Crazy things

[brigdh]

There 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.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

Union Square looked like the site of the warn in heaven today! I thought angels had exploded.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Hee! That is an excellent description.

[chthonicsiren.livejournal.com]

Yeah, there's a giant pillow fight in Union Square each year. Welcome to bizarro world.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Oh, is that what it was? I was really confused.

[solo.livejournal.com]

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!

Simplistic Solo sez:

Since you seem to have established some kind of rapport already, what do you think might happen if you asked her whether you could have one of the nice seats occupied by her coat, explaining that you dislike the other one on offer? If she's cool about it, you can stop being annoyed with her, and if she makes a fuss, at least you can dislike her with justification. :-)

[p-zeitgeist.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. Or perhaps even better, ask whether she minds if you share a seat with her coat, since you suffer dreadfully from the cold? That way either she will move the coat of her own volition, not wanting to risk some grad student getting coffee on that cream-colored fur, or you will have both a seat and some additional warmth.

Of course, you'll probably have to talk to her if you do that. But since she's talking to you anyway, it may not be such a loss.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

*laughs* Oh, if I had the courage, I would certainly do that, if just for the sake of seeing her face as I explained that the fur just looks so warm.

But I do not have the courage, mainly because I've seen her refuse to move when other people have asked. She also has a habit of picking up other people's things to rearrange them and give herself more space, generally without asking. The combination of the two makes me suspect it's not that she doesn't realize she's taking up excess space, it's that she doesn't care.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Ah, well. I wouldn't call it a rapport so much as "hey, I recognize you!" (which is not actually a word, but whatever). I'm sort of scared of her; someone else once asked her to move her things, and she just glared at the guy until he walked away.

[rm.livejournal.com]

i bet the Hawk was the same one I saww ten blocks north eating the squirrel. It's odd, because normally they stay to Central Park or to the Wall Street canyons, where you see them all the time. I've next seen them in the area we've both sighted them in lately before.

[wordsofastory.livejournal.com]

Some of the other people thought it was in the process of building in nest in one of the trees, but I couldn't see anything.