Annoyed

Okay, so let's say that you are a bike commuter. You live relatively close to your work and so you carry what you need in a backpack and schlep it to work on your BACK...hence the need for a BACKpack. Anyway, so you carry your clothes for the day, cell phone, money and other little things. You don't want to carry too much, that would be silly. So, you get going one morning and have a pretty decent ride to work. You park your bike...get ready to take a shower and get ready for your work day.

Only, when you get into your locker - which locks, but isn't THAT secure - you find out that your bath towel is missing. Actually, that would be towels...like two. What would you feel at that moment when you realize that you do not have a bath towel?

Well, that's something that happened to me 3 or 4 years ago.Carrying a towel in the backpack would be doable, but if I don't have to I'm not gonna. I went into a minor panic...that's what I did. I immediately went looking for someone who might be able to help me with my dilemma. Fortunately, they found some newly delivered shop towels from the linen company that would just have to do for this particular day.

Yeah, my towels were taken. I thought they were gone...you know, like stolen. They weren't stolen. They were re-purposed into shop towels (kind of ironic that I was given shop towels as replacements). My bright yellow bath towels were both used to wipe up something greasy....

YOU HAVE GOT TO BE KIDDING ME! Why would anyone think that's okay?

Okay, so fast forward to just about a month ago. I have since been invited to use what is now the "ladies" bathroom in the main building instead of using the shop area shower/bathroom...(thanks Kristan). I store my personal items in a locker just outside that bathroom. You know typical stuff, make-up, hair dryer, brush and other accoutrements. Anyway, I arrive at work after a visit to the gym and get my stuff all ready to go, take my shower - I have my towel so all is well. Until I pull my hair dryer out of my personal toiletry bag and see that it has been dropped and where the cord comes out of the handle, yeah, it's cracked and broken. Someone got INTO my bag and did something with my hair dryer that caused it to break and then they put it back INTO my bag and back INTO my locker - which is clearly labeled with my name on the door. Go figure.

Ooh, but wait, the whole getting into stuff that doesn't belong to you doesn't just end with bathroom related items. Let's talk food. Yes, food. I noticed last summer that someone had been snacking on my cheese, granted it was fake-o cheese slices, but still...I had brought in for my veggie patties that I had for lunch and other sandwiches. Yes, seriously...eating food that belongs to someone else. After that little supply was depleted, I didn't buy anymore cheese to put into the mini-fridge in the Ready Room. That lasted until about a few weeks ago and I decided I wanted some cheese to snack on. So silly me, forgot about the whole cheese incident from last year and left my cheese sticks in the mini-fridge....

You know what happened - 

Over the next few days my cheese disappeared. What really killed me was the fact that I had stashed my cheese in the drawer of the fridge (both times). Fine. I did another "test" just a couple of weeks ago and sure enough, my cheese was disappearing quicker than I was eating it. I don't keep cheese at work anymore or any other food for that matter. Anything on my desk is fair game, but I haven't been putting anything out on my desk much in the last 6 months.

Are you getting the sense of the boundary issues I have been experiencing at work?

So this week Tom drops me off at work after a visit to the gym and I get all situated in the bathroom, get ready to take a shower and open the door to the shower and find that I have no shampoo. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! My shampoo bottle was totally gone...now I would have remembered using all of my shampoo, so really...where did it go? I had to steal some from someone else (Sorry Kristan).

There was a moment that I THOUGHT that I might be a little crazy, but that thought in itself is crazy.

I just don't get when it became okay to get into stuff that belongs to other people. Whatever happened to respecting other people's property? It's not like I'm an ogre or something - ask me to use something and I'll say okay...need some shampoo, sure have a squeeze or two. Are you hungry? Oh hey, I have some food that I am willing to share. Wanna use my nice fluffy bath towel(s) to wipe up grease, yeah, I'm saying NO to that. Just don't assume it's okay, right?

Yeah, I'm a little annoyed...

Being Flexible

So many times things do not turn out as hoped or planned for. This summer has been really fun and the things that we planned for actually turned out and we had a blast - but all good things must come to a screeching stop and things are turned upside down.

This week Tom informed me that there were a possibility of him starting a new project that would potentially cause a big change in our comfortable life. The notion of Tom starting on a new project and actually staying out in the field was a crazy possibility and one that would last thru the end of the year. After a big pow-wow meeting yesterday at his office he determined that he would not be staying out in the field, but instead would be working long hours and would start next week Wednesday.

The problem with that was that we were to be on vacation next week. Not only would he be working on a new project, the project he is currently working on is located in Utah, so he has been traveling there and left this morning for a couple of days. So our vacation time together has been cut down to 3 full days and not much time to do so much that we had planned on.

I was looking forward to just hanging out with Tom and taking care of things around the house - as we have been neglecting so much during the last couple of months. I should be thankful, he could have started on Monday instead of Wednesday.

Flexibility is key here. I was looking forward to riding the Peach of a Century at the end of the month and that is up in the air now as well as the Gresham Jazz 5K run. We'll see how things go in the next couple of weeks.

I don' think that I'll be making any more plans for the rest of the year.

Bike Commute Week

I decided that this week I would lay off the running and ride to work Tuesday-Friday.

Today, for my ride home, I decided to go via the Salmon Creek Trail. I should have known better, things were not going that great. Well, it wasn't all bad, but really, there are quite a few people that make me a little crazy.

I REALLY like it when people just DRIVE. Instance, I'm coming down HDA and I'm naturally in the bike lane because that is the right thing to do. At the intersection just past Faith Baptist Church I see a small pick-up wanting to go south and a van that wants to go north - same direction that I am going in. Well, this guy was a total idiot and me not knowing what he might do I was going slower than usual waiting for the ding dong to go past...where I turn off comes quickly after making the turn off Hazel Dell Ave and if I can get thru with no traffic that is a good day! Not today...I should have known.

Going to the trail....people are either blocking the road in their stupid loser car while visiting with a person that is not in the car...on the trail we have all sorts of people just all over the place a mom with several children and absolutely no control. I came up on a couple that happened to be running - they may have been together. It is hard to tell since the dog that was running after the woman and in front of the guy (and they were not close to each other) was on a leash, BUT no one had a grip on the other end. I guess that fulfills the leash law, sort of. Another couple were walking together, but each were on a cell phone - I hope they were not talking to each other, my gosh, they were standing next to each other. In the middle of the trail!

I don't know, I was really questioning this decision up until I actually left work. That probably was my cue to not ride the trail, but I didn't pay attention.

We'll see what the remainder of the week brings....