This has never happened before: I walk into my Starbucks on a weekday afternoon ... and there is not a single open seat in sight. And not only that, but with the exception of three seats, every single seatholder is using a laptop computer. Granted, they are all inferior machines, as anything other than a Mac is, as a matter of course. But still. Amazing. I sort of felt like I had strolled into a futuristic alterna-verse. Except that something had gone horribly wrong -- I was all frumped out in sneakers and a bright red ski parka. Totally not cool. Thankfully, Bob redeems me.
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Doesn't anyone order a straight-up coffee anymore?
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When did eleven-year-old girls start wearing dark black eyeliner, and when did their moms start taking them to Starbucks and buying them coffee drinks? "Stunted growth and your daughter looks like a hoochie-mama," anyone?
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The jockeying for The Best Seats at my Starbucks is near-comical. For loungers, the oversized sofa-chairs by the gas fireplace are ideal. But alas, there are only four. And sometimes, workers like myself like to pretend to be loungers and plop on those chairs ... and promptly fall asleep with our laptops open on our laps. For workers, the table in the corner, right next to the power outlet and facing the window onto the main drag through town, is perfection. Everyone else gets stuck along the periphery. It's immensely interesting and amusing to watch people half-read, half-work, half-converse ... and half-keep their eyes on The Best Seats. When one opens up, there is a civilized vulture-like circling, as people start to lean, pack up their belongings and move in for the kill. Sometimes, entire tables will circle the perimeter of the store, as The Best Seat is given up, so the table next to it moves over, and so on and so on and so on. It's a very well-oiled machine, actually. Civility is astounding at times.
***
I'm sitting with my back to the window. This is freaking me out only mildly, because really, who would be standing behind me, reading over my shoulder? There is no one in this world who would be that interested in what I'm doing, and only a couple of people who would read over my shoulder for the sole purpose of tormenting me, and neither of them are in the area right now. I hope.
***
There are a kid and his mom sitting at the next table over. The kid is playing a prodigiously annoying hand-held video game. It is requiring EVERY. SINGLE. OUNCE. of forbearance and Christian goodness within me to not snatch the game out of his hands and throw it against the wall in a rage, then stomp on its remains until they are pulverized into dust.
***
OFF TOPIC . . .
Mabel's and my three-week sojourn into the land of musicianship has created an addict: I can't go a day without strumming around on the guitar now. I never knew -- I wish I had known -- how much a bit of music would enhance my day, my quiet times, my personal Bible studies. I suck, I totally do, and my range of strumming is pathetically small. And for someone who has a decent sense of rhythm and tempo ... it's like I've had a rhythmical lobotomy.
But the guitar is still so enjoyable. And I admit, I feel great pride when rubbing at my callouses. Oh yes. I have callouses. And they're peeling.
Unfortunately, my new-found guitar enthusiasm has served to create a monster in Flacon. He wavers between relentlessly begging me to play for him -- as IF -- and asking to drive me to a music store so he can help me buy one -- as IF.
Flacon: You should just buy a guitar.
Me: I don't have the money to buy a guitar.
Flacon: How much do you think guitars cost?
Me: I dunno ... a couple hundred bucks?
Flacon: Uhhh ... try a couple THOUSAND bucks.
Me: Once again, I don't have the money to buy a guitar.
Flacon: You should buy one anyway.
Me: I don't need to buy one. I have Kwon's. We have joint custody of this one.
Flacon: That's just sad. A guitar shouldn't have to spend weekdays with one parent and weekends with another. He will think you don't love him.
Me: First of all, the guitar is a SHE. Second of all, SHE knows I love HER. I love HER more than Kwon ever could. I even NAMED her.
Flacon: What did you name her?
Me: I'm not telling. That's between her and me.
Flacon: You are extremely strange.
Me: No, I'm not. It's just that she and I have a special relationship that she'll never have with her father.
Flacon: I just don't think it's right that you're sharing custody of a guitar. You should have your own.
Me: Then tell the church to buy me one.
And this is about the point where Flacon rolls his eyes and throws his hands in the air, and the conversation-with-no-end-and-no-logic comes to an abrupt and exasperated finish.
But wouldn't you agree? The church should definitely buy me a guitar. All the better to sustain my decidedly disgusting (yet strangely awesome) callouses ....
***
MORE OFF-TOPIC . . .
I didn't know there were power outages in the area today. That explains the glut of people in Starbucks, and all the digruntled moms with their restless children: schools were let out early today because of the lack of power.
I'm afraid to go home now. Isn't that terrible -- that I am so tied to electricity and the Internet, that the prospect of an evening at home with neither makes me nervous? I mean, I suppose I could make myself some lukewarm tea and read by candlelight, but ... then however would I blog about it?!?!
***
BACK ON TRACK . . .
An entire family of four just walked in. The dad, the mom and the two daughters are each holding a laptop computer. They look like technological refugees.
Hilarious ... welcome to the 21st century, huh?
***
Finished: "The Glass Castle," by Jeannette Walls
Next up: "The Jane Austen Book Club," by Karen Joy Fowler
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