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Thursday, November 25, 2004
Not quite over the river and through the woods My brother, who's a Philly cop (hereinafter "B.", which is his actual initial, not just standing for "brother"), was planning to drive us to Delaware today; he works the night shift—the proverbial third watch—so he said "I'll be there at 9, unless something comes up." This morning, about 7:45, the phone downstairs rings while I'm still working on waking up, and I overhear J. talking to B. (a lot of "Oh, okay" and "Uh-huh" and "Wow"); a little later he comes upstairs to give me the report: J.: Well, that was B., he says he got caught up in something, he probably won't be here until 10 or 11, "unless the guy dies," then he'll be there all day.I called my mom and told her about the change in plans, and said we could take a train if we had to. I didn't have a current schedule, so I went to the SEPTA Web site to look up train times; they recently revamped the site, and now it's so frickin' up-to-date it's unusable—the schedules, which used to just be HTML, are in PDF now—only PDF—and only for Acrobat 6.0, which I don't have on my home computer. So of course I had to download it, which over my dial-up connection took over half an hour, while I grumbled and muttered imprecations against them. I mean, c'mon, you can't have HTML or text versions for the visually impaired or people with really old computers? Or at least have versions for Adobe 5.0, which more people are likely to have? Grrr snarl snap humph. I eventually discovered a train that would leave Philly at 11:34 and get to the station about fifteen minutes from my parents' house at 12:09; at about 10:45 I called B. and said we could take the train if he wasn't going to get out of there anytime soon. He said he was just about done, though—just some paperwork to fill out, so I guess the guy, whoever he was, didn't die—and he can pick us up at 11:30. And knowing the way he drives, we should get to my parents' house at, oh, noon. (While he was in the police academy, he drove very carefully, because speeding tickets can get you sent back to the next class or even kicked out. Now that he's got the badge, though, he basically never has to obey a speed limit again. He drives fast, but very well; I'd say "confident," not "assertive" or "aggressive." It's fun driving with him; it's like being in a video game.) Okay, 11:11 now; I'd better wrap this up, do the plant-watering and bird-feeding, round up the food we're taking to DE, and get ready to go. Between two cups of coffee and a whole Ritalin tablet, I'm rarin' to go. So another Happy Thanksgiving; I'll see you on the other side of dinner. [ at 11:18 AM • by Abby • permalink • ] |
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