Walking in the seashore twilight

[austin_dern]

Now on for another little multi-day epic storytelling event as I haven't had one of those in nearly a week now. Well, bunny_hugger visited, recently, and what better time than a week when I'm visiting her to talk about it?

The first day was a deliberately short one, with her flying in Friday night after my workweek. It's not normal for me to work on a Friday, but I'd figured that I could do this convenient time-sliding and work one Friday in exchange for a day off the next week, conserving my personal days and vacation days for other, bigger projects. As it turned out I had to take a day off that week anyway so I ended up leaving a trail of confusion and slightly frustrated schedule-setting at work, which was more confused than usual because of a development that's also pretty exciting but lower in importance to this, as I see things.

So as typical (now) bunny_hugger would be flying into Newark, and I initially thought I'd drive directly up from work. It turned out there was enough of a gap between the end of my work day and her arrival, though, that it made sense for me to go home, get a bit of exercise in, shower, and drive up from there and with my impeccable sense of timing I managed to notice only belatedly that her flight was arriving sooner than the anticipated hour and I was kind of running late.

I did, with the benefit of my iPad, know when she'd arrived and what gate and that this hadn't changed substantially, and I got to the gate at about the scheduled time for her to arrive. There was not any of the wave of people getting off the plane, however, and I eventually thought to check my mobile phone and discover she'd arrived and we had somehow managed to miss each other. Well, not somehow: she'd gone to the baggage carousel, despite not having anything but carry-on luggage, as a reliable place to sit while waiting for me, and I'd come in through a path that bypassed the carousel entirely. We seem to have a knack for this sort of thing, considering we see pretty much exactly in line with each other about things like the baggage carousel being a natural place to meet someone after a flight.

Coming home ... we were tired. She'd been up late packing and getting her house ready to go a week-plus without her, and I'd been up since early morning for my usual work routine, so we knew to start with it wasn't going to be one of those nights where we stay up till dawn staring at each other.

What we did do, though, was get hungry, and we resolved to stop for dinner even though with the lateness of the hour there was an excellent chance we'd have to stop at a diner. And we did, at a magnificent diner by coincidence near the former mall where my first job had been. This was a fine one, a diner of stone and chrome and neon lights outside, glittering in the night like a fantasy, with omelettes and French toast. Diners are one of our ritual things, and getting to one we haven't been to as a couple before (I'd been there, although a change of management and renovation or two ago) made for a pleasant inauguration.

Trivia: Newspapers announced on 18 July 1881 that plans for a day of national thanksgiving for James Garfield's recovery were being made. Source: From Failing Hands: The Story of Presidential Succession, John D Feerick.

Currently Reading: Giants Unleashed, Editor Groff Conklin.

Comments

[mondhasen.livejournal.com]

This was a fine one, a diner of stone and chrome and neon lights outside, glittering in the night like a fantasy...

Nice image. Wonderful setting for omelettes and French toast.

aside: LJ insisted on the alternate omelet spelling- a left over perhaps from Liberty Fries ;o)