10. Boredom, rain, and bagels

Yesterday was a ridiculously unbusy day at SPS. Extreme boredom on our part, perhaps, but for the locals, an unbusy day for us meant a good day for them. (You'd think rainy weather would make people more depressed than usual. The answer is no.)

I ended up reading ~80% of the book depicted to the right, and Duane (my shift partner, a med 1 student) claimed to be studying on his laptop at first, but after the first three or so call-less hours, it sounded like he was playing Minesweeper from the amount of mouse clicks he generated. Most unfortunate of all was Mike (also a med 1), who was 4 hours early for his shift after ours and who ended up snoring on the futon half an hour in. Poor kid. He claims he only has a bed and no study space at home, and from the looks of it, he probably makes very little use of that bed, to boot.

At least it happened to be a training day, meaning instead of guarding a ghost building, we had Mary and Rick and 10 other group leaders and 40-ish new volunteers-to-be occupying a large room on the opposite side of the floor. Bored group leaders on break would occasionally come in to say hi/offer free food and drinks, and yesterday, it happened to be leftover breakfast for the trainees: a good dozen Panera bagels with at least five different cream cheeses, a half box of yogurt, and a half box of Granola bars. Some anonymous group leader would always bring a surplus of free food, and if it's not eaten, some other hungry group leader would end up bringing it home. This Saturday, it so happened that Evan (an undergrad a year above me) had the fortune of being in the latter position. Unfortunately, he traveled by bike. This all formulated into a Jing and Duane and Mike becoming extremely overstuffed on bagels for the rest of that pleasant afternoon and early eve.

I don't think I want to see another bagel for at least a month, as good as the experience was.

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I took a 2-hour stroll around the prettiest green places on campus today. The best kind of rain is the recent kind of scattered showers: slow and occasional enough to not pick up so much dirt and debris to turn the river yellow, but just enough to turn waters the same green as the neighboring woodlands. Plus the alternating cracks of sun between dark shifting clouds is breathtakingly beautiful.

It's good to slow down once in a while. Too often we pass these places by with another destination in mind, becoming oblivious by habituation to just how much alternative charm nature parades us.

I'm reminded of the same sad pity I used to feel for Central Park every time I ran.