Coffeehouse blogging, revisited

I've always liked blogging on free wifi at a local coffeehouse, so it seems appropriate that I revive my blogging habit with one of these sessions. I've been meaning to start back for awhile now, but protracted unemployment and gap-year soul searching made it much less fun to keep you all filled in on my life. This was compounded by my mom's sudden illness and death. Losing a loved one can really take it out of you. But I've had my time off, it's been 4 1/2 months since my last post and two months pretty much to the day since my mom died, and I need to get back among the living. So here goes.

I'm killing time in the Twin Cities...I'd been on a week-long junket to Minneapolis and Decorah and had intended to head back to Chicago last Friday, but between snow storms and necessary meetings and a few other last minute developments, it started sounding dumb to drive back to the Windy just to get on a plane on Thursday AM to fly back here. I had nothing exceptionally pressing that couldn't be done from here so I accepted an invitation to hang out. It's been a good decision...I got to go to my middle nephew's football game last night (they won,) I've had nice evenings with friends and family and I took a long walk along the River this lovely fall morning. All good.

So now I'm sitting at a neighborhood Dunn Bros and I'm thoroughly enjoying the people watching. It's mostly just local folks...a couple of work-from-home types who've set up their office here for the day, a guy in scrubs working frantically on some document I can only assume will mean life or death down the line, a couple of retirees sipping coffee and talking a bit too loudly because their hearing aids can't cancel out the background noise. The usual.

I do have a quick question for the guy over to my left. Do you really think she'll go out with you? Or will you be paying her?

Let me paint you the picture. He's probably mid-forties, but an old-looking mid-forties. (What since I'm a young-looking early-forties type it has become very important to define the subsets of this age group.) He looks like an unholy marriage of Geraldo Rivera and Epstein from Welcome Back, Kotter!. He's wearing a burgundy MOCK turtleneck (as if a standard turtleneck wouldn't be bad enough,) and waist-defining mom jeans with a braided belt that make him look like a woman from behind. And I know from standing five feet from him while I was waiting for my coffee that he smells like hair oil and patchouli day-old underwear. He's got a big fancy computer with a giant screen and it looks like it has many bells and whistles, but it also just looks really heavy. I suppose it helps him get his exercise carrying that behemoth around, so I shouldn't judge.

About fifteen minutes ago I got a little worried. He was doing the conspicuous nonchalant-stretch-check-out maneuver and his gaze settled on me. Yikes. Please don't talk to me.

WELL. I guess I've learned not to flatter myself and assume I'm attracting attention. Turns out he wasn't so much scoping me out as verifying that I wasn't paying him any mind. (We professional eavesdroppers know how to appear unobservant, so there's no way he could discern my general nosiness.) Because now he's cruising a babe site checking out hotties.

He seems to be especially interested in tall, dark leggy types who sit spread-legged on hoods of cars, drape across motorcycles with their buttocks slipping out from the hem of their lowcut dress, or who pose midway through a full bend-and-snap to make a pouty, little girl face at the camera. I think it may be a chat room because it has the look of a posting board, or possibly it's some specialized dating or escort hire. At any rate, he's had to tip his chair back now.

I'm not sure why this guy creeps me out so much. I'd like to think his general unattractiveness and personal odor weren't at the root of it and it's just the cyber-ogling that is making me squirm. But of course you, dear readers, know me too well, and are well aware that his unfashionable attire and bad hygiene freaked me out the moment I saw him. The big-busted-Russian-mailorder-bride-lust is just frosting on the fruitcake. And somehow, my general misanthropic, obsessive-compulsive craziness has started to sing quietly within me, and it has made me feel like reengaging, like rejoining the conversation, like blogging.

And I find his obliviousness and single-minded tantric ookieness to be a perverted ray of sunshine in my run of dreary days. I guess it's nice to know that hope springs eternal. I'm due for some hope, that's for sure.