Dude!
People watching at the coffee shop is awesome....well, more like listening in to other people's conversations is awesome. I LOVE it. While I am trying to a). not look homicidal b). look thinky c). do puzzles d). write more of our trip to London in '10; I have one ear out for any interesting chatter that might float my way. Usually it is only interesting to me and...but, like, why do coffee shop people talk so loud anyway?
This deserves a new paragraph. Anyway, why do they talk so loud? The music that plays at these places is generally a bare decibel over being able to make out the song itself on the piped radio or Pandora station or whatever. The rest of the place is pretty quiet except for the tippy tapping of keyboards and the nervous knee jiggling of the over-caffeinated. The only real noise comes from whoever that a-hole is that just ordered ANOTHER cappuccino and that screeching milk steaming thing blows like a train whistle through my skull. Actually, you should see my little London Trip journal. You can totally see where someone got another cappuccino where my pen slips now and then...crack! Anyway, people be talking loud and that is fine with me. Even the pretentious people, who, in any other setting would set my nerves on end going on about themselves and their super important whatever b.s. they feel the need to shout about in public to someone who usually is some sort of devoted follower or just maybe not as douchey and generally more polite enough to let someone who thinks highly of themselves ramble on (like just now).
People at the coffee shop/(un)interesting conversations had:
1). Middle-aged lady sitting across from me with devoted follower or colleague ready to lick her boots. She looks artsy and upper-middle class whitey. I would suppose she has something to do with the university. She gives this other mousier woman a lecture about writing class and drops a lot of hints about "my novel, you know?" and throws out some pretty funny buzzwords for writing class people 'in the know' (you know?). Blocking; Arc-strength; Dead-ends; Pruning and then gives some examples of others in the class and the problems they are encountering and how the teacher was like Moses and leading them through the troubled waters of book-writing and the inferno-like hell of the plot-dragging desert. Cute! Other lady is taking some notes and nodding and looking all starry-eyed. Makes me wonder if maybe artsy lady might actually be some writer or professor I should know...which is probably exactly why she is speaking so loudly about her novel, "you know?"
2). Laid-back couple sitting one table up from them. Woman wearing basically yoga clothes and looking about 6-7 months pregnant. Man is either with her or wants to be, the way he smiles at her and stares at her mouth when she is talking. Awwww. He has nice eyes, crinkles on the side when they say something together that gets both of them laughing and rocking in opposite directions away from the table and then swaying to meet each other's eyes in the middle again. Pregnant lady is surrounded by plates of half-eaten food...how pregnant of her! She looks like she is studying something complicated in paperback bound thick-ass booklets of spreadsheets marked through with red and yellow highlighter. At some point, they both get up and leave all their stuff there; all the food, her sunglasses, booklets and so on. My suspicions are that they either went to make-out somewhere, or that they went for more food, or a walk or all three.
3). Two people stand on the corner across the street (I was sitting against the window, how cool am I?), holding hands, both in collared shirts. One (with short hair), wears a light-blue button-down, tucked in and dark pants. The other is a woman with curly hair just below her ears. They are both smiling. Tuck-in turns three-quarters and I see she is a woman as well and seems very anxious to get as much hand-holding and kissy face time in with curly hair. Curly wears a slight smile, Tuck-in wears an expression hovering between smile and gritting of teeth. They walk at the light and here, it looks like, Curly must take her leave as she plans to enter the coffee shop. Tuck-in manages to get a few good kisses and other PDA deals in on the street corner under the awning, and even lamely lets Curly drag her into the shop, through the door. Tuck-in gets a couple more almost desperate kisses, and hugs in before leaving her lovely lady, Curly, and heading out the door and at a brisk pace striding down the sidewalk and away. Her look is refocused, as she faces away from her woman, or maybe just not so needy and more strong but happy. Curly goes to pick out a treat and order her coffee.
5). I got an amazing chocolate chunk sea salt cookie to go with my Earl Grey tea. If someone else was taking surreptitious notes about the people and conversations at the coffee shop, I feel they may have noted in aside about this weird neurotic girl sitting in the corner writing on napkins, tapping her crocs together (to pop my knee back in...I don't know why, it just works), feverishly working (and cheating) on a book of NYTimes crossword puzzles and then exclaiming audibly about how "effing good this cookie is" and smiling that "spa" smile and sipping at her tea while pretending to look uninterested in everyone else's business.
also, I don't think I brushed my hair that day...I probably looked the nuttiest of the bunch, but it's Berkeley, so I figure I can get away with it.
I needs that cookie again. It is my precious.
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