dappled shade

Graceful Courtesy

Each morning, hordes pound across the intersection from the Caltrain station to a single-car MUNI train. Everyone manages to cram in, but not everyone gets a seat.

I've seen young men sitting who have offered their seat to women. Unless the woman is old or pregnant, the offer almost always gets rejected. Even if the guy gets up anyway, the woman won't take the seat. It's a matter of pride along the lines of "My business shoes may be damn uncomfortable, but I'm still going to stand rather than be patronized to."

What does happen, though, is that in the mornings, when we're all crammed in, the seats tend to be occupied by women and men are more likely to be standing. It took me awhile to figure out why it wasn't an even distribution. Men are walking into the train, scoping out how crowded it's going to be and opting to just not take a seat. If they already have one, they'll get up and move away from it toward another part of the train.

I'm not sure how I feel about this socially, but it's certainly good manners graciously applied by some MUNI riders.

The Treachery of the Common Swimsuit

One of my ankles is a bit unreliable, and age isn't improving it. The elliptical runner with the shuffle on high is my favorite exercise at the gym, but because of the ankle, I'm moving more and more into swimming.

I started looking for a swimsuit earlier in the year. The timing was perfect - all the stores had pages devoted to swimsuits. These pages were often subdivided by "problem" areas - the waist, stomach, chest (too big or too small), and thighs. Unfortunately, nothing for an ankle so I didn't feel it was all that helpful. In the end I bought a red bikini and brown board shorts from a website that didn't worry about customers' problem areas, but did assure them that the outfit would stay on even in the ocean.

I swim for about 35 minutes and go two or three times a week. Speed is not one of my virtues in the pool as I refuse to put my head under water (water in the ears is just too annoying). But I keep moving, and get a decent workout. It also uses muscles that don't get used on the elliptical runner.

All was well with this routine until last week. After my swim, I hopped out of the pool and discovered that the colorful outside of the bikini had stretched - a lot. (Fortunately, the liner had more or less held its shape.) The bikini bottoms had had the same melt down. It looked like saggy elephant skin. Definitely not attractive, and also somewhat inexplicable. It was as if the bikini top and bottom had got together and decided to spontaneously lose all stretch, leaving a sagging mass where a cute little red swimsuit used to be.

So back to the drawing board for a new swimsuit; hopefully this time for one that doesn't fall apart quite so spectacularly or unexpectedly.

Ginger Tea Message

Note found in my Organic Ginger Tea:

"Help!! I'm a coffee drinker stuck working in a tea factory!"

Made me laugh, but not sure why it was there. The best suggestion so far is that it was an employee on their last day, but, if so, it's a weak protest. Whoever it was, I hope they found some coffee.