meanwhile, back at the coffeeshop (again)

It's another 4th of July at the coffeeshop. The Bolshevik-looking guy is at the table by the window with the professor-looking guy, both talking nonstop while the professor's teenage daughter looks on. The cops are sitting behind me having their coffee and muffins, and other familiar faces are scattered around me. Jerry is sitting across from me reading one of the local weekly papers.

A year ago right now, I was sitting in this exact spot ruminating about whether the British were really all that bad. Compared to george w. bush, Queen Elizabeth was looking pretty good. But things change (thanks, Barack!), and it's been a whole year that quickly flew by, and Independence Day is on a Saturday and everybody seems confused about which day to celebrate. Some people were off work yesterday, some on Monday, and for some reason the grocery stores are open today, so some people didn't get off at all.

The week was wild, but the merger of my business happened painlessly on Wednesday and, on the home front, we think we have found an apartment downtown (20th floor) to live in as we house-search over the next several months. I've slept better the past couple nights. A Tylenol-PM helped.

what do the normal folk do?

Jerry decided to take a whole day off -- today, a Saturday -- and he somehow talked me into taking the day off too... His reasoning -- "I need to work this Sunday, so you should just work Sunday too instead of today, and we'll spend the day together." This time of year, I'm working all the time, and right now so is he, but I rearranged a client appointment and cancelled a haircut appointment (and I desperately need a haircut) and took the day off.

So now what? My idea of taking a day off would have been to stay at home and "chill", but, no, Jerry said we should do what normal people do on a Saturday. Which is what, I wonder?

We started by going out to breakfast, at Victor's 1959 Cafe ("revolutionary Cuban cooking") in south Minneapolis, then headed to the Mall of America (the opposite of "chilling"), the highlight of which was running into comedienne Joan Rivers, who I actually like very much. She was there for some promotional event for QVC cable shopping network, I think, and also to autograph a couple of her newer books that I had never heard of and had no interest in. If she would have been signing copies of her old bio, Enter Talking, I would have waited in line (It's one of my favorite celebrity autobiographies). She is 75 years old now but has had so much plastic surgery that she looks like a very blond mannequin. Scary! but she's still funny.

The Mall was mobbed today, thousands and thousands of people. We bought some shirts on sale at Macy's and then wanted some coffee, but all of the coffee shops either had long lines (I don't do lines) or had no available seating. So we left the chaos of the Mall behind and headed into Bloomington, where we found a very cool Starbucks in a very seedy strip mall, and had a leisurely cup of coffee while we read the newspaper -- much more my idea of a day off!

Tonight, Tom is here. We're going to watch In Bruges on DVD and then play cards til we head to bed.

Then we'll get up and go to work, which for us this time of year, is normal.

uglyfying your head

A cold snowy Sunday today. After bumming around one of the used-book stores, late morning/early afternoon, I ducked into the Espresso Royale coffeeshop for some hot coffee and cozy reading time. This coffeeshop is in the funky Dinkytown neighborhood of Minneapolis, adjoining the University of Minnesota, a few blocks from our house. Lots of people are there, probably all U of M students and nobody over the age of 25 except for this old guy in the corner reading his book (that's me). Elvis music is playing the whole time I am there (and I am probably the only person there who knows the songs).

Most of the guys, drinking their coffee and thumbing through textbooks or working their laptops, are still wearing their stocking caps, pulled down over their ears, each cap without exception ugly shades of gray and brown. For me (the old guy), one of the mysteries of current twenty-something guys is why the fascination with really ugly stocking caps? I mean, we were indoors, and these guys wear them all summer too, not just on cold snowy days, so it's not about practicality. It's meant to be a fashion statement, or an anti-fashion statement, isn't it?

... and, if you're gonna wear them, why not at least have some interesting colors to offset the drab winter landscape?...

"Back in my day", the anti-fashion statement was hair down to our butts. Now the hair gets covered up. Or, I don't know, maybe it's just a Minnesota thing.

The coffee was good.

08.08.08 @ 8

I was at the coffeeshop at 8 this morning to see Jack. It's his last day on the job. He's been the manager of the shop for the last several years, and we can always depend on him for a smile and some friendly chat. He's a young, vibrant guy, obviously too talented to be a coffeeshop manager the rest of his life, is going back to school -- to the University of Minnesota (just down the street) to study theater. Another starving actor, or maybe not? Still, it's sad to lose one of my coffeeshop friends.

As I write this, I'm sitting at the Volkswagen dealership, waiting while my GTI has its 20,000 mile checkup. Across the lobby, the TV is on. In a far-away time zone, the Olympics opening ceremony is happening right now to be followed, of course, by two weeks of Summer Olympics. I'm a casual Olympics observer, will watch some gymnastics, maybe some diving.

The opening ceremonies, which I find mostly annoying anyway, will be re-broadcast tonight on American TV. We'll miss it. We have tickets for the Jungle Theater, at 8 o'clock -- Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Maybe one of these years, we'll see Jack up on stage.

*****

Brett Favre ended up with the New York Jets?? Jerry, an avid Jets fan (sporadically), doesn't know what to think.

meanwhile, back at the coffeeshop

Happy 4th of July, he says to me, and of course I say, Same to you, man, but now I'm thinking, Hey, were the Brits really all that bad? Could they have been any worse to us than we've been to ourselves?

When I was a kid growing up in New Jersey, 4th of July was one of my favorite holidays, not because it was Independence Day (whatever that means) but because it was the one day all year when all the relatives on my mom's side came over for a cook-out -- our grandparents and all the aunts and uncles and cousins -- lots of food and laughs and baseball out there in our own field of dreams. Those of us who are left will never have a 4th of July without remembering those times and feeling a little sad.

Oh yeah. 2008. I see that the coffeeshop will be open late tonight because of the crowds coming to the neighborhood later for the fireworks over the river (the Mississippi, a block from here).

This is the first time I've brought my laptop over to the coffeeshop, and I feel a little weird about it. I'm still not very good with a laptop, I do much better with my iTune-blasting PC at home. And I'm a little nervous that the people who usually come over to my table to see what book I'm reading will come over now to ask, "Hey, what are you writing today?" So, just in case I have people looking over my shoulder, I'll avoid using swear words or saying anything controversial (Hmmm -- maybe I should re-think that comment about the British!). :-)

*****
Day Four of the trek through the Southwest for Jerry and the German girls. Today they leave the dude ranch and drive to Santa Fe, New Mexico, where tonight they are going to see and hear The Marriage of Figaro at the Santa Fe Opera. From cowboys to world-class opera -- think we're giving these girls enough variety, a good taste of the USA? Tomorrow, they move on to Roswell, NM, to attend a UFO convention (seriously!).

*****
But it's a beautiful, one might even say perfect, morning here in Minneapolis, the kind of day meant to be a holiday. I'm going to finish my skim latte and go for a bike ride. Cheers, fellow Americans!

overheard at the coffeeshop

I peer over my glasses to see who is here at the neighborhood coffeeshop this morning... There is the black man who looks like he might be a professor, always here on the weekends with his teenage daughter. He usually is reading a book, while the daughter looks bored to tears, and they don't talk. She keeps looking around, and every few minutes she picks up her cell phone, either desperately hoping for a text message or maybe playing Tetris on the phone. This morning, though, there is that guy sitting with them -- the older white guy with the white beard and wearing a cap that makes him look like a 1917 Bolshevik -- and when he sits with them, the two men never stop talking. I can never hear what they are saying, so I imagine they are discussing the book the Bolshevik might be writing, or maybe they are plotting the Revolution.. No, I don't think that's it -- If it were something that interesting, the daughter wouldn't look like she's ready to blow her brains out.

Then Jim and Ruth, retired friends of ours, stop over at my table, as they always do, to see what book I'm reading. What's refreshing about them is that they have usually at least heard of whatever it is. A couple tables away are the two slightly overweight cops eating their muffins and hoping that people don't stop at their table to tell them about the new graffiti on the building next door, graffiti reports being something they say isn't their job any more. Then next to them is the guy who seems nice but talks to himself. I get the impression he might have fried his mind on something, and he always has the look that he just got out of re-hab.

Students from the U start to drift in with their laptops. I finish my latte and trudge through the snow, Doctor Zhivago-like, down the street to my 9 a.m. haircut appointment and from there to the office. A lovely Saturday morning.