2003-03-15 - 11:06 p.m.

On the internal soundtrack: "Side by Side"

I was DREAMING about that song this morning, about wandering around a hotel singing it to myself. In the dream, someone overheard me singing it and joined in, and I was singing loudly and expressively in a way I would NEVER do in real life. Not 'til after five years of voice lessons, anyway.

I AM WEARING A T-SHIRT!!!!!!

AND NO SLIPPERS!!!!

AND I AM *NOT* COLD!!!!!!!!!

I am ecstatic.

Today, Poindexter put together the shelves for the garage and put up the new panels and scarves. He *rawks*. I was utterly useless and became cranky just trying to think about how to do it -- the curtain rods are ten feet up -- so I had to leave and just let him work his magic. It looks fabulous. Then I felt guilty for being so unhelpful. But, everything still has all the folds from the packaging so we're gonna have to take 'em down and wash 'em and possibly iron them and put them back up. So, I can iron and feel useful. I don't get cranky about ironing.

I went out to get myself a chai latte to cheer me up, and also to get a newspaper so I can plan my weekly shopping around the sales. I was gonna go to Starbucks, but something made me turn down one street early (decided to get the paper first, then the chai, maybe?), and I came upon an independent cafe I'd peeked into before, but thought I was not "cool" enough to go to.

This is ridiculous, but I am intimidated by coffee shops. I would love to go work in one, maybe for a couple hours once a week or so, just to have people around. But I'll only order one drink, so I feel guilty taking up a table. Plus, all the people always have a "look" about them -- usually a slightly grungy/goth look -- which I do not have, so I feel out of place. It's very silly, but I'm not a big coffee drinker so I never really thought much about it.

ANYWAY. This place has an owner who is an incredibly friendly man in his 60s, I believe, and Middle Eastern. He was chatting with a woman in her 40s who was also friendly, and I ended up sipping my "to-go" chai and chatting with them for a good half-hour. About traveling and contractors, mostly. The woman, Mary, lives nearby, and is living on the top two floors of her house while the bottom two are gutted and awaiting renovation. She gave me her phone number and e-mail when she left and said when she got back from her vacation we would have to get together for coffee again! WOW!

In addition to the coffee, he has desserts available AND -- AND! His own homemade middle eastern dishes. WOW!! He made us stuffed grape leaves so we could try them. They were FABULOUS. He says he only uses the freshest ingredients, and he makes it right there. I'm going to try the tabouli next. He was so cool. His cafe is beautiful, with walnut-stained wooden beams on the ceiling and the walls are a warm deep terra-cotta color. He did ALL the renovation work himself -- Mary said the place was a DUMP before he started -- and he said that "If you want to do it right, you have to do it yourself," and "Contractors are all thieves, they take your money and don't do anything."

Do you ever have little moments where you fall a little bit in love with some facet of a stranger?

I rarely remember them specifically later, only the experience. One that I do remember was being stuck in traffic in Philadelphia, during a trip when I was single between VA and NJ. There was a church bus next to me, some AME church, full of people about my age. I was looking up at the bus, and a girl looked down at me, and the two of us spontaneously broke into big grins. It was a little human connection in a very dull moment, and I've never forgotten it.

Once recently, in a train station, I saw a guy. Maybe 5'9" or so, stocky. Mid-20s. Baseball cap on backwards. He had a HUGE grin on his face, and had his baseball cap on backwards, and his arms straight up in the air with hands balled into fists. Another guy about his age was just behind me -- obviously coming to visit Baseball Cap -- and when he came through the doors, Baseball Cap ran up to him, yelled something, slapped him ten, and gave him a big careful-not-to-be-too-clingy guy hug. He was SO HAPPY to see his friend, and not at all embarrassed to show it, and I fell a little bit in love as I walked past, smiling.

It's fun, when that happens.

Sometimes I actually have time to talk to a person. I've met people on trains and planes and had fascinating conversations with them. I remember I met a guy on Amtrak once and we talked about the internet a lot, but I can't remember much else.

Recently I had a great conversation with a taxi driver. I wanted to write this one down so I wouldn't forget. I like to talk to taxi drivers, because sometimes they have really interesting things to say. But since a lot of them are immigrants, it's hit-or-miss when it comes to being able to understand them. This guy had an accent, but he made a real effort to be understandable, and he was friendly and chatty, and he is fascinated with languages so we gabbed about that for the entire trip. He was from Ethiopia, and had been in the States for about 20 years, after living in Germany for a few years before that. He had long skinny dreadlocks and a postcard of Bob Marley and his (late) doggie on his visor. The doggie was a labrador/cocker spaniel mix, and they used to go running together. He has three kids, all in their teens. The oldest has a full scholarship to the college she's attending. He said, "We had no TV in the house [when she was growing up]."

He said he speaks several of the native Ethiopian languages, and I started to ask him about those. He told me that the alphabet has 233 characters, and wrote my name for me using the Ethiopian characters for the sounds. From the way he did it, it sounds as though the unit of the language is a syllable, not a letter (like Japanese). He said that kids know the alphabet (syllabary?) by the time they're three years old, and that the schooling there focuses much more on critical thinking. He said there were never multiple choice questions on tests, only essay questions. You really have to know the answer.

He was so interesting I'm sorry I didn't ask to see if he uses e-mail.

OTOH, sometimes it's nice to just have these little short experiences. Not every relationship has to be a long-term one. And some of 'em are even best left short.

Gratuitous photo of the day:

This is a horrendously fake smile, but I actually liked my hair in the picture. This is just after I gave up on short hair and started growing it out. It was taken in November 1998, the fall before the wedding. Jeez, it feels like it was just yesterday!

One of these days I'm going to have to post a series of pictures showing how my hair has changed over the years. I thought I wasn't adventurous hair-wise, but I keep turning up photos and it seems that I've managed to make a few changes here and there.

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