Today was the end of my horrendous commutes which tacked miles onto my car faster than you could say, “oil change.” In my rush to get out the door this morning, 1.5 hours before we had been for the last two years, I forgot any viable reading materials to take with me on the bus. Attempting to avoid another trip reading RSS feeds on my tiny hiptop screen, I made sure to prep some materials for tomorrow.
The first is Outside, a magazine that’s been around since the 70s that’s about the great outdoors… I never subscribed to it but it started showing up about a year ago for free. I have been enjoying it while it was free and while this is my last issue and I don’t plan on renewing it, I figured I better at least tell them publicly what a great magazine they have. If only it continued to come for free ;)
The second is Field Notes from a Catastrophe which was chosen as Century College’s Common Book Project choice. As I mentioned before, I had read another contender for the Common Book, A Long Way Gone, a while back and while I thought it was all right, it wasn’t anything that I could get too excited about or thought should be read by college-level students. I haven’t read “Field Notes” yet but from a quick glance, I should be able to finish it tomorrow — possibly on the way to work alone ;)
Shout-out goes to another South Metro Blogger King who I saw on the bus this morning — you rule.
If you take mass transit to work, what do you use to pass the time?
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April 22nd, 2008 at 8:47 am
i take the 477. i typically listen or watch podcasts on the iphone, or i play games on the psp or ds.
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:39 am
You know I miss the buss. Getting indoor heating parking downtown as a perk on my new gig has made me soft(r). Reading and listening to the old MP3 player.. I’m old enough to remember taking a portable CD player on the bus. HA. Once the MP3 (and I’ve never been a big fan of ITunes) deal got going I started doing Audiobooks. Great idea, except you miss big portions of the book due to unconsciousness brought on my droning narration.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:48 am
One of the reasons Kat and I moved from north Minneapolis to South St Paul was to shorten our commutes. Commuting to Bloomington and West St Paul was taking up too much of our time. I tried busing it but found the doubling of my commute time to be unacceptable. And Kat’s schedule and job made busing impractical.
While moving was expensive and a hassle, my life feels so much more sane now. My commute time, from door to cubicle, is only 20 minutes. Of course, the days I telecommute are even better.
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:54 am
Looking at how you framed that picture, I thought the book title was going to be “Field Notes from a Castration”. That, too, would be an interesting yet painful read.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:26 am
Bill,
Great shout out to the Century College Common Book project. I am currently working on the new site, to which you linked. It is obviously a work in progress. I hope you like the book. I’d be interested to see what you think when you’re done. I hope from time to time you decide to turn to the person next to you (Kim) and talk to her. Don’t be the guy who is too engrossed in his good book to talk to his wife. I was that guy last night. I am reading another Chaim Potok book! I love it. Hope all is well.
Andy
April 22nd, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I didn’t finish the book today and instead of talking to my wife like Andy suggested, I ended up zonking out for half the ride. What a relief it is to get to nap after leaving work!
fehler, LOL — I seriously almost spit Crystal Light all over my keyboard when I read that. I’m surprised I didn’t catch my own crop job ;)
Scott, yeah, I understand the issues with living/working where busing isn’t practical (I did it for 5 years) but now that I can, I must say that I can’t believe I missed out on it for so long…
Sank, they had CD players back then?! Wow. I thought you were going to go back to the transistor radio days or smoke signals or something! :)
Adam, hopefully once my T-mobile contract is up in October I’ll be able to switch to something else. I would love to see Android work out but I have a feeling, based on what we’ve see so far, that the iPhone is the best bet for mobile Internet. I would like to do the whole movie, music thing — especially that my wife monopolizes the MP3 player I bought for me…
April 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
I think I saw you walking to the bus yesterday am. Was going to say something but I decided that I’m not a good morning person & wasn’t sure if you guys were. =)
Usually I read a book on the way to work. Depending on how loud the people are around me, I will listen to my iPod. On the way home, I usually watch a tv show on the iPod.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:20 pm
Usually I read a book or magazine while listening to my iPod (I have one of the original Shuffle models; one of these days I am going to invest in a newer model). But some days I just nap, though it is harder to sleep on the train than it was on the bus.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:41 pm
Tim, agreed. They need to make the train less squealy and make less stops. Maybe in the future, when they have the infastructure, they can make every other express between point A and downtown.
I just woke up from my much needed bus nap and now it’s time for dinner :)