Another day, another dollar

I missed my regular train this morning — or, rather, the train I normally get when I oversleep a little and miss the earlier regular train. There’s a 7:37, and then an 8:15, out of my station and I can get a good half-hour nap in if I catch the later of the two. It means I have to work until 5 instead of 4:30, and I much prefer getting the earlier train in the evening if I can do so. It’s less crowded, for one thing, and it gets me home a good forty-five minutes earlier than the next train. (Because it’s less crowded, has fewer stops, and requires less waiting around in Penn Station.) But it’s tough making that argument with my body when I haven’t had enough sleep, and at least twice this week my brain has lost it.

This morning I couldn’t find my hat — it was underneath some papers on my chair — and so I missed the 8:15 by a couple of minutes. I live less than five minutes from the train station, and I could see the train pulling into it as I raced that one block, but I just didn’t make it. I had to stop running when my iPod went flying out of my coat pocket anyway — its edges are a little chipped, though it seems otherwise okay — so I just accepted that I’d have to catch the 8:30 train instead. I just stood on the platform and listened to Studio 360 — the time travel show I’m sorry I missed when it taped live here in New York — and waited. And I’ve got to tell you, I’m really glad I didn’t give up looking for that hat. I’m glad I found it before the next train — not until 9:23 — but it was really too cold today to be without it.

Anyway, I think I’ve spent all this time talking about my train schedules and brief morning mishaps simply because the day was otherwise uneventful. I worked through lunch to make up some of the time the missed train cost me, and I read what I think is a really good chapter on a book we’re developing for counseling older adults. I worked a little more on that short story, and right now I’m watching the third episode of that Monty Python documentary.

According to my desk calendar (one of three I received this Christmas), today is Haxey Hood Day, which I’m amused to discover is still a very living tradition. That’s really neither here nor there, but it’s a whole lot more exciting than my day was.