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Tuesday, July 12, 2005

Planes, Trains and Automobiles

I'm starting out with Trains and Automobiles. I don't know what I'm going to say about planes, but I wanted to use the title, so I'll come up with something. ;-)

Light rail runs down the middle of the street in front of the building where I work. It's relatively new, less than a year, and we've been saying even before the section of track opened, that someone was going to get hit by the train because there were no crossing arms that came down to prevent people from crossing the tracks.

Yesterday, it happened.

Traffic was backed up onto the airline property, and I thought that was really odd. I could see a police officer directing traffic, but I figured that had to do with a funeral since the cemetery across the street is always burying someone and there are frequently police escorts of the funeral processions. It wasn't until I actually made it up to the street and turned right, that I realized something was going on. With my uncanny instincts, all it took was the ambulance pulling away, the 20 sets of flashing lights and the train stopped on the tracks to give it away. :-) As I made it farther down the road, I could see the smooshed car where the train had pushed it.

The only snippet of coverage I saw last night said the driver was only slightly injured (Thank goodness!) and that he'd been trying to turn around. Which totally does not make sense. Why would you try to turn around on a train track with the train coming?

Oh! I just figured how to tie airplanes into this topic. How about this? I can be fairly confident that this wasn't one of my fellow airline employees since the accident took place in front of the cemetery and the clinic, not my building. (Yeah, kind of a loose tie in, but I don't feel like talking about work and that's the only other way I could think to bring planes into the conversation.)

I went to chat last night since Crimson City is out this month, but only one Dorchester author with a book out this month showed up. She lives in Germany and the chat started at 3am her time. Gah! But she was there and sounded wide awake. :-) Probably more awake than I was. Anyway, with so few authors in attendance (the third one who showed up timed out early on), I was asked questions about Crimson City--both the series and the book out this month--and it was so cool to see how interested people were! Hopefully, this interest will hold into October when Crimson Veil comes out.

I also ordered some more stationery yesterday. I was planning on it anyway because I need note paper desperately. I've been using free stuff I'd gotten years ago since I didn't have anything else, but even that is running out. But I wouldn't have ordered so quickly if I didn't get 10% off from the company who printed my notecards. So I found some cute little paper with pink lettering. :-) What can I say? Fuchsia is my favorite color. I also picked up some address labels (why don't the half a gazillion charities who inundate me with labels send me some with my PO box on it?) and these adorable note cards with my name embossed on it. I would have ordered more, except I saw the total in my shopping cart and reluctantly stopped buying.

And somehow between arriving home late from the train incident, ordering stationery, working on my bio for the RT Convention, and going to chat, I managed to write nothing yesterday. Oh, I did do a little clean up job on the chapter I finished, but I'm feeling very frustrated. If I could bring my laptop into work, I could accomplish so much more. But my damn foot means I carry the minimum. Grrr.

MN Weather Report: 73 degrees. Still humid.