that everyone is doing well, not much is new with me. Clearly I’m still living in Seattle and working in Olympia; both job and life in Seattle are going well.

Hope all is well with you all and that you enjoyed this little glimpse from my life in the carpool lane, which as the Eagles would say would “surely make you lose your mind.”