Sunday, September 09, 2007

good news and bad news from the coffee shop...

The good news:
As I came in to my favorite coffee shop, an elderly gentleman was leaving my favorite corner spot...

My favorite spot has the following to recommend it:

The bench seat is comfortably worn in.
There is a 1/2 wall to my right, over which is an outlet!
I can see the rest of the place, so I'm not startled and can have the momentary distraction of people watching.

The bad news:
The icky 'coffee shop creepy intellectual' dude just showed up, and is sitting at the next table... facing me.

On Friday I was here for several hours. The whole time he had his stuff in my favorite spot, but he didn't use it! Not once did he sit here, in the perfect spot. He paced, he tutored some idiot on physics, he went outside to make phone calls and spent a creepily-long time in the men's room. He didn't sit here. He didn't plug in his computer. He certainly didn't do any intellectual work.

Now, he's giving me the crusty look --


The real good news:

I beat creepy-coffee-shop guy here... and I'm gonna stay.

So There, Mr. Creepy. And, I'm doing actual intellectual/academic work. I'm not just some creepy version of an intellectual poser.

Yep, look at me all you want. This is what writing an academic paper looks like.

now, I need to get back to work... I finally have a handle on this paper!

1 comment:

Christopias Spritopher said...

I have that person as a parent of a kid in my class! He thinks I'm dumb because I don't have mad trivia skills, but my job isn't to know trivia - it is to understand the main idea.

I hate it when they take the good seat and don't sit in it.