All Shook Up

I’ve been enjoying having a house guest this week. Granted it’s only been two days, but my schedule is different from the normal grind, which isn’t such a bad thing. I really haven’t watched tv for over a month. Maybe it’s from being home, sick for a super long time, that I got tired of watching tv and got it out of my system. Or maybe it’s because life has decided to shake things up. The snow globe of my life is no longer sitting in the background on the shelf with a clear sky, but has the flakes flying around. The downside is sleep. I think. I love sleep. As everyone knows, I’m a 9 hour girl. But usually get 8 hours during the week. Anything less and I’m not functioning well. Take last night – didn’t really get to bed until midnight (yikes!) and then took a while with the cold to get to sleep. But we did get the Christmas tree decorated (and picked an architect for the work on the Public Safety building). Nick woke me up this morning. He had wanted me to wake him up at 8 am. No problem, I’m usually up at 6 and out the door way before 8. But my schedule has done a nose dive off the chart recently. And he comes stumbling downstairs letting me know its 8:30. But it really isn’t – the clock upstairs is off by about 45 minutes - strange. Still, it’s later than expected and I just want to stay in bed. But jump up and get going and I feel fine, so maybe I can do less sleep and I’m good. It’s the other stuff that wears me down. Although, writing this I just realized I hadn’t done the math and I pretty much got about 8 hours. So there goes that theory. I’m back to being an 8 hour girl. Which just shows that theory is wrong too, because I’m not really functioning with the math error and all, so maybe I am really a 9 hour girl.


Well, back to my main point – shaking things up. There is a daily grind. 99% of everyone has it. Elements may change from day to day. You stay for drinks after work instead of going straight home. You skip brushing your teeth one night. But it’s there. And you sometimes run on auto pilot during parts. For me, I was standing on Mass Ave this morning, waiting for my bus. Like I have done a thousand times. Today I was concentrating on not feeling cold – it was windy. I opted for waiting for the fast bus versus just hopping on the first warm bus that came by. And I’m standing there, looking straight ahead, trying not to move. Seeing people from my peripheral view come and go at the bus stop as the other two buses come. And then I’m pulled suddenly from my state by someone encroaching in my space. It startled me. Nothing bad, just different. It was Nick – he had finished his shower and was coming to catch his bus and had just sauntered up, just as my bus was about to pull up. It was so strange though. I’d never expect to run into my brother, who lives on the other side of the world, while waiting at the bus stop by my house. Normally we’d leave together or I would know he wasn’t leaving. It just was one of those mornings that my wait was long enough that our lives overlapped at that moment, and I hadn’t anticipated it. It was a nice pleasant surprise. Something that puts those smiles that reach ear to ear on your face.



Which reminds me I had an ear smile last night too with a very similar encounter. I had left work and was sending a text to Nick to let him know I was on my way home when I look up and just like in the movies, on the subway platform, through the crowd of commuters, I see my friend Noah waiving at me with an ear smile on his face too. Just a happy coincidence that we were in the same place at the same time and actually saw each other.



And on a completely different note, I think I have a new resolution I’m going to try on for awhile. I’m one of those passive blog readers. I religiously read every blog post of my friends but rarely comment. Why, I don’t know? So I’m going to post more frequent comments on my friends’ blogs I follow. Not too hard since there are only three. That I know of – let me know if you have one if I haven’t posted a comment on. I’m not talking daily, maybe not even weekly but more often than my current rate.



And while I’m at it, I’ve decided to start paying more attention to the spellchecker corrections. Instead of just blindly accepting the correct spelling of my misspelled word, I’m going to try to understand the new spelling. I’ve found it useful already. I have a feeling I’ve been mispronouncing some words due to the spelling errors. Case in point, ‘peripheral’, that I just used earlier. I wrote it as I said it, ‘periphal’. I dropped a whole syllable. Well, half a syllable. Ok, maybe a whole syllable. I can’t figure it out. One thing at a time though – spelling first. Grammar later, maybe. See, there, I just learned there are no ‘e’s in grammar. But I don’t know if I’ll actually change the way I say the word. It sounds strange with an ‘ar’ at the end. I’ll keep with my accent on this one.



Oh, and, this is the final one, I’ve started listening to more music. I’ve been an avid podcast listener for awhile now, but just downloaded my NPR shows: Fresh Air, Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me, Car Talk, TAL, PHC, Science Fridays, etc. I’ve just discovered there is a bit more to this whole podcast thing. This free podcast thing. My two new podcasts I’ve added to the library are Flop House Sessions from Band in Boston and the Tartan Podcast. The first is just music with some great gems in there. The second I admit I listen to more for the accent. Hey, it’s work related – I still have trouble understanding some of my colleagues when they get talking fast. Plus who doesn’t love a glorious Scottish accent?



So that’s that. Not sure where the last bit is coming from. It’s like a new year is about to start or something.