Month: January 2015

Coffeeshop down

In the interest of reducing our carbon footprint and sleeping in for 15 minutes more every morning, hubby and I have switched up our morning commute. Now rather than being driven to my office we drive to his office – which is on the train line and a 10 minutes train ride from my office.

When we came up with the plan it made perfect sense. After all, the drive to his office is 15 minutes, the drive to my office is 40.

But you know what they say about the best laid plans.

First of all, the train platform is not heated because apparently the city is run by people who hibernate and are therefore blissfully unaware of winter. I am having increasing difficultly balancing fashion with warmth.

GTV ARCHIVE

There is a point those two things become mutually exclusive. That point hovers around -25 degrees Celsius.

Second, the train is like a sardine can. There is  no way I can hold a coffee, my purse, my lunch, my shoe bag and still hold on so I don’t fall on the lurching train.

Sardine train

So this means I don’t get my morning americano enroute to his office/my transit. That is really making it hard to smile as I arrive at work, but I am being a trooper and enduring my coworkers even while in my non-caffeinated stupor.

I thought that I could manage until 10 by drinking a bit of office coffee, at which point I would simply take a two block saunter to Starbucks. But WTH office coffee? W-T-H? It’s bum coffee. It offends me. It is worse than the caffeine headache.

Plus then we had that series of -37C with windchill days. There was no way I was going outside and Starbucks does not deliver (I asked). So I had a terrible choice. Bum coffee all day, or tea.

I chose tea. It may be caffeinated but tea is a poor substitute for coffee, and the only way to make it better is to be stoic. I have gained much insight into the British disposition. Cultural idiosyncrasies explained.

stiff upper lip

Well, today the weather broke. It is a balmy two degrees above zero morning and I wrapped up and skipped off to Starbucks. I joyfully got my americano. It sounds like a happy ending. Right? Nope. In my absence they had become lackadaisical about stocking and had let the whole store run out of my preferred raw sugar.

So close, yet so far 😦

no coffee face

 

In private, public transportation

My holiday respite from my crowded commute is over. It officially ended Monday afternoon.

You see, I take the train to meet my beloved and he then drives me home.

I get on the train at the 4th stop going south (there are more stops going north, but I try not to pay attention to anything north of our downtown core because it is too plebeian).

  1. The first stop serves federal and civic government employees.
  2. The second is used by passengers who work in the tall business office towers and exclusive shopping boutiques.
  3. The third stop is close to a college and business school and used by students.
  4. By the time the train reaches my stop, the fourth stop, I and a multitude of provincial government employees are on this platform waiting to embark:

grandin stn

I am willing to stand for my ride south, but I still need personal space during the journey. I have even been known to wait 6 minutes for a second train because I did not think I would have adequate personal space on the first train. The problem is, not everyone seems to share my need for personal boundaries.

After my stop the train crosses the river then stops on the far bank at the university.

LRT bridge

Clearly youth is more comfortable with direct physical contact than we, the middle aged.

On the Monday question I got on the first train, having decided I had adequate space. Then at the univeristy 20 more students than common sense and physical space should have allowed for decided to squeeze on.

I was wedged up next to some amazonian proto-intellectual, my head under her chin.

As god as my witness, it took every ounce of my will to not scream and flail about in protest.

I stood suffering for 15 minutes as her breath parted my hair and proceeded down my exposed neck and into my blouse. It was horrific. I prefer to save that level of intimacy for my husband, in private.

Husband Zone