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Crazy things
Feb. 24th, 2007 10:49 pmThere is a woman at my coffeeshop, who is here possibly even more often than I am. She stands out a bit from the rest of the crowd, which is why I suppose I manage to recognize her, being much older than the average college student, and with a habit of wearing blouses with huge patterns in bright colors, giant movie-star sunglasses, and huge, cream-colored fur coat. I think she must be a professor, if not at my university than one of the other ones nearby. My guess is she's in Women's Studies, English, something like that; the pile of books she has are always on topics like 'the gaze in western art' or 'body image and eating disorders' or 'women characters in Victorian literature'.
She sort of drives me crazy.
She has a habit of taking up two or three times the space of anyone else: she'll put her coat and bag in one chair, arrange her books and notepads in front of a second, and then decide to go spend a hour taking a phone call on the opposite side of the shop. It wouldn't be a problem, really, but the place is generally so crowded that there's certain to be someone who could make more productive use of some of the space she's occupying. Also, she treats the shop like her office; I've witnessed her hold what I'm fairly certain were office hours here, meeting with one student after another and discussing things like grades and paper topics.
By this point, she recognizes me also, and so if we happen to be sitting at the same table, she will delegate me to watch her things while she goes off on some random activity or meeting. Not that I mind, and she's always very nice; once she grinned at me and said, "Your seat was waiting for you!" when I managed to snag a good spot right after someone else left.
But I tell you all of this, and I am particularly annoyed today, because she again has several of the very best seats, and I am stuck in one of the worst ones. Woe!
Today also I went by the farmers market, to buy some things for the next week. As I was crossing the street to the park it's held in, I noticed white material all over the ground, and wondered idly why there was still snow here when it had melted everywhere else. And then I got closer and realized it was feathers. Hundreds of thousands of white and grey down feathers, drifting in the wind and clumping in masses in corners and caught in some people's hair, like they'd been rolling in them. Some people were ripping open pillows and comforters to add more, and there were large amounts of already ruptured pillows in a trash can. I passed one guy, without a shirt but wearing some bizarre arrangement of belts or straps or something, the right side of his face painted blue, being interviewed by someone with a camera. "We just want people to have fun!" he was saying as I walked by. I have no idea what that was about.
I rounded the edge of the square, getting away from the feathers and into the farmers market, to run into a dense crowd of people, all staring up in the same direction. There was a hawk in one of the trees, sitting and looking appropriately predator-like at the people below.
And that is, so far, the limit of crazy things which have happened to me today. Except that, after I wrote this, the internet ceased to work for about six hours. But that wasn't the fun kind of crazy.
She sort of drives me crazy.
She has a habit of taking up two or three times the space of anyone else: she'll put her coat and bag in one chair, arrange her books and notepads in front of a second, and then decide to go spend a hour taking a phone call on the opposite side of the shop. It wouldn't be a problem, really, but the place is generally so crowded that there's certain to be someone who could make more productive use of some of the space she's occupying. Also, she treats the shop like her office; I've witnessed her hold what I'm fairly certain were office hours here, meeting with one student after another and discussing things like grades and paper topics.
By this point, she recognizes me also, and so if we happen to be sitting at the same table, she will delegate me to watch her things while she goes off on some random activity or meeting. Not that I mind, and she's always very nice; once she grinned at me and said, "Your seat was waiting for you!" when I managed to snag a good spot right after someone else left.
But I tell you all of this, and I am particularly annoyed today, because she again has several of the very best seats, and I am stuck in one of the worst ones. Woe!
Today also I went by the farmers market, to buy some things for the next week. As I was crossing the street to the park it's held in, I noticed white material all over the ground, and wondered idly why there was still snow here when it had melted everywhere else. And then I got closer and realized it was feathers. Hundreds of thousands of white and grey down feathers, drifting in the wind and clumping in masses in corners and caught in some people's hair, like they'd been rolling in them. Some people were ripping open pillows and comforters to add more, and there were large amounts of already ruptured pillows in a trash can. I passed one guy, without a shirt but wearing some bizarre arrangement of belts or straps or something, the right side of his face painted blue, being interviewed by someone with a camera. "We just want people to have fun!" he was saying as I walked by. I have no idea what that was about.
I rounded the edge of the square, getting away from the feathers and into the farmers market, to run into a dense crowd of people, all staring up in the same direction. There was a hawk in one of the trees, sitting and looking appropriately predator-like at the people below.
And that is, so far, the limit of crazy things which have happened to me today. Except that, after I wrote this, the internet ceased to work for about six hours. But that wasn't the fun kind of crazy.
