Tonight we will be at McFarlin Auditorium to see a taping of Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. The tickets were a premium for renewing my membership at the local NPR affliate.

I have been listening to this NPR station for almost 20 years, ever since I moved to Dallas for a job and took an apartment in a new complex. I thought an apartment complex would be a great place to meet people in a strange city but it wasn’t. But I guess I wasn’t trying too hard anyway. In those days I went to work 6 days a week, sometimes 7. I was one of the first people at the office in the morning and one of the last to leave. I parked my car in the same spot every day. One time a coworker told me that she thought the car was abandoned or something because it was always there in the same place.

There was a cafeteria in the building where I worked and I ate both breakfast and lunch there every day. I always had the same thing for breakfast and after a while the cafeteria workers got to know me and they would have my order waiting for me. Before leaving home I made sure I had exact change to pay the bill. These things were like rituals. For some reason it was important to me to do things the same way all the time. Maybe it was because that way I didn’t have to think about it.

I am not as compulsive as I used to be. One thing that has stayed the same - I still wake up listening to NPR. On Sunday mornings that means Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me. It’s a quiz show, where they call somebody in the radio audience to solve a puzzle.

Well I don’t know why just thinking about going to this show got me off on such a tangent. Maybe I was just looking for an opportunity to talk about myself. I think the show will be fun. I’ll let you know about it later.