It takes skill

... to mess up this well. But I am up to the challenge.

Tonight I was supposed to go to Robert J. Sawyer's book launch and birthday party. Pretty cool. One of Canada's most successful writers, and a science fiction writer at that. A potent combination. (OK, so I was a preteen science fiction geek. And a teen SF geek. And... well, you get the idea. Sometimes I go into remission, but the symptoms will reappear with only the slightest provocation.)

I checked out the bus schedules, and decided to take the route that would get me out and walking a bit. I transferred all my things into a purse big enough to hold the autographed book I would be coming home with and headed out the door just a couple of minutes late, meaning that with my short legs I would have to make the 15-minute walk to the bus stop at something just short of a jog. That's fine, the weather was lovely and I always need the exercise. Besides, I hadn't memorized the itinerary for the closer bus and there was no time to check.

About a block shy of the bus stop, I saw a bus coming off the exit ramp. I panicked and broke into a sprint. If the light changed at the wrong time... The light changed at the wrong time. Despair. But wait, it wasn't the one I needed. Relief. A brisk trot brought me to the bus stop just seconds before the bus I really wanted. That sprint turned out to have been a very necessary thing. Happy at how everything had worked out so well, I reached for the outer pocket of my purse where I keep my bus tickets.

You see where this is going, don't you?

There was no pocket on the outside of this purse. And I had, of course, being a certified member of the so-absent-minded-we-wonder-how-she's-still-alive club, forgotten to transfer the bus tickets to one of the inner pockets of the new purse. I could pay cash, but my smallest bill was a twenty, and bus drivers don't make change. Um, no.

I walked back home. It was a lovely evening for a walk.