Tower 18

It started off as such a perfect morning, despite having to go to work. Cold winter air blowing, a great down comforter keeping me all toasty and cozy, pillows, so many pillows and NPR weather forecasting snow, then a really really hot shower. Heaven. There is something so good, yet so melancholy about winter morning light. I packed a lovely breakfast and lunch into my lunch box and was ready to go. WAIT! I needed gloves…haven’t gotten those out yet this year. I found some and was on my way.

Then two hours later I am still on the train and about a half hour late to work. The CTA driver tells us (repeatedly) that we are having "interlocking problems at tower 18, and we are moving, just very slowly". This is probably a given and really obvious, but none of us on that train knew what that meant other than we are going to be really frickin late. Many made calls to work, some made those calls with a mocking tone repeating the "tower 18" bit.

I do recall the days when the CTA stayed silent during your commute and never told you what was going on, but there has got to be a happy medium here. If our train hasn’t moved in fifteen minutes and we haven’t been at stop and so we are all very surely the same people from fifteen minutes ago you do not have to repeat the same message over and over.

Thank god for books and my ipod, and that I get on so early I always get a seat. I got to work at 9.50am, only fifty minutes late.