eyebrows, trolley, and a bomb scare

did the title catch your attention? i'll start with the eyebrows and save the best for last.

a very popular thing i've noticed here is that a lot of women shave (or completely wax) off their eyebrows. then they proceed to pencil them in. i had noticed this in austin - some women did it, but it's huge here. it seemed to be a little more of a stereotype of the hispanics in austin, but no...it's everywhere. please, don't get any ideas. it's not a good idea. besides, what if you wake up and you are a little shaky while you're penciling in the right side but the left side turns out really well? the thing is - eyebrows are imperfect...they are not merely a straight line drawn on our foreheads. but the people that draw them on only do a single line. maybe they should smooth it out or make it look a little more "blurry" -- can't come up with a better word -- but make it look not so sharp. if i did that, i'd probably have the pencil *all* over my face because i'd touch my head all throughout the day because of frustration from claudia at work.

moving on. second topic: the trolley. remember that story about how i almost got my leg chopped off by the trolley? well, today as i was getting off the trolley to go home, i was following a line of people out of the trolley. as my second foot is about to hit ground -SLAM- it shuts on my foot. i literally had to jerk my foot out of the door. poor toes. dustyn told me i just have bad timing, but seriously, there were people coming out behind me. they had to push the magic green button to open the door again. i must be wearing a sensor or something because those trolley doors are playing games with me. i can only imagine - two weeks from now, i walk into work and i've got scrapes and bruises all over my legs (that is assuming i still have both of them) and people begin to ask if everything is "okay" at home.

last topic: bomb scare. i have been meaning to post this since probably my third day of work. i was headed home on the trolley. sitting in front of me were four cute old people who were speaking german i think. i remember they were so distractingly loud (this could be an entire blog on it's own. you barely hear people speaking english on the trolley. i feel like a minority a lot of the time. i wonder if people of other cultures think americans speak painfully loud because i certainly feel that when other people are speaking in a foreign language around me, they feel like they can talk MUCH louder because no one understands. SUPER FRUSTRATING. and RUDE.) anyway, the old people were so loud. the men probably wanted to go home and the wives probably wanted to go shopping. who knows. across the aisle from them was one guy with a bag on the opposite seat across from him, a hat sitting on top of the bag.

the guy across from the old people gets off the trolley, just as i'm almost to my stop before home. he doesn't take the bag. i look back at him, wanting to ask if he forgot his bag. but it seemed like he was in a huge hurry to get off the trolley. my heart starts racing. no one takes ownership of the bag. immediately, i begin thinking, oh my gosh. there's a bomb in the bag. i'm going to die. please God, let me be ready for whatever is about to come and let it not be painful. i was maybe 6 feet from the bag. my mind was going crazy. do i de-board the trolley? do i get off and run away and hope the pieces of the trolley don't strike me down for being a coward and not warning everyone to get off? do i start screaming "BOMB! Everybody get off the trolley!!!" as loud as i can? i didn't know what to do.

i just sat there and prayed. the trolley took off. nothing happened, but then i start rationalizing that surely if that guy put a bomb in the bag, he would make sure the trolley was far enough away so that it couldn't harm him as it blew to pieces. that would be the smart thing, anyway. so although we had taken off, i kept staring at the bag. my heart was in my throat. should i call dustyn and tell him goodbye?

you might be laughing at me because obviously i lived and nothing ended up happening, but this is what 911 has done to me. fear is instilled in me. why in the world would someone target a specific trolley anyway? i mean what could the trolley do that could be so upsetting (other than almost chopping your leg off twice) ... charging $4 for a whole day? not showing up on time? i don't know...petty little things.

as i finally reached my stop, i was never happier to step off that trolley. wanna know whose bag that was? one of the loud old ladies sitting across the aisle from that guy. if only i had known that the floppy hat sitting on top had big flowers on the side that wasn't visible to me. maybe then i would have put two and two together to realize that the old lady had carried the bag onto the trolley. surely a bomber wouldn't put a flowery floppy hat on top of his weapon.