So as I'm leaving work (sooo late!) tonight, the skies (very dark and gray) opened up and poured ropes of rain down on the earth.

By some fluke of chance I had a tatty umbrella at work which I half-covered myself with on the way to the EL (mostly it just beat me about the head).

Then when I was about five feet from the train, the driver was like, "Screw this waiting," closed the doors, and trundled off. So I had to stand on the platform for an extra seven minutes, shivering, damp papers gluing themselves together in my chic totebag, while crackling lightning bolts slammed into metal structures not two blocks away.

Then, when I was changing trains, me and all the people changing hovering in the doorway of our train until the other one pulled up across the way and opened its doors. That would seem the sensible procedure, yes? And we're talking of a span of seconds here. Our doors were opening as the other train pulled up. And yet, our train driver still felt the need to scold us to "GET OUT OF THE DOORWAYS. YOU MUST CHANGE TRAINS!" as if we were going to cower inside the berth of his train forever, or at least until the rain stopped and the way across to the other train was crowned only by clear skies.

So you would probably think all of that stuff would be the worst part of my voyage home today, but no. As I was coming down the home stretch, this inane college girl with a cel phone attached to her face got right behind me in my cone of hearing and started yap yap yapping about her three roommates and how they all wanted to go on dates and some guy and how bad his grades were and how no one could believe how bad his grades were and wasn't that other thing awful too and...

I tried to speed up to move out of range of her voice, but I was wearing these mule-like shoes with a little strap around the back, and between their natural slickness and the fact that they were now full of water, they were VERY VERY SLIPPERY. Try as I might, I couldn't get any friction going to help me move any faster. It was like one of those bad dreams where you are being chased by a monster and you...just...can't...quite...ever...move...away.