Bagels, Blue-Hairs, and Brownies
Today we find our protagonist wandering through a tempest of the tundra, frantically looking for shelter. Or, relaxingly driving his '95 Bonneville through a light rain to a coffee shop in his Duluth neighborhood.
Whichever makes my life sound more like an epic.
I decided to head over to Bixby's (after three hours of Star Trek first, of course) for a nice, quiet, relaxing afternoon of reading with a toasted chocolate chip bagel with a full scoop of cream cheese and bottle of cream soda (orange).
After turning around from the counter with my purchase, I scanned the place for a nice, comfy chair. There were two chairs in the corner, one unoccupied, and in the other sat a "coffe shop-type" tourtured-artist, new-age looking woman talking intellectual snobbery on her cell phone. Nix that.
I opted for a seat by the fire by a couple of kindly old ladies.
I take a bite of my delicious bagel.
"Do you use all of those pockets?"
From which commenced a semi-lengthy conversation about how my pockets remind one of the ladies of her purse, each section with it's purpose. The other one, with a slightly disapproving tone, began talking about how all her grandkids wear that style now, with some even wearing pants that zip at the knee. Imagine that. I was about to comment on how I usually carry a lot of stuff with me, and it would be difficult to put everything in two side pockets (which would subsequetly resemble saddle bags), but instead I just nodded and assented, like the upstanding, nice young man I am. ;)
I read for about and hour with the gentle lulling of the ladies' banter in the background, after which they left. However, not before one of them gave me the rest of her bag of the biggest jelly beans I've ever seen. I really didn't have a chance to politely refuse (I did gain ten pounds over the semester, after all), and ended up picking out all of the red ones and eating them.
In rains an entire troop of young girl scouts (brownies?). I brought my garbage to the proper authorities, and on the way back to my seat chuckled how the bagels that some of these girls were eating were bigger than their heads.
I read over the next half hour to slowly crescendoing background noise, the girls, in a classic scientific example of diffusion, gradually spreading out throughout the cafe. I was kneeling towards the back of my chair to talk to a friend that had stopped by, and at the conclusion of my conversation turned around to find a pudgy little girl smacking on a Ring-Pop right in front of me, quickly scurrying off to her next intra-cafe destination.
The brownies drained out of the place soon enough, but there was no hope for concentration on reading, even if the cafe was now quiet with a handful of readers. So, I decided to stop by the nearby grocery to buy a box of 12 Star Crunches for $1.29. $1.29, the exact change from the $5 bill I used to patronize my small neighborhood cafe.
It was a good afternoon.
Sincerely,
Erik-Tok Bot-Tron Techno-Tron
Whichever makes my life sound more like an epic.
I decided to head over to Bixby's (after three hours of Star Trek first, of course) for a nice, quiet, relaxing afternoon of reading with a toasted chocolate chip bagel with a full scoop of cream cheese and bottle of cream soda (orange).
After turning around from the counter with my purchase, I scanned the place for a nice, comfy chair. There were two chairs in the corner, one unoccupied, and in the other sat a "coffe shop-type" tourtured-artist, new-age looking woman talking intellectual snobbery on her cell phone. Nix that.
I opted for a seat by the fire by a couple of kindly old ladies.
I take a bite of my delicious bagel.
"Do you use all of those pockets?"
From which commenced a semi-lengthy conversation about how my pockets remind one of the ladies of her purse, each section with it's purpose. The other one, with a slightly disapproving tone, began talking about how all her grandkids wear that style now, with some even wearing pants that zip at the knee. Imagine that. I was about to comment on how I usually carry a lot of stuff with me, and it would be difficult to put everything in two side pockets (which would subsequetly resemble saddle bags), but instead I just nodded and assented, like the upstanding, nice young man I am. ;)
I read for about and hour with the gentle lulling of the ladies' banter in the background, after which they left. However, not before one of them gave me the rest of her bag of the biggest jelly beans I've ever seen. I really didn't have a chance to politely refuse (I did gain ten pounds over the semester, after all), and ended up picking out all of the red ones and eating them.
In rains an entire troop of young girl scouts (brownies?). I brought my garbage to the proper authorities, and on the way back to my seat chuckled how the bagels that some of these girls were eating were bigger than their heads.
I read over the next half hour to slowly crescendoing background noise, the girls, in a classic scientific example of diffusion, gradually spreading out throughout the cafe. I was kneeling towards the back of my chair to talk to a friend that had stopped by, and at the conclusion of my conversation turned around to find a pudgy little girl smacking on a Ring-Pop right in front of me, quickly scurrying off to her next intra-cafe destination.
The brownies drained out of the place soon enough, but there was no hope for concentration on reading, even if the cafe was now quiet with a handful of readers. So, I decided to stop by the nearby grocery to buy a box of 12 Star Crunches for $1.29. $1.29, the exact change from the $5 bill I used to patronize my small neighborhood cafe.
It was a good afternoon.
Sincerely,
Erik-Tok Bot-Tron Techno-Tron
"ma'am"
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