~Thursday~ It was a typical morning, except an hour earlier today. I was at the city bus stop at 7:17 and the bus arrived at 7:25.
70% Geek / 30% Military arrived at the stop after me, and as is his M.O., took out a hardback book and read. A man walking on the other side of the street for some morning exercise seemed to be limping ever so slightly, and I found myself thinking about physical demons people are fighting a lot of the time when we don’t even know it. I know I have mine.
70% Geek / 30% Military let me board first—he’s a very polite young man—and because it was a little dark out yet this morning, I didn’t notice until we were on board that he has sported a goatee—it being somewhere between blond and ginger.
Of course I watched him open his book to see the name of it, but it looked like an old book, as the cover was solid navy blue, a little shiny even, with a gold border around it, but no words on it at all. The page he opened to did have a Planet Fitness card being used as his bookmark. This made me wonder if I’ve ever seen him at my gym, and I took a harder look.
The bus got quite crowded this morning and I amused myself watching the pecking order, if you will, of how people seem to choose a seat. It would make an interesting one of those charts like the one of The Grand Taxonomy of Rap Names. All variations of people and who the order in which the choose a seatmate when having to share a seat, would just be fascinating.
At my friend Steve’s Christmas party, we took a “reunion picture,” of four of us who vacationed in Provincetown, MA together in 2002.
Garner in 2010
I received my holiday card from my sister, whose sentiments included some underlining of words and phrases a la our mother! Love my sister to death!
| “Happy New Year! Better late then never! 🙂 Hope 2011 is GREAT for you! You are a blessing in our lives. We love you very much! Vivian & Jeff” |
I arrived at The Royal Bean coffee shop off Hillsborough Street just before 7:00, where I met up with Anna and a guy she’s seeing named Don for a poetry reading session. Brad was slated to join us later, some time after 8:00.
In the luck of the draw, Anna’s name was called third, and she read three phenomenal poems of hers. I absolutely adore her turn of a word and her merriment and sometimes friskiness with language in everything that she writes. Mark me down as a fan.
Brad did arrive after eight and people were still reading, but since Anna had gone so early, he missed her readings. He and I sat in the back and were a little bit irreverent with our comments about some of the readers. Imagine that.
Although the event was slated to end at 8:40, it didn’t end until a little after 9:00, and from there I stopped by the bowling alley over on Capital Boulevard to check in on the Kings and Queens, a bowling league of gay people and one on which I used to bowl years ago. The league has really shrunk, I think there are maybe 10 teams now. When I bowled there were 20 or 22.
The only people I really knew there with Chris Moss and his partner, and Willis Ward, who I knew at IBM. I only stayed about 20 minutes, and Frankie came by and we spoke for just a few. He mentioned that there’s a new “state of the art” bowling alley over in North Hills now, which I hadn’t heard about.
My next stop in my gallivanting night was at Helios, where I stopped just to kill time so as not to get to Trailer Park Prize Night (TPPN) too early.
I had a cup of coffee, surfed the web, and somewhere in there had a nice telephone conversation (which are not three words I often, if ever, use together) with Steve Moore. I had to cut it off though, as 1) he likes speaking on the phone, and 2) I’d stepped outside to take the call, it was cold out there, and I was in shorts, of course.
And the last stop on the crazy train was at TPPN, at which I arrived between 11:15 and 11:30, and with whom I spent the time with Alex and Bill. A copious amount of alcohol was had, which is the reason I don’t get there any earlier than I do.
I got home quite late, and tomorrow’s gonna suck.