Looking for the wipeout, let's get jumping, surf's up and pumping

[austin_dern]

It may feel ridiculous that we parted more than a minute before bunny_hugger had to get on the train and perhaps it was. But it was practical, and for all our joyfully compatible romantic impulses we also have strikingly compatible practical impulses. She could get on a train not far from my office, and if she had to wait a few hours in the train station it wasn't a bad train station and she would enjoy the area Wi-Fi and rented episodes of this season's Doctor Who so she could catch up on being delighted by Matt Smith's performance and infuriated by the stories he was performing in.

This also let me share with her my daily commute, at least the venturing out part. It's not a particularly distinguished route --- a couple local roads to start (although we did stop at Wawa so she could get some coffee, which filled my car with the wonderful scent of the coffee she drinks, and snacks), then the Interstate, and then some interesting stuff again as we get into town --- but it's been one of those things taking up many of the precious minutes of my day for a long time now, and she's got an idea what it looks like now.

Interestingly (to me) the train station is barely a mile away from my office, incredibly convenient, although the path to get there was sufficiently twisty and turny that I wasn't positive I was on the right path, despite the street signs promising I was too approaching it. (Naturally, going back, I realized the other, unsigned, way to get there from my office, and how much easier a path that is.)

I pulled into the dropoff, and helped her luggage out, and hugged and kissed bunny_hugger for a long, long time. Not long enough. I did drive away, reluctantly, and I saw she followed my car as long as possible on the sidewalk outside.

This did make me get into work a couple minutes late, and I apologized to the secretary (who's pretty much in charge of the schedules anyway), who answered my explanation that I had to drop her off at the train station with a sweet, ``Awwww.'' I did say I'd linger after the normal closing hour to make up the time, ``but my heart won't be in it''. I did and it wasn't.

She had a couple hours waiting, though, and we texted one another repeatedly in that time. Neither of us is a natural text-messager, but for this transit, we could pretend. If all went well, by the next evening she would be home again and we would be back to normal.

Trivia: Over the course of 1955-56, Ford Motor Company's ``E'' Car Division developed 2,500 possible names for the car marque; its advertising agency (Foote, Cone, and Belding) found another 18,000 suggestions. None were the ultimately used name of Edsel. Source: Ford: The Men And The Machine, Robert Lacey.

Currently Reading: A Nameless Witch, A Lee Martinez.

Comments

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

she would enjoy the area Wi-Fi and rented episodes of this season's Doctor Who so she could catch up on being delighted by Matt Smith's performance and infuriated by the stories he was performing in

I hope you aren't too disillusioned by this, but there was no Wi-fi at the station and I did not watch my rented Doctor Who until I was on the train. I spent my time in the station playing Scribblenauts on my DS.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

I'm not disillusioned, but I am a little startled. I guess the text messages and such fooled me about the state of your Internet access, and I was surprised the train center hasn't got free Wi-Fi, as my understanding had been the place was rather good about the services that make it a nice place to hang around.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

That's why I was text messaging like crazy: loneliness from not having Internet.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh dear. And then what you suffered on getting home after that, too.

[orv.livejournal.com]

This takes me back to when Dana would visit me. I remember on the way back from dropping her off from the airport I would look over at the empty passenger seat of my car and feel an intense loneliness.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

It takes me a couple days before I don't have the ghost feeling of her in my arms. Even afterwards I can summon the feeling easily.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Also, iTunes has just discontinued TV episode rentals, so watching Doctor Who in future is going to cost me three times as much, if I don't get to B.'s house.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Oh, now, that's particularly obnoxious. I only just learned about it (from you) and haven't had the chance to even start on it yet.

They have got to get the problems with just watching cable channels over the Internet worked out.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

Apparently they didn't sell enough of them; they claim consumers don't really want to rent TV, they want to own it. Yet you can still rent movies. That's completely backward to me: if I like a movie I'm much more likely to buy it than I ever am to buy an episode of a TV show. Most of the time if I watch TV shows it's to keep up with my friends who are watching it, so what I want is immediate access, not long-term ownership.

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

Renting TV shows and keeping movies for good seems more likely to me. But maybe the prime market for shows like this (as opposed to, say, through Free Hulu) is fanboys who want to possess everything forever and ever.

But I'm speculating from the far outside, as often.

[bunny-hugger.livejournal.com]

All I know is that I'm quite cross that now I'll have to spend $3 if I want to watch Doctor Who more or less as it airs instead of whenever Netflix gets it. There isn't any other (legitimate) source of it as far as I know. Grrrrrrr. Three bucks just to watch and then trash it (since it's not as though I have that kind of disk space to spare).

[austin-dern.livejournal.com]

That's really bad. At $3 per I'd be trying to burn them on CDs or USB drives before giving up on the idea in disgust.