Air bag blew on the bus to Tulsa Monday.
Here we were, nearing Sand Springs heading toward downtown Tulsa, when the bus made a weird sound. After that, every time we went over the slightest bump (and around Tulsa there are plenty of slight and not-so-slight bumps) we bounced wildly in our seats. Then when we reached our destination, the door wouldn't open automatically. Our driver had to shove it open so we could disembark. He said something about the bag popping.
That night, coming home, one of the passengers was telling the driver of the homeward-bound bus (OSU has several BOBs (Big Orange Bus) in its fleet) how the air bag had popped, making for an interesting ride. Kinda like an extended fair ride, if you ask me.
I got home shortly before midnight and after grabbing a bite getting ready for bed, I fell asleep about a minute after my head hit the pillow. Now that I think about it, I don't even remember my head hitting the pillow. I slept like a log.
Unfortunately, neither my wife nor daughter slept like logs. Apparently, around 3AM, somebody decided tapping on the bedroom windows was an appropriate thing to do.
Okay, we live near the campus, and there are some people of questionable moral fiber who hang around the apartment complex, so it's not too surprising that somebody might have been in a less than lucid state. But apparently they were persistent. And then they tried to come in through our back door, which was thankfully was locked (but we really need a deadbolt, because the door lock is flimsy). Whoever it was gave up and went away. I think that if it happens again, 911 will be getting a call.
Tuesday morning, not believing buses had air bags, I did a bit of research. Buses do have air bags for their air ride suspension, since shock absorbers aren't up to the task for such heavy vehicles, especially ones that carry passengers.
When I got home Tuesday evening, the Internet was down. Okay, this one was on me. I needed to pay the bill, but two unexpected ER visits last week and an equally unplanned visit to the pharmacy for meds, one of which (the way my luck goes) wasn't covered by my insurance, blew away any hope of getting the cable/phone/internet bill paid before the end of the month. It also has ruled out any trips to the store unless we run out of toilet paper.
Yes, ideally I should be able to plan for unexpected emergencies, but these things keep happening faster than I can earn enough money to create a buffer of any kind. And since I dumped my credit cards several years ago, it's even tougher because I have nothing to fall back on (but I don't miss paying those ridiculous interest rates!).
Wednesday (yesterday) started off okay. I managed to find a parking place relatively close to the bus terminal, or the MTT as they like to call it. Sure, I arrived two hours early, but this year parking at OSU has gone from ridiculous to whatever is beyond ridiculous. The good thing is, I could log in at the MTT and get some work done, which I couldn't do at home because of no service.
When I got to OSU-Tulsa, things were pretty good for the first half hour in my tiny shared office, but then the Internet started going up and down on me. At first I thought it was my laptop, which is over three years old now, had finally started showing its age. But the desktop in the office did the same thing. And when I got to class, my students said they had been having trouble all day and that the IT folks were going nuts because they couldn't (yet) find and fix the problem.
Class last night was shortened because it's hard to teach and demo databases when you can't connect to a database. You can only use PowerPoint slides for so long and say, "...And then...magic happens!" and show what would have happened had we been able to actually do it.
And now it's Thursday, and here I sit at the MTT. I don't have a bus to catch today. I just wanted to get online, because I needed to send a message to my youngest's music teacher that we might could pay part of a fee this week and the rest after payday. I'm sure she'll be okay with that. He has a really good singing voice and, even though his voice deepened over the summer, he doesn't have a squeaky come-and-go voice that boys get between 12 and 16.
It's been a good day so far.
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