Scene From Atlanta Bread Company

Time: 2pm yesterday

Place: Atlanta Bread Company on Hendersonville Road

Scene: KD sitting at a high table, computer open, jacked up on coffee. Several middle-aged white men dotted around the room. Most are wearing bifocals and ties. Most have computers or briefcases open. A few other random people in the room include: one guy studying a medical book; a mother with two kids ordering cookies at the counter; a woman feeding soup to another woman who is in a wheelchair.

Enter an African-American man in his 50s who walks with purpose across the room to the counter. He is wearing blue work pants and a navy blue coat. He clutches a few magazines to his chest with one arm-- elbow bent as if his arm were in a sling. The magazine on the outside is Cosmopolitan. When he reaches the counter he says, "Excuse me! Excuse me what time is it?" in a voice that is louder than the quiet hum of computers, coffee, and the occasional, "Order 115 order 115 at the counter..."

The ladies behind the counter hesitate a minute, but then one sturdy white woman says, "There's a clock over the fireplace" with the same volume as Cosmo man. He says, "OH" and walks to the middle of the room to look at it directly.

He then asks the ladies when the next bus comes. They say they don't know. He leaves.

A few minutes later, he re-enters and walks back to the counter before declaring, "I need to know when the next bus comes!" The quieter ladies mumble that they don't have a schedule.

He suggests they call the terminal for him. They say that they can't do it right away because there are customers waiting. He leaves again.

Third time, Cosmo man walks directly up to the sandwich maker and says, "Call the city bus terminal for me. I need to take the bus." She says she will after making the orders she needs to do.

The sturdy woman interjects with his same voracity, "One moment, sir!"

She calls. She says, "3:40 and 4:15 are the next ones." He stands in front of the clock's fireplace again. He walks outside.

When I left for TAASC, he was waiting next to the bus stop sign. He was not reading his Cosmopolitan yet.

Goodbye.

Last year, a friend would always get off the phone quickly by saying in one breath, "okaybye" almost before the other person would be ready to go. I started doing this, Roomie started doing this, and it caught on. Soon everyone was off the phone with a flash.

I was thinking about this today when saying goodbye to Greg on the phone. We have a weird pause sometimes between one person saying, "Okay, talk to you later" and the other saying, "Bye." Maybe I should bring, "Okaybye" to that equation.
...
Pete influenced us in writing "k bai" on googlechat instead of "okay bye."

Tonight I was trying to write "bai," to Alyssa, but instead I somehow wrote, nao. Alyssa responded bai nao, which made me think about how in Thai a word can be a completely different word depending on the intonation. I think I thought about that because it looks like it would be in Thai, "bai nao."

But then if you have a southern accent, it would also fit, "Bai Naaow." Intonation.

Welcome to February, 2009

I had a weekend off from taasc. It was incredible.
The following photos are just a glimpse of the resplendent time.

Other images:

• A woman in a long skirt, flannel-like shirt, and straw hat at Jack of the Wood on Saturday night. She brought her own harmonica to play along with the band that was performing. I remembered some advice that it's not polite to stare.
• A fuchsia colored glove that a woman dropped on Wall Street today. Before she turned to pick it up, I saw it from afar and tried to identify that bright flash of color on the pavement.
• Today's pink, gray, and white clouds that were all at once a gargoyle, a dragon, a pizza baking stone, the Gemini Twins, and a whale. Then, the silhouette of delicate upper branches against a not-quite-cobalt sky.
• Spreading out on cool sheets... morning.