My Commute Home and Two Consecutive Days of Smiles

San Francisco is bereft of tourists these mid January days. This made for a near empty trolley car as I left work in the Fisherman's Wharf area. Nice. I buried my head in an Alan Furst novel -- high end junk writing pre WWII spy novels set in Europe fun stuff and a break from real history or Joyce or Pynchon or the like -- and listened to Eric Burdon and The Animals Greatest Hits on my iPod.

Then a Mexican chap sat in front of me. He'd slathered himself in aftershave and it was an odor much offensive for being so overdone. Happening to look back before getting off I noted that I'd been riding on the bald white man express. Several shaved heads glowed under the lights. Odd. Travel in bunches they do.

Walked purposely to BART and the subway ride back to East Bay. Here I was on the pretty blonde girl express. Much better. One with a slight and sexy overbite was draped all over a nattily attired lad. Two others were sisters and helped keep each other upright as they rode standing in mid packed train. A fourth sat sullenly glowering at whatever texts she was getting. There were also two older blondes. One was about 100 trying to appear 20. Bad move grandma. I'm blonde too but a guy so I don't count.

I stood reading about foreign correspondents in Prague just after the Nazi occupation. The writing is exceptional for spy stuff and historically accurate evocative of time and place. I read one helluva lot about Nazis both fictional and non and hate them to pieces. But lordy they make for good reading both fictional and non. Compelling if awful characters. Awww.

There was one grade A jerk on the train (not me!) who kept his backpack on and he seemed to be carrying a baby grand piano in it. Grandma blonde asked him to take it off and complained that it was hitting her and he paid no mind. I commented that he didn't care. He glared at me for a second but said nothing and did nothing. Kind of illustrated how civilized society can be. This guy is a real outlier in terms of commuters 95% of whom are considerate and when need be thoughtful.

Got home to the cat complaining loudly probably about the heater having been off or there being no lobster in her food dish. The mail was of no great interest and the wife wasn't home yet. I do hate coming home to an empty house. I was alone with my laptop and jazz on the stereo (Miles Davis Kind of Blue) for a good quarter hour before my beloved entered and again I smiled.