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cosmolinguistI didn't know it was snowing until I got outside. It wasn't much, but it was snowing. I was prepared, having zipped both parts of my Columbia jacket together for the first time this winter, and gathered my scarf and my new hat. I put everything on and went outside, a bit dismayed at the snow but resigned to my fate.
Maybe a third of the way to work, I was beginning to wonder why my legs (the least protected part of me; I have no winter apparel to cover them as i do the rest of my body) wren't numb and why my face (okay, I lied; that's really the least protected part of me because everything above my scarf is bare skin) wasn't cold enough to hurt. Then I realized the obvious answer: there was no wind. Okay, there was very little, but when you live on the prairie that's just as good as none. Wind is a big deal here. Wind is worse than all the cold and snow a Minnesota winter can throw at me.
Two-thirds of the way there, I have to cross the train tracks. I do this so often I barely even think about it any more, but this time as I went around the corner a block or so before the tracks, I noticed that the lights were flashing and the pole-thing was down across the road. No train was going by, though. The train better be gone, and not just getting here! I thought. I even mumbled it out loud ... but as soon as the words left my mouth, I heard the train's whistle. It was so loud I reflexively put my hands up to my ears, and it was definitely coming this way. So I had to stand there and wait for a whole train, even though I was almost there, I was cold, and I was now going to be a few minutes late. Thinking such depressing thoughts soon got boring, so I started counting railroad cars as they crawled by. After I got to about forty-five or -six I was bored with that, too, so I started counting in German. That kept me on my toes. I'm pretty sure I was saying a couple of the numbers wrong, but hey, I'm not being tested on this. I counted 93 cars, though I could've been off because I remember trying to go from 84 to 87. I guess I was just convinced that sieben comes after vier.
Walking back home this morning, there was another train. In almost a year and a half of going to work, I don't think I've ever had to wait for more than just the end of a train, and rarely that. But now, in one commute, I've had to wait in the cold and get colder as two whole trains go by! This one was faster, at least, it was obviously empty whereas the other one had been mostly full. I counted either 101 or 111 cars this time (and I did start at the beginning); it was bad enough to count them in English because they were going by so fast.
It took my mind off being cold--it's colder at 6:30 in the morning than it is at 9:30 at night--and off the aroma of fresh doughnuts that eminates from Casey's. I don't like walking by that doughnut smell every morning (if I walk the other way, I go past the grocery store, and it smells like doughnuts, too, so the doughnut-smell is inevitable) because it makes me want to go buy doughnuts. I never do, though; I usually don't even have any money with me when I go to work and even if I do it seems bad to spend it on doughnuts. Why waste what little money I have on consuming sugar so early in the morning? I know it will just make me hyper.
It's not just snowy outside now, but icy. I actually fell down just crossing an interssection. It wasn't bad; I felt dumb. There was a car coming, not near enough for me to worry about getting hit, but near enough that I was lit up by the headlights as I hit the pavemet for no apparent reason. It was fifty degrees on Thursday but since I have to work on Friday, of course it got cold and nasty. Oh well. Winter is obviously coming; the Christmas lights on the trees and streetlamps along the main street have been put up and lit. Makes me feel cold just looking at them. I don't mind winter, now that it's still a novelty. But I don't relish the thought of six months of it.
I got cold enough coming back that I stopped in the first building I could get into, which is this 24-hour computer lab, instead of going on to my apartment, which is why I ask about the right-clicking anyway. For someone who's only used PCs since high school, and Apples/Macs all the rest of the time, I have gotten awfully used to the conventions and shortcuts. At least I know how to close the windows on a Mac, and how not to close them, which is more than I can say for some of the people in my CSci classes (we ueed Macs there, occasionally, as well).
Maybe a third of the way to work, I was beginning to wonder why my legs (the least protected part of me; I have no winter apparel to cover them as i do the rest of my body) wren't numb and why my face (okay, I lied; that's really the least protected part of me because everything above my scarf is bare skin) wasn't cold enough to hurt. Then I realized the obvious answer: there was no wind. Okay, there was very little, but when you live on the prairie that's just as good as none. Wind is a big deal here. Wind is worse than all the cold and snow a Minnesota winter can throw at me.
Two-thirds of the way there, I have to cross the train tracks. I do this so often I barely even think about it any more, but this time as I went around the corner a block or so before the tracks, I noticed that the lights were flashing and the pole-thing was down across the road. No train was going by, though. The train better be gone, and not just getting here! I thought. I even mumbled it out loud ... but as soon as the words left my mouth, I heard the train's whistle. It was so loud I reflexively put my hands up to my ears, and it was definitely coming this way. So I had to stand there and wait for a whole train, even though I was almost there, I was cold, and I was now going to be a few minutes late. Thinking such depressing thoughts soon got boring, so I started counting railroad cars as they crawled by. After I got to about forty-five or -six I was bored with that, too, so I started counting in German. That kept me on my toes. I'm pretty sure I was saying a couple of the numbers wrong, but hey, I'm not being tested on this. I counted 93 cars, though I could've been off because I remember trying to go from 84 to 87. I guess I was just convinced that sieben comes after vier.
Walking back home this morning, there was another train. In almost a year and a half of going to work, I don't think I've ever had to wait for more than just the end of a train, and rarely that. But now, in one commute, I've had to wait in the cold and get colder as two whole trains go by! This one was faster, at least, it was obviously empty whereas the other one had been mostly full. I counted either 101 or 111 cars this time (and I did start at the beginning); it was bad enough to count them in English because they were going by so fast.
It took my mind off being cold--it's colder at 6:30 in the morning than it is at 9:30 at night--and off the aroma of fresh doughnuts that eminates from Casey's. I don't like walking by that doughnut smell every morning (if I walk the other way, I go past the grocery store, and it smells like doughnuts, too, so the doughnut-smell is inevitable) because it makes me want to go buy doughnuts. I never do, though; I usually don't even have any money with me when I go to work and even if I do it seems bad to spend it on doughnuts. Why waste what little money I have on consuming sugar so early in the morning? I know it will just make me hyper.
It's not just snowy outside now, but icy. I actually fell down just crossing an interssection. It wasn't bad; I felt dumb. There was a car coming, not near enough for me to worry about getting hit, but near enough that I was lit up by the headlights as I hit the pavemet for no apparent reason. It was fifty degrees on Thursday but since I have to work on Friday, of course it got cold and nasty. Oh well. Winter is obviously coming; the Christmas lights on the trees and streetlamps along the main street have been put up and lit. Makes me feel cold just looking at them. I don't mind winter, now that it's still a novelty. But I don't relish the thought of six months of it.
I got cold enough coming back that I stopped in the first building I could get into, which is this 24-hour computer lab, instead of going on to my apartment, which is why I ask about the right-clicking anyway. For someone who's only used PCs since high school, and Apples/Macs all the rest of the time, I have gotten awfully used to the conventions and shortcuts. At least I know how to close the windows on a Mac, and how not to close them, which is more than I can say for some of the people in my CSci classes (we ueed Macs there, occasionally, as well).
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(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 06:33 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 12:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 01:05 pm (UTC)But it would be cool to have passenger trains, too.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 04:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 04:58 pm (UTC)There's a lot more empty space here--I remember reading in my eighth-grade geography book that Britain (well, the island, with England and Scotland and Wales on it; I don't know if I'm using the right word for it because I don't know what it's called) is the size of Minnesota. This book always used to compare places in the rest of the world to states in the U.S., which I suppose was to help us relate to things, but for the most part it didn't help me much. "Oh, Vietnam is the size of Tennessee. Well! And Europe has the same land area as Alaska. Interesting." (Or whatever. I made those up; they're assuredly wrong.) But I don't really know how big Tennessee is!
I do know how big Minnesota is, though, and if that were the size of an island I lived on, I imagine I wouldn't see many hundreds of train cars at once, either.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-24 05:40 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 08:19 pm (UTC)Having worked in techsupp for nearly 4 years, I can appreciate the choice to give people only one mouse button. On a mac, you can do everything through the menu's, and the context menu's are just there for convenience.
My Nanna has coal trains going past close to her place... we'll often sit out on the veranda and count the carriages, and some of them are huge... 3-4 diesel engines pulling 150+ carriages.
An empty one derailed when it crashed into a parked train at the station nearest her place, and completely wiped out the platform and the kiosk on it, and the pedestrian bridge over the tracks that used to lead down to the platform.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 10:36 pm (UTC)I know, I'm dumb. I usually try not to flaunt it so. Thanks for alleviating my ignorance.
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-22 10:59 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-23 04:15 pm (UTC)Or something.
Mac users have this way of making it seem like such a compliment if you are deemed to be worthy of knowing their secrets ... :-)
But, hey, as I pointed out to a friend of mine who was telling me about his Panther upgrade and how cool it is, he and I are both using UNIX, his just cost more.
Victory is mine!
But really, having seen
(no subject)
Date: 2003-11-23 08:08 pm (UTC)But for some people, I think mac users just feel slighted for being put down for so many years, that they can finally claim victory over their PC brethren when they get to show them something.
The cost of the Panther upgrade is for the Aqua GUI, and all the applications that are thrown in for free, the development kit, everything. You can actually run the same Unix as is with Panther, and all of the linuxy type stuff free of charge. I would happily pay for a linux/BSD distro if it included the same level of integration and user friendliness as Panther.
If you ever do find yourself in the position of spending the money to buy a laptop, I'd say without hesitation that the Apple laptops are much better value than anything else on the market.