Feh.

I was in New York this weekend, so on the way home I was musing about what sort of lunches I could prepare for the week, given that I have something planned every night this evening. Especially Monday and Tuesday, because I wouldn't be able to shop on Sunday and I'm staying in DC over Monday night, so I can't prepare anything for Tuesday on Monday night.

Then I remembered that I had made a double pot of chili last week, and I had two portions packed in my freezer.

So this morning I got up and packed for my overnight stay. I set out the lunches in a bag on my desk as I gathered things together.

Then I walked out without them. :-(

So now they're going to thaw and sweat all over my desk, probably marring it. I won't be home again until Tuesday evening, so those lunches are lost to me, and now I have to go out for lunch. I'm hoping that Russell decided not to go into work today (he called this morning to say he overslept, so he may have just gone back to bed) and can drop by my apartment to rescue my meals.

Bus from hell

So here's the story about my frustrating trip home yesterday.

I left deege's apartment and made it downtown to the Port Authority Bus Terminal without incident with about an hour to spare. Then I wandered around trying to find where I needed to be to catch my bus. I couldn't find any information on my ticket or display that told me at which gate I needed to be. I eventually got the information from a Greyhound employee.

When I found the gate, I also found a looooong line of people waiting to go to New Carrollton/Washington D.C. I was expecting a system like that at an airport gate: your ticket tells you which bus you're going to board and that bus is filled with people holding those tickets. Apparently not. Although my ticket did have a bus number, they seemed to just load each bus up with whoever was at the head of the line.

For some reason, by the time I approached the head of the line they decided that they needed to skip delivering passengers to New Carrollton, so me and other New Carrollton passengers stood to the side and watched while two buses were designated "D.C. Express". Eventually, one of the other New Carrollton passengers made a fuss and they assured us that we would board the next bus. They said they were obtaining a free bus that would go to New Carrollton.

The trip itself was uneventful, until we passed through Baltimore and hit the Baltimore beltway south of the city. The driver hared off on the beltway, taking us all the way to Pikesville before leaving the beltway and finding a place to park while she tried to get directions on the phone.

When she returned to the bus, we found a place to turn the bus around (at the Milford Mill subway station) and then got back on 695 to return all the way back to I-95 and resume our trip south.

Then she hit the D.C. beltway and everything was looking good. We passed the Greenbelt Metro station and I knew that New Carrollton was not far. Then she took the exit for the Baltimore-Washington Parkway! This caused a great deal of fuss among the passengers. The folks headed for D.C. agitated for the bus to continue into the city, since we were getting closer to the city all the time. The rest of us agitated for keeping to the schedule. Eventually, one of the passengers went to the front of the bus to give the driver directions to New Carrollton that entailed us getting off on S. Dakota and making our way through Cheverly and Bladensburg.

My guess is that because this bus wasn't on the regular schedule, the driver didn't know the route. If they hadn't fussed with the schedule in New York and refrained from dropping the New Carollton stop from the other buses, then we wouldn't have become lost.

So we arrived at New Carrollton almost exactly two hours late, which meant that I had missed the first train that would take me back home to Baltimore. I caught the next train and got to my apartment around 8:30 p.m.

Really, I shouldn't have made the return trip to New Carrollton. I should have booked the return directly to Baltimore. That's what I'll do if I ever take the bus to New York again.