So my trip on Thursday from Boston to Albany wasn't so bad on the bus. There weren't very many people on it but the ones that were there represented some of the typical crazies. The bus driver was awesome, very thorough in his job and all the announcements. He was talking me up as I boarded the bus, all friendly, not sure if it was a 'black guy's into me' thing but later when we stopped for a little break I was getting off the bus, walking down the few steps of the bus perfectly fine, not carrying anything but he reached out and grabbed my arm w/ both hands almost all the way up to my shoulder kinda aggressive and 'helped' me down.

At Riverside this black woman got on and sat right in the front behind the driver but when the driver got back on the bus he was kinda mad because he had put his stuff in that seat and I think she just moved it to sit there so he told her next time she had to ask because that was his stuff. She turned out to be a big weirdo. She was wearing some letter pinned to her back. It was a regular sized piece of white computer paper w/ cursive handwriting on it like a letter but the handwriting was small and filled up the whole page so I couldn't read it at all from the distance I was at. After our break I saw her walking back to the bus and she was walking backwards so you just saw this letter coming at you, plus it was enclosed in a clear sleeve for protection :0) While she was off the bus the 70+ year old veteran was just asking out loud to everyone what her deal was and why did she have that on her back. I realized a similar looking letter was also pinned to both her bags of luggage. When she got back on the bus the old guy was asking her about it I think and maybe she said she was an activist. I was trying not to pay attention and had headphones on.

In Albany, I had to wait for my mom for a bit to pick me up. I heard an interesting conversation w/ a cabby talking to this woman that maybe also was a cabby. They seemed to be friends. He was saying how he gave up a $300 fare to someone else, like that meant he was a nice guy but then he said

They were Chinese. I'm not a prejudiced person but I don't like Chinese people. And there must be something wrong if I'm going to give away a $300 fare.

So he was a jerk white guy that was in denial that he's a jerk and his friend was a black woman. What a guy! Obviously he's not prejudiced. He talks to black people for fuck's sake.

This morning at 7am started my trip from Eaton, NY where my mom lives to Rochester Hills, MI. We stopped on the way in Niagra Falls to go running. It was about 30 degrees so not really that cold but the area around the Falls was icy w/ all the mist freezing over on the paved paths. We managed to get in 5 miles and see the Falls. If we stop on the way back I'll get pictures. I've never been when it's that cold I don't think. There was hardly any tourists there so most of the shops were closed. We found one place that had sandwiches so this 75 or so year old man was working there and made our food. When we walked in he was sitting at one of the tables, no one else was in there, except the woman sitting w/ him. She was older too, maybe his woman, and she had very, very fake blonde hair and a red shirt on that said 'Red Diva.' She kinda reminded me of my Great Aunt Lo. Anyway Grandpa made us a veggie burger for mom and egg salad for me. It took a very long time but he made the egg salad kinda from scratch. He started w/ a hard-boiled egg and proceeded from there. I was kinda impressed. We finally got out of there to deal w/ our parking meter. The meter was real weird. It had a camera on it so if your time elapsed it would take a picture and send you a ticket. Luckily there was a grace period before that happened where you could throw in more money and not get a ticket. We had to do that a bunch of times because we kept running out of time but luckily no violation.

Made it into Canada okay. I also got to listen to my all-time fav radio station, 102.1 The Edge, out of Toronto. I started listening back when I was an undergrad at SUNY Buffalo and we got that station. I was so sad when I moved to Boston and no more The Edge. Anyway I got to listen for awhile today. Just before going back into the US for Michigan we were low on gas so got off at an exit to get some. We drove around for over 30 minutes trying to find gas on empty and fearing we'd completely run out. Mom started stopping in the middle of the street to ask random pedestrians or wave at cars to roll down their windows to help us because w/ each person they'd give directions but we wouldn't find the place. It took a few tries but then we found some gas. Mom said it reminded her of the Amazing Race when the people ask random strangers to physically take them to a place because that was what she was about to do.

So now w/ a full tank of gas we made our way back into the US. At the border the patrolman I guess was trying to be funny and asked

"Do you have any Canadian cabana boys hidden in the back?" I said "I wish." I'm not sure if he heard me so my mom repeated what I said and then added "She must be looking." Patrolman then said "That's not good." Then I was thinking, Oh Shit, why can't you just keep your mouth closed. He's going to pull us over because I'm being a smart-ass. Luckily for us his response was "That's when you settle." So I guess he was saying That's not good that I'm looking for someone because that's when you settle on anyone. Might be true, but not the case yet for me.

Finally made it to my brother's 10.5 hours after leaving my mom's. So weird to see my niece and nephew. Hadn't seen them since Easter. They grow up so fast! JJ is now walking all over on his own, he's 1y 2m, and has all kinds of teeth. Ella's basically potty-trained and saying all kinds of stuff at 2y 9m. She loves to dance so we were dancing in the living room to the music channels on cable. We had it on the rap channel and she was calling it 'the nasty music' and shaking her butt all over the place, then we'd turn it to bluegrass and she'd yell 'Yippee Caillou' and 'Yee-haw.' If we put it on the metal station she'd do headbanging moves. Awesome! Can't wait until tomorrow. Too bad I'll be exhausted because I'm staying up while everyone else is asleep and then they'll wake me up really early in the morning.

I deleted a large portion of my blog late Thursday night. I was trying to update the Amazon links in my sidebar and ended up accidentally deleting a ton of the blog. I was freaking out because I wasn't sure if it was gone forever and I've been blogging all this crap since Aug 2002 so that's a big portion of my life's history gone plus all the hard work RR has put into it. I thought he was going to be furious w/ me.

I was trying to delete one of the Amazon images from the server because I wanted to change the size of it and I didn't realize that the main folder for my weblog was also highlighted so when I hit Delete it started deleting everything in my weblog folder. It took me a bit to respond because I didn't expect that to happen and then finally I hit stop but it was too late. When I first went to check the site to see how it looked, it looked the same so for some reason I thought maybe the computer decided to have my back and didn't really delete all that stuff because why the hell would anyone do that? But then I ended up reloading the site and it was a mess.

I wanted to contact RR ASAP so first I tried emailing but only had the patience to wait a minute w/out a response. My cell phone doesn't work at my mom's so then I had to go downstairs and call RR from her phone but no one answered. (Jenn, when will you ever switch your cell phone to voicemail and not the office main line???) I repeatedly called until I got an answer and talked to RR.

I told him I did something really bad and he started to freak out. He thought it was something like I screwed him over somehow so when I told him what I did he didn't really seem worried. He said we should have a backup and it would be fine. So now she's back up w/out losing any data. Now I'm afraid to mess w/ things so I'll take some time off. That works out anyway because I'm at my brother's and he doesn't have wireless so I can't use my laptop. I'll just use his once in awhile like I am right now.

Thank TimeMachine for backing the server up properly!