We’ve all long known that I don’t “fit in,” metaphorically speaking. I’m not into the usual things guys are into… not sports, or cars, or hunting, or what-have- you. I don’t slot neatly into the Red State / Blue State spectrum. George Lucas didn’t “ruin my childhood” by making a trio of crappy movies. I shoot a webcomic based on my rubber duck collection, for pity’s sake. That’s fine, since I don’t really want to be like most of the rest of humanity. Maybe I’m a snob, but I just don’t “get it,” all of the identifying with brands that people seem to do. What I would like, however, are pants that fit.

Supposedly I’m just barely under average height, 5’8″ tall. Too bad that doesn’t translate into a wide availability of pants. Everything’s got a 30-inch inseam or longer. Even when I find a “short” 30, or an actual 29, I have to wonder what the hell kind of body shape the pants were built for. There’s weird bunching going on that mystifies me. Or, to put it another way: Why in hell does it look like I’m smuggling a small animal in the front of my trousers?

(Yes, yes, go ahead and crack wise. I gave you a straight line, I’d be disappointed if you chose not to use it as you see fit.)

What I usually end up with are pants that are too wide and too long and bunch up funny, because the alternative is… what? A kilt? I don’t see my boss approving that as proper work attire, for starters.

Were I rich, I’d just have everything custom made. Since that’s never happening… I just have to live with the fact that, like in every other part of my life, I’m the odd man out when it comes to buying clothes.

Yes, I haven’t been posting. It’s hard to post when you’re stressed and tired of being stressed and tired due to stress all of the time.

Why? Oh, it goes something like this… starting in late May… (more…)

One of the other units in our little apartment complex, at some point in the last few months, became the “party place.” You know, drinking and music and groups of idiots shouting at random, that sort of thing. Generally speaking they’ve kept it reasonable; they’re usually not super-loud, and they’re dispersed by 11pm or so. It’s not my favorite thing in the world, but when kept under control I can deal with it on occasion.

Not last night, though.

Full-volume music. Several conversations taking place outside at full volume simultaneously. People wandering out to the street to be noisy gits. And this went on well past 11pm.

And past midnight.

And past 1am.

The party didn’t wind down until two-freaking-thirty in the morning. (And it took another half hour or so for me to calm down enough to be able to sleep. Joy.)

Icing on the cake? Eight-o’clock rolls around and one of them decides to drive somewhere… announcing this fact by blaring their car stereo for a couple of minutes before driving off.

Yeah, they’ve had their exceptional party. I hope they enjoyed it, because if they try it again, cops will be called. Persistently and promptly. After a generally crappy week of work, this was precisely what I did not need. Grrrr.

It was the worst of commutes, it was the even-worse of commutes.

Mine: Trudged (through five more inches’ worth of snow than any forecast had predicted) for twenty minutes to reach a MAX station at which dozens of people had already been waiting for quite some time, only to wait another twenty minutes for a train to arrive. (Note that three outbound trains’ operators made a point of assuring us that an inbound train would arrive “in a few minutes.” Few. Right.) Train arrived, it’s SRO of course, the floors were slick with snowmelt, it’s dark, the windows were fogged, but hey at least we were moving, right? Wrong. Each of the first six stops after I boarded involved a wait of some sort… including one which lasted twenty minutes… during which the operator left the train for about ten of those minutes. Eventually the train chugged its way to downtown Portland, through which the going was dreadfully slow due to a combination of problems on the Steel Bridge and idiot drivers who thought nothing of blocking a train’s path so they could sit partway through an intersection.

Transit time totals? Twenty minutes’ walk plus twenty minutes’ wait plus ninety minutes on the train itself (boarded at 5:40, disembarked at 7:10) plus the rest of the walk home equals two hours thirty minutes.

Which is nothing. Because…

Kylanath’s: Get off work at 3:40-ish. Arrive at bus stop to find people already waiting for a bus… any bus of several… to arrive. These people have phones with which they check Tri-Met’s transit tracking system, and with which they call Tri-Met, only to hear nothing about problems with any of the scheduled lines which service that stop. Lather, rinse, repeat… for four solid hours. Finally a bus, any bus, arrives. At 8:00pm. Driven by the driver who normally shows up at 4:00. After an unusual route through ugly-as-hell traffic, arrive downtown after 9pm and choose not to race for a #9 which might have serviced Broadway but probably was going to whip around at Union Station and head out Powell again. Instead, board a Green Line MAX train… which switches to being a Blue Line train at Union Station! (I imagine several passengers were a smidgen… annoyed.) A slow slog across the river and a massive delay at Rose Quarter later, and finally get off the train around 10:00.

Transit time totals: Let’s call it a quarter hour of getting to the bus stop, four hours waiting for a bus, another couple of hours actually riding vehicles, and another quarter hour walking home from the train station for a grand total of six hours thirty minutes.

In short: Way to go, Tri-Met! You were so very prepared, weren’t you?

(No, seriously, how do you not service a stop for four hours? Without adding any of the routes which service that stop on your so-called “service alerts” page, even? THE HELL.)

So, that was our Snowpocalypse 2009 experience. What about you?