My past twenty four hours have been a bit stressful. First, the bus that was going to take me to the train station passed me by. Daniel and I had to frantically call around for a ride. Thankfully, Jared came through and I got to the station in the nick of time. I had just settled down with my books and a cup of tea, when, two minutes out of Tukwila*, the electricity on the train goes out and we screech to a halt. Forty-five minutes later, it is confirmed that there was "an incident with a trespasser on the rails." I have never been in such close proximity to death before, let alone death caused by the vehicle I was riding in. The crew was great (they handled it really well), but most of the passengers were being so blase about it--it was really distressing. All their jokes about body parts in bags and oh-this-is-soooo-inconvenient really got to me. I still feel pretty off today. My initial reaction was to keep it abstract, like I was watching a TV show (this may be some form of dissociation); every time I caught myself thinking about the violent-death part, felt my pulse quicken and my chest get tight, I pushed it off and read some more viking lit. Like I said, today, I feel a little off still. Probably didn't help that I got home at 12:45am.
Then, this morning, some genius decided that Portland should put chains on all of its buses, making them 20 minutes late. I did not realize this until I was on a bus going 25 mph on a 50mph street.** I missed class because of it. Stupid Portland--it has only just started snowing, like, right now. And, to add insult to injury, it is snowing everywhere except for my house.
However, due to my resilience, and these awesome videos, I felt a lot better.
last, but not least, BILL NYE, explaining the effects of El Niño:
*equivalent to about 20 minutes south of Seattle
**I just thought my usual bus was insanely late, but it turns out every bus was