I left work at five minutes past five PM. About fifteen minutes later I ran across the Hillsboro Airport Park-and-Ride lot to catch the MAX, bound for home. This was one of the shiny new trains which look like someone elongated the hell out of a new-model VW Beetle.

Between Quatama and Willow Creek we experienced a panic stop for no explained reason, and we waited between stops for five minutes or so. Okay, this sort of thing isn’t too unusual, so it seemed like no big deal. Then we got to Elmonica, and we waited. And waited. Five minutes into that wait, the operator tells us that the train ahead of us is having trouble and “momentarily” they’ll have it moved out of our way.

We sat there for half an hour. Well, okay, most of us stood rather than sitting: It was a standing-room-only train when I boarded the thing.

So, there are problems with these sleek-looking new trains. Chief among them? The designers clearly didn’t expect anyone to ride them who were in possession of lower limbs. The mid-car seats face either a bulkhead (with no place for your knees at all if you’re at the “window” seat) or reversed seats that are placed so close to you that nobody can actually sit across from you, ensuring that either half of those four seats go unoccupied or that everyone’s knees are between someone else’s legs.

Classy, isn’t it? But wait, there’s more!

Four of the mid-car benches are at the same elevation as the rest in that section, but without the raised flooring to rest your feet on… so unless you’re really tall, your legs just dangle there. And if you are tall enough to sit there, you won’t want to because (again) there’s no legroom unless you’re in one of the four aisle seats. And nobody wants to sit in the “window” seat at those benches because…

• No legroom
• No window
• Nothing to look at but a slab of white plastic bulkhead

The raised sections at each end of the train aren’t much better. I like the idea of the extra seating at the non-operator-cab end of the train, but everything else about those sections is designed as if someone took the worst parts of the existing low-floor train designs and exaggerated them. Everything’s more crowded, and now they’ve sunk the aisleway a few inches so you’ve a much greater chance of stumbling into your fellow passengers and/or one of the myriad metal bars.

I’m utterly, thoroughly underwhelmed by these new trains. In the future, if I’m faced with the choice of boarding one and it looks like all of the not-completely-crappy seats are taken, I’ll just wait for the next one unless I’m under severe time constraints.

Yes, it’s that bad. TriMet has committed an epic fail with these stupid, garish, unfriendly, noisy new trains.

Anyway. Just to make my commute a bit more fun, we had not-one-but-two dogs on the train (bookending my escape routes, of course) and one utterly brilliant bint decided to take her bike and park it in the middle of the aisle among the mid-car seating area. I mean, it’s not like people sitting there want to be able to get off the train at some point, right? Never mind getting jabbed by handlebars!

I left work at five minutes past five PM, and got home at twenty-five minutes past seven PM.

I’m glad that tomorrow is Friday.

I can dimly perceive where the dedicated clotheshounds get it, that drive to go out shopping and cycle through their wardrobes, filling their closets with a neverending supply of new duds. Because there’s nothing quite like the feeling of putting on a new article of clothing the morning after its first run through the laundry and seeing that it fits. Not only fits, but it looks good.

Mind you, in my case this is something of a rarity, so don’t worry that I’m going all shopping-crazy. I still hate the challenge of finding, for instance, pants that actually fit me. (Common problems: Slacks that are all weirdly poofy in front, and way way way too long of inseams even though supposedly they’re the same length as the other three pairs of pants I’ve just tried on.)

Still… this morning, I’m moderately pleased. I take my victories and my pleasures where I’m able.

(Bonus points for knowing the song which gave me the post’s title without Googling for it…)

And a hearty, jolly, “thank you so very little” goes out to the schmucks working at the industrial supply outfit just down the street for making sure I was wide awake by 5:00am with a mixture of carrying on conversations at yelling volume, banging metallic things around, and setting off someone’s car alarm.

I mean, I didn’t need that hour of sleep, especially after the Daylight Savings change. Naaaah.

For a few days it was just an occasional cough. Sunday evening it became cough plus fever. Monday morning? Full-on migraine, complete with swaths of light across my entire field of vision and a painful reaction to any bright light source or sharp sound. (This is my first experience with migraines, but I have it on good authority that my diagnosis is accurate.) Oh, and the aforementioned cough & fever.

No, I don’t know if it’s the so-called “swine flu,” and I don’t care. I just want it to hurry up and get over with. I’ve barely left my room since 8pm Sunday, and I’m beyond tired of the sight of these walls. And ceiling, considering how much time I’ve spent in bed. Today I went from mostly-feverish-and-nauseous to hacking-up-a-lung (and feverish). MY, WHAT FUN.

And it looks like I’m not the only one who came down sick, damn it all. I hope everyone else has an easier time of it than I’ve had so far. I apologize to those of you that I’m responsible for infecting, too.

Bleh.

The daughter turned sixteen yesterday, so we threw her a big silly party. (Well, okay. The Lloyd Center skating rink people threw her a big silly party. We just paid for the thing. Heh.)

Near as I can tell, she and the half-dozen friends who showed up all had a good time, and she was delighted by the party and the presents and especially the chance to go ice skating. (She’s only been asking to do so since she was, oh, maybe six years old?) I may not understand the big deal about a girl’s sixteenth birthday, but I’m not enough of a brainless lump to let said birthday slide on by without at least trying to make a decent event out of it.

So: Happy Birthday, kiddo!