Train

    Last month, not surprisingly, I threw a Christmas party. (I mean, it would have been a lot more surprising if I had had it in June, say.) Somebody actually took the BYOB thing seriously, with the result that I wound up with more beer than I started with. This week, my friend Gypsye had some musicians staying with her, so she suddenly got enthusiastic about taking the excess beer off my hands. Thus, taking my Dad home from dialysis yesterday afternoon, I got a call from her asking if she could come pick it up. I told her where I was and that I would be home in fifteen minutes.
    Funny thing happened on the way to Olympia. At the bottom of the Rosewood Drive hill at Assembly Street, there was a truly humongous coal train crossing in front of me. So I called Gypsye to tell her why I was going to be late. She replied that she was in the same jam, second car in the second lane from the left. Seeing her two cars ahead of me (and that the train was going to be at least another 5-10 minutes), I got out and ran up to her car. Pretending to be impatient, I looked at my watch and said, "Where have you been? I've been waiting for ages!" (I like to think that I didn't quite give her a heart attack.)
    Then I went back to my car and texted her while driving, because I'm just a rebel like that. For once at least, the train didn't stop and sit for an extra five minutes (which is what truly makes us crazy about having trains run through the middle of town all day), but it was still a while. We felt that five o'clock on a weekday afternoon is probably not the ideal moment to run a gigantic freight through a major intersection. I'm sure somebody somewhere sees the logic in this, but it's beyond me. Excellent opportunity for madcap physical comedy, though, and Gypsye got her beer and a chance to visit with the world's greatest cat. So there's that.

Edit: Pronoun issues.