Rent: Re-envisioned
On Tuesday, I saw the musical Rent on stage for the seventh time. If you include the mediocre movie, its the ninth time I’ve seen Rent.
This time however was a wonderful new experience for me. This production of Rent had a completely new director, a new set design, a new costume design, a new lighting design, and a new sound design. E.g. They remounted the show starting from the book, libretto, and score.
It was really refreshing to see the different choices that were made:
- Costumes: I thought they felt more historically accurate. The original staging of Rent feels more early-90s instead of mid-80s where the show historically fits best for many reasons. (Many reasons, that I don’t recall at the moment, but I remember reading in Sarah Schulman’s book Stagestruck: Theater, AIDS, and the Marketing of Gay America that there are elements from the mid-80s in the story.) I also appreciated the bright costume my friend Jimmie D. Herrod Jr. was in, it made him much easier to pick out on stage.
- Angel: Jerick Hoffer’s Angel is angrier and less soft than Wilson Jermaine Heredia’s original Angel. This really shocked me at first, but feels so much more honest and less stereotypical than just Heredia’s, Gleefully happy, gay, transvestite.
- Lights: Tom Sturge’s lighting plays a wonderful homage to the original design by displaying Benny’s Hummer as just lights, echoing Maureen’s motorcycle entrance. I felt the lighting didn’t call as much attention to itself as I remember the original lighting doing.
- Stage Design: Martin Christoffel’s stage is gritty, there is graffiti all over the place. The set is primarily composed of scaffolding. It exudes reality, whereas Paul Clay’s original design is more impressionistic and has many more elements that are built for the theatre only.
- Stage Direction: Pulling Angel in as a ghost after she died worked exceptionally well, it was brilliantly painful to watch him interact with Collins during I’ll Cover You. Changing Mimi’s Take Me Out to a preparation at her house, instead of a high energy dance number makes an exceptional amount of logical sense. The fact that she proceeds to ask Roger to go out right after it actually made logical sense!
The decision to kill several darlings of the original staging (or more accurately not copy them) while jarring to me at first works. Maureen’s entrance isn’t on a motorcycle of light and sound, but just is. The visual and audible siren during Roger and Mimi’s kiss during the cafe scene wasn’t there, and it wasn’t needed.
Stripping out the pieces that were signatures of Rent brought me back to the more human elements of the story. It made the show more powerful and real. Director Bill Berry’s Rent hit me much harder emotionally than Rent has hit me in a long time. I teared up not once, but at least three times. It reminded me of my humanity in a powerful and wonderful way. The cast and crew should be commended.
Exhausted Forgiveness
I’m going to write an entry of the variety that I’ven’t written in quite some time: the complain about friends and acquaintances in my life and how I’ve reacted to them. I’ven’t written one of these in quite some time, because in general they cause more grief, make relations with friends difficult (since they never know what’ll end up in a blog entry), and just generally are a reenactment of teenage angst, which I’m more or less beyond since well, I’ve been on the planet for 31 years.
I have a friend through church who recently ended our friendship. The conversation that immediately proceeded her decision to end our friendship played out over Facebook. It was one of the most brutal, violent, and cruel interactions that I’ve had online or offline. I’m still smarting and a bit dumbfounded by the magnitude of the anger I encountered.
In the message that ended our friendship, she cited “unsolicited advice” as being the core reason why she ended the friendship. This in and of itself needs a bit more elaboration; unsolicited advice is something that her parents used to “control” her. I don’t know the full history between her and her parents. Ultimately, we all carry baggage from our past that affects with how we interact with those in the present. However, we are not simply amalgamations of pavlovian responses culled from our previous interactions. We humans have the ability to recognize how we have been affected by our previous interactions and adjust our behaviors accordingly.
I remember a morning I was working at McDonald’s and a woman came in and verbally abused me and my fellow crew members. The store manager came up from the grill area, punched a refund into the register, handed the woman her money, and told her to leave. Upon my inquiry, the store manager, said that the woman was probably mentally ill.
Ten minutes or so later the same woman came into the store, ordered a sandwich, apologized, and was a model customer.
I’ve kicked around what I should do if my former friend approaches me to re-establish our friendship. I believe that redemption and change are possible, however I am not sure I am ready to offer my ex-friend my other cheek. I truly believe in the second Unitarian Universalist Principle, “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;” I believe that this is owed to all people, including and especially those who we disagree with those people we consider our enemies. I was not treated by my former friend in a way that remotely resembled our second principle.
I try to practice grace, humility, kindness, and forgiveness in my life. However, in this instance I cannot bring myself to practice forgiveness. That is what she has taken from me.
I’m eating at a Chick-Fil-A ASAP.
I’ve avoided the annoying brouhaha over an interview of Dan Cathy, president and CEO of Chick-fil-A. I generally try not to get too deep into these types of issues. I find that they become issues not because they’re really a problem, but because someone wants to drive a wedge between us, and remind us of how we’re different instead of celebrating what we share.
The first article I read on around this brouhaha was Jonathan Merritt’s essay in The Atlantic. In it, he mentions the “…failed calls for liberal consumers to boycott Urban Outfitters, because its owner is a conservative and Rick Santorum donor.” If this boycott culture is taken to its logical extreme, there will be a daily rating of each company on the public stock exchange on how closely the views of the current day’s owners of the company align with yours. (Putting aside the fact, that this really would need to be updated several thousand times a second to be completely accurate.) It would be nearly impossible for us to operate in the modern world this way. The only way you could ensure that the goods you obtain are provided by someone who agrees with you is to live individually off the land. But, I digress.
Two things struck me in Merritt’s essay. First was the statement released by Chick-fil-A that “The Chick-fil-A culture and service tradition in our restaurants is to treat every person with honor, dignity and respect — regardless of their belief, race, creed, sexual orientation or gender.” I believe they’re honest, and I appreciate that they’re treating people as individuals. What is quite interesting about that statement? It completely lines up with the first two principles of my faith, Unitarian Universalism:
“The inherent worth and dignity of every person;” and “Justice, equity and compassion in human relations;” The second thing that struck me was Chick-fil-A’s service and commitment to their employees and community. Chick-fil-A “…gives millions of dollars each year to charitable causes — and not just to ‘pro-family’ groups. It funds a large foster care program, several schools of a higher learning, and a children’s camp. It has provided thousands of scholarships for Chick-fil-A employees to attend college and grow past the service sector where they got their workplace start.”
The interview that Cathy gave doesn’t focus on marriage, quite the contrary, it is the interview of how a businessman incorporates his beliefs, including his religious beliefs, into how he runs his business. For Cathy, religion isn’t something that he stops and does on Sunday, its part of how he lives his life, and you know what? That is as it should be. None of the great teachers from the world’s religions have said “Just worry about this religion stuff on one day a week, and go do whatever you want on the other days.” No, they encouraged us to live our lives with the beliefs that we have developed as part of our faith. A minister from my own tradition, Peter Raible, often said, “In all our days, may we turn more to act than to word to declare our religion.”
I also read the Corporate Purpose of Chick-Fil-A which is on Dan Cathy’s bio: “To glorify God by being a faithful steward of all that is entrusted to us. To have a positive influence on all who come in contact with Chick-fil-A.” So, in reading this we can get bogged up in the opening “To glorify God…” — I used to be there. I would’ve read those three words then said “Oh forget that.” But, I’ve had the wonderful gift from the Reverend Dr. Alicia Grace of putting my own meanings into the language of reverence of others. Alicia used to, and often still does, play what I call the “synonym game” where she will work into her sermon or meditations a number of words describing the same thing, encouraging people to not get stuck on the literal meaning of the word, but to focus on the deeper meanings that we share. (e.g. Soul, Inner Light, Quiet Place…)
I know, I don’t agree with everything Cathy has said, we definitely don’t agree on gay marriage. But, I know I’ll be welcomed in his restaurants, not from a desire for my money, but from a deeply held belief of love and service.
Now, I just need to find my way to Boise, ID ASAP for a Chick-Fil-A sandwich…
I used to put a bunch of time into Wikipedia. Every so often I’d actually really take ownership of an article, watch over it, and keep it looking sharp.
I don’t do that anymore.
I still enjoy adding a sentence here or there, clarifying something that was unclear, or even just putting a space between a comma and the word following it..
I still really see a need for Wikipedia pages to have owners who look over the page in its entirety and ensures that it makes sense. Wait, I can hear you now, you’re saying something along the lines of “Well thats antithetical to the spirit of Wikipedia.” I’d argue its not. Wikipedia, as I see it is about sharing knowledge and everyone being able to contribute, but if I’m using it as resource, a spot where anyone can throw anything up onto the wall in scatterplot doesn’t work.
I wanted to learn a bit more about phonograph records, and recording lengths, so I went to the Wikipedia article on them.
It is a disorganized mess, organized into topics, but then chronologically broken down within those topics. Its a pain to read, and I checked my computer once or twice to make sure it wasn’t displaying the same text for the second time by accident. An exchange on the talk page notes:
Still A-class?
The article has a lot of sections without any references. I don’t think the A-class is still correct; currently it’s more a B-class.–Oneiros 1:36 am, 19 August 2008, Tuesday UTC−7)
It is definitely ‘not A-class; after reading Wikipedia:WikiProject Professional sound production/Assessment, IMHO C-class would be more appropriate. Since a two-letter-grade drop is pretty significant, I’ve dropped it down to B-class for now. The problem with an article of this length is that its really challenging to master all the details that people have contributed and come up with a coherent and less repetitive version. It’s taken me hours just to do a little bit of clean-up and find the right place for the Sentinel Chromatron references I wanted to introduce when I first got here. 67.101.7.26 3:33 pm, 20 August 2008, Wednesday (UTC−7).
Apparently this isn’t a new problem for that article.
I’d like to see Wikipedia put an interface for an editor to fork and own or curate a page, so that any edit made to the page is approved by them. At the same time a check on this fiefdom is needed and keeping the normal anyone can edit a page is critical, but providing an integrated way for curator owners to emerge on wikipedia would help the morass of spaghetti stuck to the wall writing that it is now.
On Identity
Not a week goes by without reading of a home foreclosure where the foreclosed upon homeowner says something along the lines of: “We have a roof over our heads. We’re grateful,” she said of her apartment home now. “But it can never replace a dream home you thought you’d have forever.”
In many ways what someone who says really said was: “my home was part of my identity, and I just lost that part of my identity.”
When I worked at Citigroup one of the things I learned that really resonated for me is that a person’s job is part of their identity, and when they lose that job they lose part of their identity.
For many Americans, especially Americans who live in suburbia, owning a car, and very specifically what car they own has historically been part of their identity. Millennials and I’d argue city dwellers of all generations have distanced themselves from placing their identity in their cars.
I’d be lying if I said a small part of my identity wasn’t wrapped up in my home or how I get around town. But for me I believe its a part of my identity because it reflects the choices I’ve made, I look around at my home, and I have a push for simple natural materials, and uncomplicated colorings. I’ve never quite seen the appeal of owning a house, it seems as much as a money pit as an apartment, with more headaches than its worth.
In getting around town, I definitely own the transit and Zipcar geek label, but that is part of my pattern of becoming a subject expert in an area. Similar to my opinions of houses, I found owning a car to be a huge sink of money, and ultimately not necessary for me to get around. I’d rather take a bus, Zipcar, taxi, or Uber to get around than deal with owning a car.
In this way, part of my identity is not having things I don’t need, or that don’t have some potential of serving a purpose.
Yes, that wording is wiggly, because well, I’m a packrat. But precisely because I am a packrat, I understand the burden of things. They must be organized, labeled, and cared for properly. Plus they require space, lots and lots of space.
But back to the topic of identity. It saddens me that identity is so tied up into what we own, or how we earn our income. I’m sure for some people that earning their income is secondary to actually spending time that they love, but even when I’m at a job I love its still work.
I’ve been in Seattle for about two weeks shy of six years. These six years have been hard. Really fucking hard. I’ve had to push for what I’ve really wanted, and trust myself to make the right decisions, and to accept when I make what turns out to be the wrong decision. But I also think I’ve figured out and become quite a bit more comfortable in my identity. I no longer cling to the identity politics of being a gay man. If anything, I define myself in relationships: with the handbell community, at church, with my cats, within the kinky community, with folks at coffee shops, and that odd conversation with a stranger.
People bemoan that the younger generation is all tied up in Facebook and other social networks. While I’m not a fan of Facebook by any stretch of the imagination, I’d rather people create their identity in their relationships with others, even if thats online, rather than their car or their house.
What is college really about?
I had a friend who in response to reading my blog entry, I wish I never went to college said something along the lines of “Well it indicates you can finish something.” He then recounted that many projects have a period when they suck, generally once you’re past the “wow we’re working on all this cool stuff”, but before “the end” is in sight.
But here’s the thing, those projects are something that you want to do and you know you want to get to the end of.
All through elementary, middle, and high school, I was fairly computer savvy, and I started writing code when I was seven, and still continue to do so. I also took some summer courses from the University of Michigan’s Computer Engineering school. Everyone figured I’d become a programmer once I graduated. But, I’d get through specking out something, writing a fair amount of code, however when I got to figuring out the code for edge issues and debugging all the bugs it drove me crazy.
So, I decided to go after one of my hobbies that I really enjoyed, when I started college I went into Theatre, but after spending a fair amount of time in theatre I realized I didn’t like it enough to do it continuously.
I wandered a bit and ended up discovering a “completer degree” from Northern Kentucky University in Organizational Leadership, which seemed to fit my interests, in some vague way. While I was going to NKU, I started working at Chiquita and found my way into being the guy between the business side and the computer guys. By the time I realized this, six years had passed since I graduated from high school, and it wasn’t at the point where I could steer my schooling in a different way without throwing away a huge amount of work.
So here is my problem with college: I figured out what I wanted to do career wise when I was on a chronological basis seven eighths of the the way through college, and even further on a credit hour scale. So I trudged through and finished, not because I wanted to get a degree in Organizational Leadership, but because I was too damn near to the end of my degree not to complete it.
So what does completing college signify for me? I managed to complete something that by the time I had it I didn’t really want. Thus, I fall back to my initial advise:
If you’re not dead set on what you want to do in college, don’t go to college.
Once you decide what you want to do in college its better having that driver behind you. (Or if people in your life aren’t going to accept that, go part time to college and take your general education courses, and work full time.)
I’ve learned as much if not more from my work life, and from what I know about that I would’ve gone a completely different way in college.
Completing college is more meaningful when you complete a degree that will allow you to do something you really would like to do.
Oh, and I followed up on that Organizational Leadership degree with a certificate in Project Management, which is something I do want to do. I just didn’t realize it until I had my Bachelors.
I avoided digging to deeply into the news of the shooting in Seattle this past Wednesday. Part of this is a habit of mine, I never dig too deeply into anything upon first glance. Whatever happens communities continue to evolve, the world does not end, the planets still continue in their orbits, and time marches forward. This is the nature of things. It always has been and it always will be.
I’ve been quite mindful of the fact that there is no such thing as a true story. What I find relevant, salient, and revealing about an event is different than what another person finds about that event.
The shootings this past week in Seattle got personal today. They were mentioned during my church’s service. I saw people who I know lost friends this week, standing on the chancel, welcoming their newborn child into our church community. Later in the day I learned that, a member of a small group I belong to, lets call her Torri, is friends with the lady who made the
911 call reporting the shooting at 8th and Seneca. The caller is now traumatized. Torri has had a horrible week as a result of supporting her friend and other issues.
I also listened to the 911 Call from Cafe Racer, the location of the initial shooting.
I got a ride from another friend between church and a party. She was attempting to pin the root cause of this past week on one simple issue, our country’s lack of gun control. The issues that have been dragged to the surface are much more complex and nuanced than can be compressed into that simple analysis.
I will not be as presumptuous as to claim that I know the story and root cause of what happened. That being said I have collected quotes and information that I found relevant here. I found doing this to be reminiscent of my response to September 11th, 2001. I spent that evening writing down facts, figures, and scraps of info that I felt were important as I watched the TV news. I no longer watch TV news for many reasons, but I have collected Smuler, scraps from my readings that illuminate the themes that I believe are part of the root cause of this past week’s events.
“I ran up to her right away and there was just a massive pool of blood there,” said Yori, 58, who helped along with other bystanders. “I didn’t know anything about her, so I spoke to her as a human being who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The Navy veteran said he gave her last rites.
“I felt really special to be able to do that – for us to be there when nobody else was there with her,” said Yori, 58.
A police supervisor who recognized Yori told him to leave, not knowing he was trying to help. Another officer who also recognized Yori next to the victim asked him to keep onlookers away from the crime scene, which he did. He also stayed to give officers a statement.
After giving Leonidas last rites, Yori went to his church, Seattle First Presbyterian on Eighth Avenue, and prayed for her. Later that night, he went to sleep as he usually does in the church’s doorway.
Told Thursday she had two young children, Yori’s striking blue eyes welled with tears.
“I got to thinking, what would it be like to come home expecting your wife to be there, expecting your mom to be there and all of a sudden, she’d been shot.
“That reaction, you feel so helpless. Absolutely helpless.”
“If you look back over the shootings we’ve had this year and the prior year, you can see many of them are related to the belief that it’s O.K. to carry a gun somewhere to solve a dispute,” Mayor Mike McGinn said at a news conference on Thursday. “We have to look at what we can do to redouble our efforts in this regard.”
Even in the best of times, the police in Seattle, a generally low-crime city, live under something of a bell jar of scrutiny. Widespread libertarian sentiments about personal liberty — and a small but vocal anarchist community ready on short notice to throw epithets, or sometimes rocks, at the police — often bump up against expectations of personal safety.
The police are also tested by an average of 100 to 300 political demonstrations a year.
Police officials said that efforts used in some other cities to get guns off the street — notably the New York’s Police Department’s “stop, question and frisk” program, which gives the police latitude to stop people officers think might be carrying a weapon or other contraband — would simply not be accepted here, despite a record of success as measured in seized weapons.
“Our community has probably a lower tolerance than New York City does for police intervention,” Mike Sanford, an assistant chief at the Patrol Operations Bureau, said in an interview at police headquarters. But with the recent shootings, he said, there are now genuine safety issues in some neighborhoods, and people are reaching out to the police seeking reassurance and a greater presence.
Dale Todd, 55, who was riding his bicycle on Wednesday around the cordoned-off crime scene near the university. At one point, he stopped in front of an officer manning an intersection blocked with yellow caution tape.
“I’m behind you guys,” Mr. Todd said.
“Tell the mayor,” the officer responded.
Stawicki’s bloody spree — five killed (and one injured), including a second shooting on First Hill as he was on the run — didn’t end until nearly five hours later when, confronted by police in West Seattle, he dropped to his knees and shot himself in the head.
Walter Stawicki, 65, believes that his son grew more and more lucid in the hours following the shootings, realizing what he had done, and killed himself to take responsibility.
Walter Stawicki said that his son was “a gentleman,” but regrets he didn’t act to have his son committed for mental-health care.
Ian Stawicki showed signs of autism and had learning disorders. He struggled to read, write and focus his attention, his father said.
But the two men distanced themselves as they learned more about Stawicki’s strange and potentially dangerous behavior. Cafe Racer owner Kurt Geissel saw it too, as did other nearby businesses.
“Everybody has their own personality and their own quirks and we don’t try to fault people for who they are,” Geissel said. “Everyone has a bad day. But he was consistently not all there.”
Now, Walter Stawicki regrets he didn’t force a mental-health intervention, even if it meant lying to say his son posed an imminent risk.
“We let him down and we let a lot of other people down, too, by not effectively being able to intervene,” Walter Stawicki said.
“I’m grieving for him, I’m grieving for his mother, I’m grieving for his brother. I’m grieving for six other families.”
Victims of the Cafe Racer shootings will be honored at a gathering outside the cafe Saturday afternoon and at a benefit concert Sunday evening — and the cafe’s owner says he has decided he will reopen the business, but he does not know when.
“I think Joe and Drew and Kim and Don would be mad if we didn’t,” said Kurt Geissel, who has owned the cafe for eight years.
Geissel was referring to the four people fatally shot in the cafe Wednesday: Joe Albanese, Drew Keriakedes, Kimberly Layfield and Donald Largen.
According to Assistant Police Chief Jim Pugel, detectives are examining three primary possibilities: Stawicki may have used his mother’s truck, gotten a ride from someone or hopped on a bus.
He better have taken public transit, used zipcar, hitchhiked in a prius/leaf or bicycled.
Using his mother’s truck as a Single Occupant is unforgivable.
This is Seattle after all, and just because you’re a mass murderer, there’s no excuse to not do what the NWO order tells you to do.
I wish I never went to college
About a month ago I encountered the following question on a Young Adult forum I belong to:
As a Young Adult, what is one thing that you would say to a bridging senior youth? what advice would you give them that has helped you navigate the young adult world? ( topics can range from college to getting a job to friendship or even spiritual growth) Thanks guys
I replied:
If you’re not dead set on what you want to do in college, don’t go to college.
Once you decide what you want to do in college its better having that driver behind you. (Or if people in your life aren’t going to accept that, go part time to college and take your general education courses, and work full time.)
I’ve learned as much if not more from my work life, and from what I know about that I would’ve gone a completely different way in college.
Much of college seems aimed at preparing students for academia. When classwork does emulate a real world product, I believe that its lack of actual implementation it is ultimately poor substitute for actually real work it ultimately denotes a result with little consequence.
In his paper Paul Lockhart, A Mathematician’s Lament he paints the picture of a world where music education is mandatory, but where students spend their elementary through high school years studying the theory of music, while never touching an actual instrument. He argues that this is how mathematics is taught in our schools.
Many people, including me, learn best by actually doing. If I had learned music in Lockhart’s hypothetical world I never would’ve gotten to touching an instrument. I actually am a pretty good musician. Music theory isn’t my strongest point, but its something I’m getting better at. I’ve recently picked up a wee bit of arranging, and working with a friend who is solidly grounded in music theory I’ve begun to pick up bits, and I really see the value in putting the time and bit of rote learning into learning more music theory.
In both high school and college I was often more interested in those things that had a direct real world result. This resulted in me being more interested in implementing a new layout for our store registers at McDonald’s, working on developing specifications for a container tracking system at Chiquita, producing and directing plays in college, and putting together peaceful protests as a member of a student organization. I learned valuable skills during all of these times.
One of the most amazing classes I had was Wright State University’s Small Group Communication, we executed a community service project sending fifteen boxes of clothing to Saint John Bosco Home for Boys an orphanage in Jamaica. That class was awesome because we both learned about the theory of communicating in small groups, while actually using it to perform a community service project.
So what would an ideal college look like? Kettering University is an excellent example where students intern for one term then do classwork for one term. They also have business administration students who do the same thing.
What about turning the whole college idea on its hea?. Take a company or a non-profit, perhaps one with a strong service culture, and run it with students. Up and down the chain, have students everywhere. The company would likely have many part timers instead of full time employee students, but you’d also have professors advising them in the trenches.
I’ll admit this example is likely too far out there, but I think there are more opportunities to have students do real work in the real world, and not just make believe work projects.
So does this mean that I would never go to college? No. Its just that its tough for a twenty something year old to know what they need to know before they need to know it. Thats why my suggestion in the initial comment was to go to college after you have a real idea of what you’d like to do with your life.
Liberals Suck at language
I’ve been mulling this over for a while. I simply think the biggest political deficit of liberals is they often suck at the sound bite.
Lets take the “same-sex marriage” debate. Wait, see theres the problem already! A politician can be asked “Do you support same-sex marriage?” and if she replies with “Yes I support same-sex marriage” she’s missed the battle.
Take President Obama’s recent interview. It gets onto the second page before he says “Making it absolutely clear that what we’re talking about are civil marriages and civil laws.” Well thats fine and dandy, but people who are pissed or who are looking for soundbites aren’t going to get to the bottom of the first page, let alone the middle of the second page.
Not to be one to just whine without offering solutions, I believe we should have always been saying “same-sex civil marriage” or “gay civil marriage” put the civil piece right next marriage, all the time, in a way that can’t be separated in normal editing. I haven’t heard GLBT leaders and advocates advocating for gay religious marriage. Those discussions are going on within individual faith traditions, they’re not the direct subject of the political debate.
The example where I think liberals fail at language is on the college tuition debate. We’ve been saying “Rising cost of college tuition”. At least for the University of Washington the cost of educating students has gone down on an inflation adjusted basis. (Citation: KUOW interview with University of Washington’s President, starting at 6 minutes 30 seconds.) The soundbite language gets tricker here, but I’d suggest something along the lines of “Rising family borne costs of college”. This moves it from what the school is charging to what the parents and students are paying.
Here is the important piece of both of my suggested soundbites: Its tough for the media to butcher them. You can’t take the civil out of “gay civil marriage” and you can’t take the “family borne” out of “Rising family borne costs of college”.
This matters because this is how the soundbite is framed influences how people think. If we targeted our soundbites better we’d be much better off.
Lost, but luckily found!
I’m good at losing things, really really good at losing things. (Like to the point that with items that I’m likely to lose (water bottle, pens, etc) I just buy cheap versions so I don’t have to worry about it when I do lose them..)
I have really bad luck at finding things that I’ve lost.. I’ve tried enough times to the point that I know King County Metro’s policy and procedure off the top of my head..
Yesterday, I wandered upto Northgate to go shopping. The bus from downtown to north the Northgate mall is the 41 and it runs as frequently as every five minutes during rush hour. I had just come from the gym so I had my regular bag, plus my gym bag. Since the bus was kinda full I snagged a seat facing inward in the back and put my gym bag under the forward facing seat next to mine. It was a nice out of the way spot.
Around 4 o’clock, I hopped off the bus while fiddling on my iPhone, and called my mother. No she didn’t help me find my bag, but I make a habit of calling her every four days or so.. it cuts down on random text messages from her, and makes her feel loved. Additionally, it gave her something to worry about, which I think she considers to be her primary mothering role. As the phone was ringing to her I realized I had left my bag on the bus.
After I got off the phone with her I pulled up the OneBusAway iPhone app. (I usually prefer the mobile web interface, but the iPhone app has more data points exposed that I needed in this case.) I found the bus I had just gotten off of by looking up the route then finding a stop up the line aways, and checking a few route 41s until confirmed the one that dropped me of. The OneBusAway App very nicely provides:
- The vehicle’s unique number
- The next run of that particular vehicle
In this instance, instead of turning around and becoming a south 41 the vehicle in question, 2742, turned around and presumably interstate back south then started in downtown as a northbound 41 again. The OneBusAway app very nicely told me that 2742 should be getting to the Northgate transit center around 5:15 pm.
So I wandered off, did my shopping then wandered back to the transit station at 5:10 pm, and found 2742 on app, and waited for it to arrive right on time. I hung out while everyone got off the bus, then asked the driver if I could check for the bag.. It ended up being right where I left it…