Restoring my Faith in Humanity, One Bus Ride At A Time

Let's just get it out there.
It's been a while.
A long, long while.
And I have stuff to write about.
Stuff.
"Shtuff"
Scheise, for you proud Germans out there.
You know what I mean.

But instead of discussing what it means to blog, or what has been going on with me.
I've decided to keep it light.
To keep it cool, calm and collected.
To keep it real.

But let's get you caught up, right quick:
1. Remember when I started this blog? It was because I got laid off by the BT Supercenter? Well guess who's working for the BT Supercenter again. That's right. This one.
2. Remember when we elected a democratic house, senate and president? That was awesome, and terribly short-lived.
3. Remember when my grandma died? That blog caused some major drama from some of my cousins' mommas. We'll blog about that at a different time (insert evil laughter here).
4. Remember all my talk of higher learnin' and grad school? Well guess who's actually taking the plunge and applying. That's right. This one.

And that's pretty much it.
For now.
I mean, sure lots of other things revealed themselves to be true during the months that have passed, but I'm trying to restore your faith in humanity. Not bore you to death.

So I'm on the bus this morning. And it's not my usual bus.
I could not, for the life of me, figure out what to where this morning and thus, my comfortable and familiar 31 Bus was missed.

The 31 is a short, yet comfortable ride. I always get a seat. It's not too full, but it isn't a ghost bus, there are other corporate zombies on it. I feel kind of at home.

But alas, this morning I hopped on the 30 as it was the bus that came first and baby, it's cold outside.

And I'm reading.
And I have my ipod in.
And I'm not paying too much attention until 27th street.
Where a conversation starts to take place.
A conversation amongst the senior citizens occupying the seats specifically for them.
Two women, one's clearly a professional of some sort; carrying multiple bags and looking somewhat put together.
The other woman is possibly homeless, but oh man, is she as sharp as a whip.
The two men are African-American with pretty thick southern accents. If I were to judge their social class by the way they dressed, I would say working class, maybe one of the met teetering on lower-than-working class.

And these olds are just having the grandest of time. Talking about everything from exercise to politics to bike trails. All of them were democrats (YES!) and the possibly-homeless-lady was all anti-Scott Walker and how all the ladies voted for him cos he's good looking, to which the classy olds pipes up and says, "I didn't!"
It made me giggle.
Working class guy #1 says how he thought for sure Tom Barrett would win.

I don't know.
It made me feel good to know that across class and race, these folks could have a decent conversation.
And on public transportation in the "most racist city in the USA."

Possible-homeless lady got off at St. James and Working-class guy got off at the Dunkin' Donuts where he received a butterscotch candy from a passer-by.

Seriously, you can't make this up.

Day 97

And I'm never goin' back to my old school.

Who doesn't love a little Steely Dan in the morning?
And it's the morning, kids.
Don't be fooled.
After hanging out with some of my oldest, yet still awesome friends last night, the dogs (all three of them) decided to wake me up at such an hour that I would say it's unnatural.

The day was mildly entertaining. After cashing some checks we decided to grill out as it was the first nice day we had had in a long time. We knew we had some dogs and burgs and the house but no buns.

So we decided to brave the Milwaukee Convenience Store to see if we could purchase some over-priced enriched bread product.
Except.
Apparently inner-city peeps don't eat buns.
Or bread.
Which, I have to say was disheartening.
I know I shouldn't be disheartened whenever I have an urban experience, yet I am.
I just think that if a place claims to have groceries, I would think they would have bread, milk, eggs and/or butter. I would think this would be the most basic of grocery items.
Instead, at the store on like 8th and Highland, they had rows and rows of candy, chips, soda and "juice," and one wee sections of bread that had four tiny loaves for almost $3 each.
So store #1 was a bust.
We also have a "Grocery Store" in our neighborhood, right down the street which we have never braved, although we were told that it was "nice."
I'm going to have to disagree.
The market is primarily for an Asian customer, and I would venture a guess to say Hmong customer.
The plusses?
1.People were friendly.
2. They had lots of Asian food/produce.
The minuses?
1. They had no bread of any type, much less buns.
2. The store smelled really, really bad. Like I had to get out of there.

So we headed to the nearest 'burb to buy buns and parmesean cheese.
Mission, prolonged by urban experience, accomplished.

The plan of the day was supposed to be to head to Pridefest with our friend JT, and then I would split off later to meet up with my old school (read: friends I've known the longest, but don't hang out nearly as much as I should).
But the gays were running about 2 hours late, and it really didn't make any sense for me to pay the $15 Pridefest ticket to stay for an hour.
If that.
So sadly, I told E to give my regards to JT and friends, and E did the same for our old pals and we made like a Journey song and went our separate ways.

I needed to bus it to Riverwest, and didn't like any of the options that googlemaps gave me so running about a half and hour late, I decided to just "figure it out" the way I thought would be safest and best.

Before you accuse me of being scared of bussing to weird neighborhoods, the bus had me going to 27th and Burleigh and then taking the 60 to get to Art Bar. While in the day time I would do this, I was also concerned with how I was getting home for the eveing.
I most certainly did not want to have to wait long for a bus (or god forbid miss my transfer and be stuck) on 27th and Burleigh at 1am. So I decided to take the good old 30 which I always feel comfortable on and know runs late.

As luck would have it I was also able to catch the 10 which dropped me mere blocks from my destination.

The whole thing (leaving the house/getting to the bar, including walking time) took an hour.
And while I was still late, I still beat my friends there (thank god for fellow tardy folks). I slipped my screwdriver slowly and started "A Confederacy of Dunces," which thus far has been an enjoyable read, but I am only on page 44 or so.

It was my HSBFF's birthday and she is quite close some old college friends of mine, and some other favorite people of mine E&J. Plus some extras.
And extras are always fun.

The ladies were already a bit tipsy from the bottle of champagne they split before leaving the house, and as I ate a light lunch, I was feeling no pain from my delicious screwdriver.
Well done Art Bar.
Well done.
I wish I lived closer cos that was a perfect bar to read in.
After healthy doses of nostalgia and story telling we then headed to the Tracks for some nosh and more bevvies.
While the veggie burger was delicious, I really can't eat veggie foods (dogs/burgers) while drinking.
Something happens in the tum that is not a fun time.
Nothing to the point of me spending the night in the bathroom, but I wasn't entirely comfortable the whole night either.
I think when drinking, I need to stick to fried foods, or junk food.
I'm just saying.
EL and CB joined us which was fabulous and we then headed to Foundations, which is, I would venture to guess, Milwaukee's only tiki bar.
While it was crowded, that didn't stop us from nabbing a table, then the booth, while most others enjoyed fabulous tiki tonics, I had a measly Malibu and pineapple and then a water.
The ol' tum wasn't liking the veggie food.
I did get to have some great conversation with PH and that was fabulous, because she is awesome, and her fiance seems cool too, even though we was getting sleepy towards the end of the night.
A plan was made to go K-oke but it was just past midnight and if I wanted to be sure to get home via bus, I was going to have to cut-out. Although it pained me greatly, as we all know, I love singing.
M&P were leaving too, so I asked if I could get a ride to the bus stop, but the kind souls offered to drive me home, which I gratefully accepted.

It was a great night.
Laughter, old friends, libations.
Who could ask for more?