Tuesday 01/20/2026
First up, out the door at 7:10 to walk to a dental appointment at 7:30. Simple quick fill of a cavity next to a crown. No shot, just a quick buzz with the drill and pack in some filling.
Tidy the apartment for the housekeeper coming at 11. Call United Health Care to handle a stupid bit of billing. UHC split my insurance into separate accounts, one for medical and one for prescriptions. The fact that the monthly payment was from my bank by EFT, didn’t get transferred to the new, prescription policy. So now they sent me an email saying it was overdue. The customer service lady seemed distracted, I actually thought she might be ill or on drugs, but she managed to get it done. Or said she had; we will see when the bill gets paid or doesn’t.
So time for the writers meeting. Betty had to leave early so she made me host. I managed to get everyone admitted to the Zoom. Nice meeting, although I hadn’t written others had.
Meeting over, I went downstairs to meet my lunch guest, Harriet from basketball days. We have kept slightly in touch and I invited her to have lunch. I had also invited Joanne and my neighbor Carolyn, subbing for Patty who is more of a basketball fan but had to bail a day ago. Anyway nice lunch, good conversation.
Which led to 1:30 and time for Line Dance class. After which I caught the 21 bus down to Charleston center and FOPAL. Seventh work stint in the last 8 days. And I finished. There are no boxes of donations left in front of my section, all sorted and priced and shelved or put away.
Had a little trouble getting home, had a light supper in the dining room, and going to be a couch potato until I go to bed. Here was my commute problems, as I told them to Lou of the car-free group.
Tonight about 5:30 I was ready to come home from FOPAL at Cubberly Center. I walked out to Middlefield. Dark, and busy traffic on Middlefield.
Lyft had sent me a 20% off deal so I called a Lyft. I was assigned Jose in a red Prius C. I watched it approach on the map. It approached, and it arrived — on the map. Swear to Allah, there was no red Prius C anywhere I could see.
“Your driver is here, he waits 4 minutes”. So I tapped Contact Driver and then Call. Driver’s phone rang 5 times and went to voice mail.
I tapped Get Help, and that called Lyft Support. We’ll connect you to the first available… and hold music. I held for a couple of minutes and gave up.
I canceled the Lyft ride, incurring a $5 fee, and for fun opened the Transit app. OOOh there’s a bus coming at 5:59, and I have just time to walk a block to the Charleston bus stop. Which I do. And wait. Watching the traffic on Middlefield, and watching the little bus symbol on the app.
The little bus symbol stayed where it was, around San Antonio, with a little number (of seconds?) on it that kept going down and then up again.
At 6:10 the transit app showed me the bus departed at 6:01 and now I could leave at 6:27.
There was NO BUS at 6:01, or any time between 5:50 and 6:20.
So at this point I could have tried Uber I suppose but instead I went to Waymo. The Waymo pickup was right next to the bus stop. It took another ten minutes — I was kind of looking for that 6:27 bus to show and would have had a real moral struggle to think about, if it had. But the Waymo was first.
So, a ghost lyft and a ghost bus. Just glad it wasn’t raining.
Codgerville 