D.O.P.-T.

My relief was late this morning. He called to say his car wasn't running right and he'd be getting a lift from his mom. He came in almost half an hour late ... and said her van had broken down twice in traffic on the way from San Jose. So I was late leaving, and had just missed a bus, so I walked up to the next stop, where the expresses stop. There were several people at the stop, including a guy with a shivering dachshund in a soft bag, and a Punjabi lady I occasionally see and talk to (insofar as either of us can understand the other), and an express did come. It was fairly full of sleeping homeless folks. Right before the stop for the knot of Indian businesses and the day shelter ... the bus stalled. The driver was barely able to wrestle it to the curb without the power steering. Slowing for the red light immediately after the next stop, which is not an express stop ... it stalled again. So those of us still on it, luckily far fewer than there had been, all tumbled off in front of Starbucks. The driver had managed to get the bus clear of the exit, so we weren't blocking the stream of drivers with take-out lattes. We stood there and shivered and a non-express came along and saved us.

The housemate eventually got up and we took the dogs for walkies. Her dog decided to bite my dog's tail and they tangled their leashes and I tripped, twisted to avoid falling on my dog - and smacked my back hard on a tree and wound up sitting at the foot of it, and started crying. Attracting several solicitous passersby and residents. I appear to have wrenched something in my back as well as giving myself a nice bruise. Now I think I will go to bed.