R comes over to the counter to chat about various things (work being done on her yard, a conference she has to go to instead of working on her yard, and whether I am still seeing Nancy since Nancy hasn't been up here in awhile). While we're conversing, BDWFWHL* is busy hitting on E. Blatantly right there in Starbucks. In full view of R and everybody else in Starbucks. This amazes me. The odd thing is nobody besides me and possibly Lisa have noticed the dyke drama taking place. The rest of the customers and crew are oblivious. R finally intervenes and they leave.
Tom arrives. I move over to sit with him. Julie arrives. Richard and Queen Isabella* arrive. Anthea arrives from Portsmouth. Conversation ranges from Vladivostok (Julie and Anthea and Richard looked at my pictures, which I had brought to show Lisa but the place was so busy Lisa never got a break to look at them), to Japan, Basho, Alan Booth (The Roads to Sata and Loooking for the Lost), Fancies and Goodnights, photography, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, the auction at Rose Cottage...
Julie and Anthea are waiting for Lauren who is going to portray Elizabeth Stuart Phelps in Julie's play. Anthea is the director. They review the script while they wait.
Queen Isabella says he plans to take his sabbatical in the 97/98 academic year on Hokkaido. Anthea, and Tom, and I all decide we are going to crash his sabbatical so he better get a bigger house. Then Anthea says what she really wants to do is retrace Basho's journey. She's had this fantasy for years. So have I! We decide to do it together and go crash in on QI afterward. I have enough frequent flier miles for a free ticket to Tokyo. Then we all get into this discussion of why there are no direct flights to Sapporo. The conversation gets wilder and wilder until Lauren calls and says she is at the Lowell train station instead of Andover and Julie and Anthea run off to pick her up. Richard vanishes without saying goodbye in order to avoid more photography questions (he doesn't know why my automatic camera didn't expose correctly for the Fuji Velvia). Tom and QI and I talk about Sumo. Tom and I love it. QI is embarrassed at the idea of it but he's never actually seen a Sumo match. We convince him that if he actually went to a match, he'd fall in love with it. Then they talk about Noh, which I don't know anything about. Suddenly we all realize our parking meters are about to expire and we rise as one to leave.
A morning like this brings home to me that what really drove me crazy in the high-tech environment I worked in was the lack of conversation. Nobody talked about anything but work details and at my level every transaction was a negotiation not a discussion or a conversation. Experiencing every verbal interaction with another human being as a negotiation was exhausting. No wonder I was tired. I had little opportunity for non-work conversation until I embarked on my get-a-life project (which did result in meeting Nancy - the best thing that ever happened to me). Maybe most high-tech workplaces aren't as austere as what I experienced but I shudder at the thought of going back to that kind of environment.