Old Town Trolley

My friend, Melina, and her boyfriend like to laugh that the Old Town Trolley drivers seem to have some sort of infatuation with me. While I highly doubt this is true (really it's probably just that their main post is right beside Qdoba, and we go there every week), there have been a couple of incidents that might lead one to think it.

The first one is my own poor decision to go out on a date with one of the drivers last summer. One Mike Fox. The story of that is documented in this blog. (Scroll down to the paragraph that starts with "The aspiring actor.")

The second one involves an apparently magnetizing white dress that I will never wear to Qdoba again. We were sitting in the window eating. One of the drivers walked up to the window, paused, got my attention, gave a thumbs up and walked away. He must have seen my look of confusion because later he came into the restaurant and told me that he wanted to explain that he gave the thumbs up because he really thought I looked nice in "that white dress" ... and then kept hanging around creepily. I didn't get his name. I do look pretty good in that particular dress, but seriously.

Today, I went to get a sandwich at Potbelly's. As I waited in line, I noticed there was a guy in an Old Town Trolley uniform behind me. In a pretty good mood today, I immediately started smiling knowing that when I got back to the office, Melina was going to LOVE hearing about this. I hadn't even turned around yet.

With a big smile on my face, I turn to check out the driver ... and it was none other than THE Mike Fox. DIRECTLY behind me.

Now, forgive me, it has been more than a year since I went out with the idiot (who, if you have read the blog remember, said the trolley job was a "temporary gig"). When I first turned, I thought, "Oh, that looks like it could be him," but I couldn't really tell.

So, I didn't just glance. No, I looked right at him for a good 15-20 seconds, looked down at the name tag that said, "Mike," and THEN turned around knowingly with a BIG smile on my face.

What are the chances of that!? Hahahahaha.

At that point, I could not STOP smiling because I thought the story was going to be fun to tell even if it was just some random driver, but now that it's Mike Fox ... I had hit the jackpot. So, after staring at him longer than I should have, seeing his name tag and smiling wider, I didn't say a word to him.

I don't know if he recognized me or not, but I didn't care. I stood in line in front of him for another 7-8 minutes ... smiling the whole time. It was glorious. Hopefully after 3.5 years working for the trolley company, the guy isn't still telling dates his job is temporary while he looks for acting work. As Melina says, "No, that's not temporary, that is your CAREER."

It was a good day.

NOTE: Please know, I see nothing wrong with anyone working as a tour guide for a career. I just found it completely annoying from him because he insisted multiple times he had plenty of time to move to New York to be an actor, and I thought he was insane.

Fun, fun ... K-12 pics

The reminiscing for the "Senior year" bulletin, and the ensuing response it generated made me think it would be funny to dredge up all my old yearbook photos.

I might not have remembered enough to be able to answer the questions in that bulletin properly, but I DO remember that quite possibly the single most traumatic incident of that entire year occurred when I returned from graduation and saw that my mom framed and displayed, in a row, all of my school photos for my graduation open house ... especially those 6th-8th grade, middle school ones. EW.

Now 10 years later, I'm OK doing it to myself, and could even come up with some added history below. Enjoy. :)

Kindergarten: My hair used to have a nice wave to it ... I think that was a cute little red dress that year, too.

1st grade: I was well into my closed-mouth smile phase here. As a child, I decided to allow one of my front teeth to wage battle with a softball bat being swung during a warm-up at the Elston ball diamonds. The tooth lost, required a root canal and turned brown. I didn't like bad teeth even then. Thank God it was a baby tooth.

2nd grade: I really liked to wear sweatshirts, but ONLY with the sleeves pushed all the way up, so it was as if they were short sleeves. I have no idea why. My mom tried to get me to stop, but it was documented in the school photo this year anyway.

3rd grade: My yearbook from 3rd grade was lost a long time ago, but I might be able to at least scrounge up the pic the next time I go home. We'll see if I remember. (Anyone who went to school with me that last year at Coal Creek, if you can refresh my memory on what it looked like that year, I would like to try again to find it.)

4th grade: If a clothing item had a cat on it, it was in my wardrobe. Those are large cat ears poking up there.

5th grade: Don't let this one fool you into thinking I stopped wearing my hair up EVERY. SINGLE. DAY. I hadn't. Length of my hair at this point: Well beyond my waistline. Since I hated to wear it down, I have no idea why I refused to cut it.

6th grade: The side pony. Niiiiiiice. Ugh.

7th grade: Oh, how it would be nice to lose that baby fat. And those bangs. Lord.

8th grade: A perm and short hair does NOT mix for someone with thick hair. It shouldn't have taken a genius to figure that out.

9th grade: The bangs lived on that one last year, but this pic at least holds the prize for biggest change in a calendar year. Thank goodness because looking at these is wearing me out.

10th grade: I had to give a speech for English class on picture day, and I was NOT happy that Mrs. Escamilla was dictating what I had to wear that day, rather than wearing something more of my choosing. Yes, you read that right. At our school, Escamilla was an English teacher.

11th grade: Does anyone watch "How I Met Your Mother"? I feel like I had the "crazy eyes" here. Or maybe it's more "crazy smile." The picture just looks strange. I sure hated that cowlick, too. It was the bane of my entire bang existence ... so traumatically annoying, it almost kept me from getting my current ones, but luckily it had mysteriously vanished.

12th grade: The cookie cutter senior picture pose. They took the yearbook pics that year before I got the signature "Rachael cut."

Ahhhh ... memories.