Blech, Tuesday?

I've had a mass transit fetish for so long that I'm not quite sure where it started. At the deepest roots of it are probably Big Bird taking the subway from Sesame Street to the Central Park, really, but somehow it stuck. Even playing the original SimCity, I always tried to force my wee residents to give up their archaic asphalt and use 100% railways. I <3 rail.

Living in Phoenix, it's always been one of my greatest frustrations that our mass transit system is so cruddy. Maybe I idealize the transit in other cities. It's easy as a visitor to say, "Gosh, this [comprehensive public transit system] sure is great!" But the convenience of four separate bus lines going from my house to my office is about where the coverage stops; anything off the beaten path becomes unrealistic.

So today I'm rather excited (for once) to work for a newspaper, since I've managed to get in on a smallish group who are visiting the new light rail operations center today. I'll be meeting the heads of the operations group itself and hopefully figuring out what sort of data they'll have on train locations/activity, and then finding a way to build that data into our site so people can easily check schedules and whatnot.

From what I hear, the schedule is pretty simple. It's a single circuit to start, and any given station is expected to have a train arrive at least once every (x) minutes. We'll see if it actually turns out to be so easy.

In any case, I looked at the meeting itinerary and noticed this: "OMC tour and train ride." Woohoo! Big Bird and I are gonna go to the park!!

I was cruising out of the parking garage at work this afternoon when my car alarm suddenly did a double bleep to let me know that it's reawakened after a long slumber. I think it was the cheapest model I could find, and I mostly bought it so I could get a discount on my auto insurance. It is... temperamental. And asleep for around two years, if I remember correctly.

It'll take me a while to remember to disable it before I open the door. It went off a bit ago when I went to the grocery store. Last time this happened, just as I redeveloped the habit of disarming it prior to entering, it stopped working again. D'oh.

Went out with friends on Friday night and remembered that socializing is rather fun. Also remembered that one of my friends has an amazing capacity for alcohol and that I always forget to ignore him as a reference for how much I should drink. (*hic*)

Finally sorted the house out a bit. I decided I don't like the front room to house the tv; one of my favorite parts of having a front room was that I could entertain guests without having to bother cleaning my living space in advance. Dirty clothes strewn about, dishes here and there. With it back as a separate space, at least it stays consistently uncluttered.

I don't know why, but I suddenly had a flash from a work conference I attended shortly after I'd turned 21. I think it was less than two weeks after, and I went with a coworker who enjoyed going out and makes friends anywhere he goes. We ended up at the hotel bar at the end of the night playing pool, drinking and chatting with a few other random guys.

The woman at the bar didn't card me, and I'm sure I looked like I needed to be carded. At the end of the night, it seemed in my drunken state like a good idea to thank her as I left for not carding me. From my perspective it was nice to be treated like I wasn't a child. From her perspective I'm sure she suddenly figured she'd just poured several martinis for a teenager.

In any case, I have a dining room and a separate tv room again. Everything is sorted out, if a bit dirty. Time to bring in the big guns.