...minus the number of Filipinos in the Bible...

I woke up this morning having crashed on Stan & Scott's couch after a night of revelry that involved a good Caribbean restaurant in Encino and girls with names like Sunshine and Skyler and Misty Rain. I left Stan's house at 9:30, walked over to Lassen only find out that the bus only ran on weekdays, walk further south to Plummer and watched the bus drive by just as I was coming over a hill. I missed it by 5 minutes, which meant I'd have to wait another hour just for the next one to show up. Having no other options, I sat.

There's something about sitting in the hot San Fernando Valley sun in last night's clothes while waiting for a bus that isn't coming for another hour, while a strange mix of scotch, Cuban food and five dollar bottles of water still fill your breath. Maybe it was all that percolating in my stomach or maybe it was the fact that cell phone Mahjjong can only hold your attention for so long. Either way, having discovered other options, I stood up.

My plan was to walk along the bus route on Plummer until I found an establishment where I could loiter until the next bus came. Worst case scenario is that I would have to wait until 11am doing nothing, er, doing nothing aside from playing Mahjjong and wondering why you can't get your cell phone to connect to the Web.

Instead, since it was nothing but a residential area, I ended up just walking a dozen blocks until I found a stop that had a chair in the shade. It's hard to do when the sun shines directly on your side of the street, but I found a house whose garden was more unkempt than the others and whose yard consisted of the bus bench on the sidewalk. The heat was getting to me and the motivation exhibited by the joggers was starting to get irritating. The bus couldn't arrive soon enough. After a few transfers, I made it to work, picked up my bike, and made it home. I've grown accustomed to just bringing it with me as part of my commute, and it's nice to think that I don't have to feel the pinch at the gas pump or have to worry about bullets whizzing by me. All in all, while life can still be bothersome (like the fact that my next door neighbor is a registered sex offender), it really ain't all that bad.

While sitting at the bus stop, a jogger stopped nearby to stretch. We simultaneously looked up at the sun, a moment where we shared a common distaste for the heat, I because of my wool jacket, and he because he probably would have gotten a stroke. He said to me in passing, "You don't have to be crazy, but it certainly helps."