short nights, full waiting rooms, and bitten-back comments

I managed to squeeze an extra 15 minutes of sleep in this morning and still get to the dealership on time.


After handing over the car I headed for the customer waiting room, dreading the hours of “Fox News” or other programming that might be my fate.

There was only one other poor soul waiting and he had tuned the TV to the History Channel and was watching what was essentially a commercial for a Tom Cruise movie about assassination plots against Hitler. I settled in to read and managed to say nothing about the programming. The room filled up with older women who were producing frequent soupy-sounding productive coughs. No one was covering coughs; no one had any hand sanitizer. About every five minutes one of them received a phone call and none of them had the courtesy to leave the waiting area while conducting personal business.

After 0900 I did step out into the corridor in order to call ETSU and arrange a slot for myself in the CSI course. Before I could sit down, Gloria called to check in and I went back into the hall.

After most of the other customers had left to retrieve their cars and be on about their day, the most prolific of the coughing women found the remote and dialed in network daytime fluff and pseudo-news. I said nothing. I wasn’t about to handle that remote when she stepped outside and vanished for some reason.

By noon, the room had refilled with new customers. A news item about the Palin book featured a commentator down-checking her political chances to win the US presidency. The customers, however, all thought differently. I said nothing. I did not mention my working title for her ghost-written book, “Sarah’s Big Book of Big Lies.” I did not bring up her habit of quitting every job she’s had before completing them, her inability to form a complete sentence, or her willingness to incite lynch mobs, while excluding anyone but white evangelicals from the roles of US citizens. They were mostly old, and I could, most likely have escaped the room without being bludgeoned. But I chose not to excite or incite them.

I’m now registered for both my classes. I suppose I’ll go onto the campus tomorrow and get some clerical things done, student ID, parking permit, find out about e-mail accounts and campus alert programs.

That, in itself, may be fun as I have two ophthalmology appointments tomorrow and I’m sure they will dilate my eyes. Grocery shopping, filling out forms, being photographed with a flash, just driving home will be so much fun. But I’m sort of used to it and it won’t be nearly as bad as coming home to Palmetto from Bay Pines, crossing the Sunshine Skyway bridge at sunset with dilated eyes.

Soup and leftovers for dinner.

The trip into Greeneville was a pretty drive this morning. All the valleys were filled with fog. The sun was just beginning to illuminate the top of the fog layer as it crested the ridges to the east. Nearly every valley had a fog layer in it. Worth being up to see.