www.eslpod.com English as a Second Language Podcast A Day in the Life of Jeff Episode 7 – The Commute Home and Running Errands
COMPLETE TRANSCRIPT Welcome to ESLpod.com's “A Day in the Life of Jeff,” part seven: The Commute Home and Running Errands. I'm your host, Dr. Jeff McQuillan, from the Center for Educational Development. In part six, we were at work, we took a break, and we went to lunch. Now, our work is finished and we get to go home. Let's get started. [Start of story] It’s five o’clock and it’s quitting time. I put a few files into my bag, grab my mug, and say goodnight to the rest of the people in my area. I go to the parking garage and get into my car. I signal my turn onto the street and drive toward the freeway onramp. I merge as best as I can onto the freeway, which is always a bit of a hassle at this hour. Traffic is stop-and-go all the way from downtown. I hear on the radio that there’s a stalled car in fast lane near La Brea, backing up traffic all the way to Hoover. I decide to get off the freeway and to take surface streets for the rest of the trip. I need to make a stop on the way home. I know that the fridge is empty, so I decide to stop by the market. I get there and I pick up some French bread, a bag of apples, a few bananas, some pasta, tomato sauce, and a cooked chicken. Luckily, they have a lot of checkout stands open, and I get through the line pretty quickly. I thank the cashier and the bagger and push my cart to my car. I open the trunk and load everything up. Just then my wife calls me on my cell phone. She was going to be a little late getting home and asks me to make something for dinner. Tonight, I will be the cook. [End of story] This episode is called “The Commute Home and Running Errands.” Commute, you know, means driving back and forth from your house to your work. To run an errand, “errand,” means to do something, usually something outside of your house. For example, going to the grocery store, going to the drug store, stopping by the post office to mail a letter, these are things that you have to do that are not part of your work but that you need to do in your daily life. And, we call these things errands, and the verb is to run an errand. Our story says, “It's five o'clock and it's quitting time.” Quitting time is the time that you stop working. To quit, “quit,” means to stop, so quitting time is the time that you stop working at the end of the day. “I put a few files into my bag,” I “grab my mug,” - my coffee mug - and I “say goodnight to the rest of the people in my area.” If you work at a big company, usually you are divided into smaller groups that work on the same topic - the same type of work. So, there is an accounting section and there is a sales section. One way to describe those smaller groups is an area, so people in your area would be people who work next to you on the same things that you do. “I go to the parking garage and get into my car. I signal my turn onto the street.” To signal, “signal,” means to indicate, and in a car it means to turn on what we call the blinker, “blinker.” The blinker is what indicates whether you are going to turn left or right. So, when you are driving your car and you want to make a turn, you have to signal, are you going left or are you going right. And of course, in the back of the car, there's a little light that goes on and off, we would say it flashes, “flashes.” To flash means to go on and off quickly. So, “I signal my turn” - left or right - “onto the street and drive toward the freeway onramp. I merge as best as I can onto the freeway.” To merge on the freeway or to merge when you are driving means that there are two lanes - two cars next to each other - but the road is getting more narrow. The road becomes smaller and now you only have one lane, so these two lines of cars have to go into the same lane, and we call that merging. To