Friday 10 January 2014

A Commute Comparison

Monday's commute to work on the TTC:
- wake up late, the snooze button is my friend
- feeling tired and sad
- dreading returning to work after the holidays
- look all over the house for pieces of clothes, that may or may not be clean
- outfit feels uncomfortable and unattractive
- grab a few grapes on my way out the door
- so insanely cold outside; feet, fingers, and face freeze
- have to walk slow because the ice on the sidewalk is terrible
- unable to find my metropass in my purse
(kind streetcar driver lets me on anyway)
- continued frantic search for metropass proves fruitless
- not enough change to pay the fare when I transfer to the bus
- an attempt to break a $20 bill at McDonalds fails due to their lack of change
- wait forever for a Dufferin bus, many come but there isn't room
- crowded bus arrives and I have to squeeze in
(kind bus drive lets me on after only paying $2.25 instead of $3)
- bus and/or crowd of people smell awful
- floor of bus is covered in water and slush; bus is warm, making me sweat
- had to bring second pair of socks for the commute home, feet are soaked
- high school students talk incessantly, about nothing
(I do get a seat after the mass exit at Dufferin Station)
- sitting on a sideways seat squished between two people
- purse and lunchbag on my lap, the bulk is adding to the heating and sweating
- bus is announced to short turn at Queen
- scramble for phone to text my boss that I might be late due to the short walk
(the walk up the hill to work ends up being fast, nice, and refreshing)
- forgot to wear the new watch I got for Christmas
- hat hair
- dress shoes kept at work are in worse shape than I remembered
- fan in the office is making a loud and distracting noise but is on too high a shelf for me to reach
(when I get my computer turned out, I find out that I did arrive in time, a couple minutes to spare actually)

Friday's commute to work on the TTC:
- wake up after hitting the snooze button a couple of times
- feeling refreshed, healthy, and awake
- a basic but cute outfit can be made from the pile of clean laundry piled on my desk
- enjoy some canned peaches
- warm but still softly snowing outside
- a light sprinkle of snow of the roads and sidewalk that has yet to turn to slush
- streetcar arrives moments after I get to the stop
- a TTC token in my pocket, replaced by a transfer on the streetcar
- streetcar is clean and travels down St. Clair West quickly
- someone walks by and I catch a brief scent of nice perfume/cologne 
- I daydream but still manage to catch my proper stop and get off without issue
(miss a mostly empty bus that passes me as I approach the stop)
- a quick transfer with no waiting, a bus comes quickly and I can get on
- after a few stops I am able to walk to the back of the bus and stand out of the way
- the bus nearly empties at Dufferin Station, I get a seat and few people get on
- bus driver negotiates the busy street smoothly, the bus is quiet 
- a double seat to myself, I can see people walking dogs out of the window
- lots of squirrels in the big park
- the driver opens the back doors for me just as I reach them
- walking to my building I pass some nice infrastructure projects we have been working on and they look good
- run into the building's superintendents, have a nice walk-and-talk
- watch Jason gave me says I'm 15 minutes early
Needless to say, I had a good commute today!

3 comments:

Sweeton said...

It's nice when it all works well

Jannedals said...

wow those are two completely different moods! Mine is roughly the same every time, but I have four different ways of getting to school and I like to switch it up just to keep things interesting. The rest of it is just listening to Swedish people talk in their silly language haha

Anonymous said...

Wow like night and day! I'm glad your week ended on a better note than it started. Always nice when that happens. Either way your commute sounds rough. Toronto really needs to invest in transit! I don't envy your commute.

Love,
Teri