Breakfast

Relieved to hear that we avoided making the list of the Worst Blogs on the Internet, I feel I can again surface to add a post to this fine community. Which I helped to launch, but have lately been a poor contributor.

I have lately become aware of so many more readers of this blog than I knew were out there. We don't keep a counter here, in part to avoid the temptation to write for an audience instead of ourselves (not that we can ever truly avoid that). So we don't know how often we are visited, and from where those visitors come. But I've just heard from a lot of people in the last few months who have noticed my absence and mentioned it. This inspires me to check in more often. Friends in the Dominican Republic, in England, our good friends in California, and so many others that I don't talk to enough. This one's for you.

In the last 3 months I've made some decent money at poker, almost ruined my car by not tightening my lugnuts, borrowed a nice laptop, purchased a nicer laptop, given up on the TV show Heroes, discovered the joy of a quiet breakfast alone with a newspaper, survived a cold, worked on my jump shot, won an election (as a campaign manager, not a candidate), experienced an economic downturn, experienced a historic American moment, and tonight, just tonight, watched the Michigan basketball team knock off the #4 ranked UCLA Bruins. It's been a great time.

So many good blog posts to be had there, but I think tonight I will focus on the breakfast. During the campaign I had to attend these county meetings for the Democratic party, and if that doesn't sound boring enough, they took place downtown at 7 in the morning. At first I hated it, but after a few I started to look forward to them. Because the meetings would let out at 9am, I had an hour of downtime before I had to open the comic book store, and so I would buy a paper, go to a nice coffee-and-eggs diner downtown, and take an hour to chill out and read the news.

I grew to love this time, so much that I now observe the ritual even though I don't have to go to the meetings anymore. Every Friday morning I try to get up an hour early (with middling success), get downtown early, and take some time for breakfast.

One of the things I really like about the diner are the patrons. It looks kind of like that place in the movie "City Hall", where John Cusak goes to meet with Danny Aiello over breakfast to discuss business. It has that feel to it. And there are a group of tables pushed together on one side of the restaraunt where the Guys get together, usually about 8-10 of them. I've never been able to discern if all of the Guys are retired, or only some of them, or if they are/were all in the same line of work.

What I know is that they're always there on Friday mornings, and I'm guessing on other days also, talking about sports, the news, jawing with the waitress, and just sitting around drinking coffee and enjoying an extended morning together. I like to imagine that they've all known each other for decades, that they've been coming to this diner for breakfast together for years, and that they'll all grow old together and always have this place to come to in the morning. They remind me that it's ok to relax, to take some things slow, enjoy your coffee, and that the world outside with it's long to-do lists and urgent matters doesn't necessarily have to be answered to Right This Second.

So that's my post. If you're lucky, I'll do another one next week. In the meantime, enjoy your coffee. Read the paper. You have time for it - you really do.