As a general FYI

[annathepiper]

It takes about an hour and forty minutes to walk from just north of downtown Bothell to MurkNorth.

Why do I know this? Because the 5:22 run of the 245, which was supposed to pick me up at 156th and 40th right by my building at Borg, was a good thirteen minutes late and didn't actually get to the bus stop until more like 5:35. I don't know what the hell was going on with that; I happened to see two, count 'em, two fire trucks heading the opposite way on 156th, so I suspect that some form of major accident/disaster must have happened further down the way that was making traffic hellish, or something.

Anyway, this caused me to not reach the Houghton Park and Ride in Kirkland until roughly 6pm, at which time I discovered that the 342, my connecting bus which runs up 405, through Bothell, and then right down through Kenmore, makes its last stop there at 5:45. DOH!

So I went "Well NOW WHAT?" and wound up catching the next bus that showed up, riding that around to Bothell, and then walking home from there. I toyed with the idea of calling kathrynt, llachglin, or spazzkat and saying "HEY! Who wants to give me a ride home?" but then decided that a) I liked the idea of a walk down Burke-Gilman, and b) I wanted to see how long it would take me to get home. Now I know.

And boy, my feet hurt.

Comments

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

methinks thou wilst sleep RATHER WELL tonight!
might need 2 alarms in the am tho!
ever find out what was up that caused the slowdown?

bb

[annathepiper]

I'm hoping the sleep'll be better than the last couple of nights, as I've been having to adjust to going to bed before midnight again, and that's still messing with my ability to be conscious in the mornings! This is what I get for being a nocturnal creature at heart.

And ugh, one alarm is almost enough to kill me. ;) When mine went off this morning I caught myself thinking, "Oh yeah... that's for ME. CRAP."

Dunno what it was that caused the slowdown, though!

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

nocturnal critters are best turning to day critters by doing the evil - stay up over 24 hours and you'll sleep THEN routine!
s'only way i can do it!
i'm one HELL of a bitch in the process tho... i HATE daylight b/c i'm so darn light sensitive...

bb

[annathepiper]

I don't have the light sensitivity problem, thankfully, but I do have a problem staying up that long. ;) I've done it, but only by the skin of my teeth! (Dara and I generally stay up all night to observe Longest Night in December, so that'll have me conscious for 24+ hours at a stretch. But afterwards, oh the zzzzzzz....)

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

can you do it w/ a tiny (45 minutes or less) nap? or are you one of those folks that gets nasty bitchy fugly w/o sleep? i know *I* am! :)

[annathepiper]

I don't get bitchy when I'm short on sleep... I mostly get incoherent and loopy. :) And I think that if I tried to take a teeny nap, that would only make matters worse--one of those scenarios where a tiny bit of sleep is almost worse than no sleep at all, because of the body going 'OH THANK GOD LET ME REST what?! NO I DON'T WANT TO GET BACK UP!' Heh. :)

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

oh yeah, the "KILL ME NOW BITCH AND I MEAN YOU DAMNIT" moment when you realize you have to get up or you are completely borked for the next week, yeah, been there! hubby usually awakens THAT beast w/ a 24oz coffee already in his hands, doctored the way i like it! otherwise the victim, err, person waking me up might NOT survive to take anothr breath!

yeah, i'm familiar w/ that routine... your body is in HEAVEN thinking "ok i survived" and then you have the balls (or other body parts as appropriate) to wake me????????? yeah...

btw - i do loopy AFTER i do klingon bitch in heat! :) so by the time i've gotten to loopy, most potential witnesses are corpses!

[annathepiper]

General note to self: do not get between Brightbeak and her coffee. ;)

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

hehe...ok, so i'm an addict :) :)
and i'm SO not going to 12-step this one... it's kinda like breathing, VITAL to my life! :) and sanity! (quiet there peanut gallery!)

[annathepiper]

Heh! I'm kind of surprised that I've never gotten into coffee, and I'm living in the Coffee Capital of the Pacific Northwest. But it's true. The few times I've tried anything with coffee in it, I've gotten way more twitchy from the caffeine than I ever have from soda. But I do like the smell of it. :)

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

where coffee makes you jittery, it CALMS my jitters, but then again i am weird so hey :)
and the smell of good coffee, soothes the savage beast w/in :)

[annathepiper]

Heh! Very appropriate icon. ;) And I guess you must just have a bigger caffeine tolerance than I do--and that's saying something after I've been in the habit of chugging back half a dozen cans of soda a day in stints of 8-9 hours of work at Microsoft!

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

i have a chemical dependence as well as a psychological one on caffiene...
we did a detox from caffiene a couple years ago, won't do THAT again... even after 6 weeks, it was gtting worse & worse & worse.. headache became a constant, my IQ plummetted to a near-negative place (and from 3 digits that's a drop), i coudln't think enough to read (and i'm a chronic reader) couldn't concentrate long enough to remember ANYTHING, fell asleep in some awkward places (bathroom, on potty w/ door locked, oooops), and well, overall was as miserable as hell... couldn't even count to 10 w/o thinking about it!
had a NICE cuppa and sat down, and within a couple hours i was fine and able to do taxes...
hubby said even my eyes cleared up
now if that had been 10days to 3weeks, i'd have thought it was just withdrawl like a drug, but we were talking 43days. that's entirely too long for it to be just withdrawl.. even my naturopath was concerned at that point, and said to get back on the coffee, b/c it was obvious that it played an important role in maintaining my ability to live!
coffee is MY legal drug of choice :)

[annathepiper]

Damn, that's impressive! Interesting that you actually seem to need the caffeine. :) I've gone off the soda for a few weeks straight--I kind of had to, when I was recovering with the broken arm. And I didn't have anything like the effects you describe.

[brightbeak.livejournal.com]

actually, frigthening is the word hubby & i went for! oy!
i can do w/o carbonated beverages (i like them, but they're not a necessity) but my coffee? gotta!
oh well, i'm bass ackwards & not quite up to mfr specs, so this should ahve been expected :)

[annathepiper]

Hee!

Would it be unseemly to gloat...

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

...about being able to catch the 535 home until 10:20? :-)

Re: Would it be unseemly to gloat...

[annathepiper]

Yes. Next question? ;)

(Well, okay, not too terribly unseemly--and I can't bitch too loudly, as I did realize on the way home that if this happens again, as it very well may if I have to work late some evening, I do have the backup plan of the 545 to the U-District and then the 372 up to Kenmore. Just have to make sure I actually catch the 372 when it runs, because it goes to only like once an hour after a certain point.)

Re: Would it be unseemly to gloat...

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

http://tripplanner.metrokc.gov Is Your Friend. :-)

Re: Would it be unseemly to gloat...

[annathepiper]

Yeah, I know! That's how I figured out how to do the 342. :) But the Trip Planner doesn't do me a damn bit of good if I only figure out I've mistaken when a bus is supposed to run when I'm not anywhere near a computer. ;)

Re: Would it be unseemly to gloat...

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Ah, you've noticed that too, huh? :-)

[jessicac.livejournal.com]

I carpool with Sadie on Thursdays and Fridays. We leave RedW-C at about 5:15-5;30pm. You're welcome to catch a ride home wth us.

I drive myself in M-W and my schedule varies more on those days, depending on how early I get up to go to the gym. I generally leave work between 5:30-6 on those days, and you are welcome to catch a ride home with me those nights too.

[annathepiper]

Thank you kindly. :) If you and/or Sadie don't mind swinging over to building 50, I'd be happy to be an extra carpool body! Otherwise, no worries. I've got a free bus pass now and I don't mind taking the bus either!

Nocturnal people and busses

[(Anonymous)]

I'm nocturnal by nature..if allowed to be. Left to myself, I'd got to sleep about 2:00 Ay-Emm and get up about 7:00 Ay-Em, and feel just fine. I can do 24 hours straight no problem..around thirty hours is where I start fading.
My current job requires that I be at work by 5:00 Ay-Em..which sux. The only people on the road at that time are drunks,and cops waiting to catch them...Sometimes you see weird stuff early in the A.M...I ride my bike to work,through some college housing. People passed out are everyday, but a while back a dude had passed out on the sidewalk,and someone(or several someones)had built a vaguely Egyptian looking "monument" around him out of beer cans and bottles.
It's a Southern/Kentucky thing I suppose,and I'm not saying this is right(the opposite,really), but,to me,something almost hardwired deep inside says busses are for hauling you someplace you don't want to go,like school or prison..or for people who've lost their licenses to DUI. I've always kept at least two powered vehicles,and two bicycles..For me, public transportation never goes where I want to go when I want to go..Scott

Re: Nocturnal people and busses

[annathepiper]

I might remind you that I am from Kentucky, so the attitude you describe towards busses can't necessarily be a Kentucky-specific thing. ;) Or, rather, specific to Kentuckians.

However, I will cheerfully grant you that bus service in Lexington blows, from what I can recall of it. So if you've got a hardwired reaction to public transport, I'd blame that on the public transport rather than the state you're in!

Re: Nocturnal people and busses

[(Anonymous)]

I think some of it's cultural-I've lived in a couple southern states(Florida and South Carolina..to me, Kentucky's Midwestern) and public transportation just isn't as common as,say, the northeast.There's apparently no real demand for it.
A friend of mine who lives in Arlington,Texas says their public transit is even worse than Lextran.
Part of it may be I've always lived in small town/rural areas where you had to provide your own transportation. Driving doesn't bother me at all(except on ice),but some people don't like to drive at all. Depends on what works for you,I suppose. Scott

Re: Nocturnal people and busses

[annathepiper]

You have a point re: Kentucky being more Midwestern than South, though I think this actually may depend upon what part of the state you live in. I wonder if the parts down closer to the Tennessee border have a more 'Southern' feel to them. When I was in Chattanooga for six months when I was a teenager, nobody down there believed I was from Kentucky because I kept saying 'Louisville' wrong.

And yeah, I'm sure the whole perception of mass transit depends on what you're used to and where you live. If we lived any farther away from the Seattle urban core, e.g., out in Woodinville or Duvall or northward in Lake Stevens, I'm sure we'd have to be driving a lot more.