This was my Friday morning....

I'm going through another bout of insomnia so I hadn't slept for much of the week. Thursday night I was able to pass out early, thanks to half a bottle of wine, and found myself waking up at what I thought was a reasonable hour. Turns out it was three in the morning. Not a reasonable hour.

So I tossed and turned til the alarm went off and tossed and turned some more, finally getting into the shower a little later than I like to. Since I was so tired (not to mention a little hung over), I did the thing in the shower where you just stand there, zoning out, and letting the water wash all over me. This meant I got out of the shower way late. So late I didn't have time to make breakfast. Or pack for a possible trip to San Jose that night. So late that I didn't even have time to brush my teeth and instead, brought my toothbrush and toothpaste with me to work.

I did, however, have time to shave that morning, which is another reason why I was late. Because as what usually happens when you're late and half asleep, I cut myself in the spot I always cut myself and caused a full-on gusher. That meant wasting time trying to get the thing to stop bleeding.

I made it to BART just as BART pulled into the station and so I made that by the hair of my chinny-chin-chin. Everything was cool up until I hit the airport, the second to last stop on the BART part of my commute. Right in the middle of the tunnel that takes you to the airport, the train just stopped. We waited there for a few minutes when the driver got on the PA and announced that somebody at BART HQ accidentally pressed the wrong button and made it so this BART was supposed to be heading in the complete opposite direction. This meant he had to switch sides, back us up for a bit, then wait until everything is fixed.

We backed, something that took a lot less time than the driver thought it would take. It was, however, just enough time to make sure that I would miss my SAMTrans connection and so would have to take CalTrains. Which meant I had to wait that much longer for my coffee, my breakfast, and my teeth-brushing.

It was at this particular point that I started bleeding again.

We pull into Millbrae and just as I go to the CalTrain section, I see that Caltrain had pulled into the station. I went to get a ticket so I wouldn’t get in trouble in case they came by and checked tickets (which had happened to me years ago when I applied for the job) but the ticket machine wouldn’t accept my dollar bills. So I had a choice- wait for another fifteen minutes or risk a possible ticket if they actually got around to checking.

I risked it, hoping that the karma achieved in putting up with all the crap I had put up with so far this morning would bail me out.

Needless to say, it didn’t. As soon as I sat down in my seat, some meathead of a failed cop came down the aisle checking tickets. In my head, I was all prepared to unleash the full venom of how I was feeling, being a little hungry, a little sleep deprived, and a little pissed off about all this. Just as he was about to get to me, though, some Chinese guy who hadn’t sat yet went up to him and started asking him a question about tickets. The Chinese guy barely spoke English and so the conversation between him and the meathead conductor went on for a stop and by the time it was concluded, the conductor had gotten so frazzled by the whole thing, he forgot to check my ticket and moved on.

I was safe. Or, at least safe for now.

Be cool, be cool, I said to myself and did. I kept my eyes to the paper and never looked up as he spent the next ten or so minutes going up and down the train. At one stop, he even kicked somebody off the train for not having a ticket, but for whatever reason, he never said anything to me. Karma? The fact I looked either too cool? Or too pissed and had a noticeable cut below my lip that was bleeding?

Finally, I couldn’t take it anymore and decided not to risk it anymore so I got off at the stop before the stop where the shuttle comes to pick people up and take them to Super Mondo, I got off. The stop is actually closer to SMC but because it’s a smaller stop, they don’t have shuttles to take you to work. It’s only a fifteen minute walk to work from there and I thought besides the fact it would ensure me from getting ticketed, I could get some coffee and the wind and cold could finally stop my bleeding shaving cut which I was going so profusely I was out of kleenex.

So I walked to work, coffee in hand, kleenex glued to my face as I was bleeding all over the place. The good thing is that despite it all, I wasn’t that late to work. And all in all, it wasn’t half bad of a walk. But as I was walking to work, I started thinking, boy, I really hope I don’t run into somebody I don’t want to run into until I get some coffee, clean myself off, and brush my teeth.

There’s somebody who works in my building at Super Mondo who I met once before, years ago. In fact, I think I went on one of those internet date type things, a Dead Man Walking type date where I was pretty much nixed within the first few minutes of meeting. Which is fine. Anyways, after months of staring at each other and giving each other the "hey, do I know you?" look, we’ve progressed to making small talk and saying hi to each other. It’s still a little awkward, though, only because we haven’t had the talk yet, the one about why it is we kept on giving each other the "hey, do I know you?" look. Which, again, is fine. I got nothing bad to say about her and it’s good to know somebody else in the building. She’s also pretty friendly and a good person to know at the company. Unfortunately, everytime we run into each other, usually in the elevator, it’s not at a great time to have the talk. In fact, I usually run into her when I’m least into having the talk. Like just coming back from the gym and holding in my hand my lunch and not able to think about much other than how much I really want to eat. Or when the security system was being fixed and the elevators weren’t working and we were scrambling to figure a way into our corresponding areas.

Naturally, I ran into her. when I haven’t had coffee, was bleeding profusely, and hadn’t brushed my teeth. She’s in a really, weird, chatty mood too. I, however, am not. So once again, we just make small talk and I try to do my best to not be too freakish and sociable.

As the elevator hits my floor, I get off, sit in my cube, drink my coffee, and thank God I finally made it into work.

PS- BART broke down that night too, so I got home half an hour later than I should have. Friday was a good day.