An interesting day - shoes, butterflies, bats

For a day I spent mostly sitting at my desk waiting for people to answer my questions so I could immediately send out more and wait again (such is my job), some pretty interesting things happened.

I took the bus this morning, and as I always do, I wore sneakers for the walk from the bus stop to work and brought my shoes. I arrived at work amd forgot to take off my sneakers for about a half hour. I eventually did remember, only to find--

I had brought the right shoe of two very similar pairs *headdesk*

It was funny, though, and I was able to amuse several people throughout the day with the story.

I had a mildly disturbing experience after lunch - there was a bee in my window on the inside, and it wouldn't get onto a flat surface so I could catch it in a tupperware thing and take it outside. I wouldn't have had any qualms about killing it if it had been something vicious like a wasp or a yellowjacket, but I think it was a honeybee. Anyway, when my boss got back, she called up a dude from the first floor and he beat it to death with a newspaper. I felt a little eeeugh about it, but not enough to raise a fuss.

Then when I was walking to the bus stop after work, I saw about a bafrillion ants. It was one of those situations where I thought they were piles of dirt, about ten inches long and four wide, on the edge of the sidewalk... and then I realized they were writhing. Skillions of teeny red ants (the color of red velvet cake, actually!) coating the blades of grass and generally milling over the area. I kept far away from them.

My bus stop is on a road that comes at a right angle to the road I walk down, and so sometimes I take the diagonal across this huge lawn beside one of the corporate buildings. Today I decided not to, because I was early and I thought I might as well get more exercise, but then I saw a monarch butterfly in the grass and followed it.

Once I got into the middle of it, the lawn was blanketed with blooming clover. It was mostly white, but there were some purple ones mixed it. It smelled heavenly everywhere. I walked toward the bus stop and looked around for the butterfly, who was flitting off to my left and getting farther away. I let it go. Once I got to the bus stop and was still pretty early, I turned back to see if I could find the butterfly again, and it was right there, flying right at me, around my head. I said "Hi!" all surprised, and then it went away down the sidewalk and across the street.

I looked back into the meadow and saw another monarch butterfly, watched it for a while, and saw it also go down the sidewalk but not cross the road. I saw another one in the opposite end of the meadow. Three monarch butterflies :) I love them. I remember the first one I saw last year, on a windy day as I walked to lunch, holding on in the grass and trying not to get blown away by the impending thunderstorm. I saw them, at least once every other day, for a week or more after that.

To completely destroy the lovely image, later on the bus I sat across from a guy who kept playing with his teeth with his tongue, and I thought he must just normally have a really fat lip, or else he had braces. Then I saw him spit brown shit into a plastic soda bottle and I almost barfed ¬_¬ Chewing tobacco is BAD NEWS, people. Not only can you lose half your face, it seriously grosses out the general populace.

caitirin and I had dinner at the dining hall (I had mostly french fries because out of all the things on today's menu we had planned we could eat - a dozen at least - they had ONE in the actual dining hall. Jerks.) then we went to my parents to pick up costume stuff. My dad slipped me six bucks for mini ice creams at the dairy bar down the street from their house ^_^ He's the best daddy ever. And this place has SERIOUSLY good ice cream, for cheap. Something like $1.75 for an "itty bitty," which amounts to a generously sized single scoop.

And when we got home, there were bats! Lots of them flying around eating the bugs. I had a lot of bug-related experiences today! Hee. I like bats*. We could see them flapping around, different than birds, with their wings all transparent. I heard kids screaming outside a few minutes later and I wonder if they saw them too XD

*When they're outside.