Snow's a-coming / Bus reading.

Yesterday I took a daytrip to a different neighborhood in the city so I could work on my one final paper at different coffee shops and have a change of scenery, and I ended up in the afternoon on the outdoor patio of this organic bakery in the yuppie/hipster part of town, and just as I was packing up my books and laptop to go home since my brain was dead and the sun was going down and it was a bit chilly out, this short, frantic-looking well-dressed woman in her early 40s (but looked late 30s) in a padded vest who had double-parked her car outside ten minutes ago was now coming out of the bakery with a tall to-go cup of coffee and a bag of organic pastries, and for some reason she accosted me and was like, "Snow is coming tomorrow!", and I was like, "That's why I was outside enjoying the sun today!", and I immediately began wondering where she was from, since she had a strong accent but I couldn't place her face ethnically. She laughed and said a few things I can't remember, and then went to her double-parked car, a newish sedan, and as she hopped in and drove away, I saw the license plate was an in-state personalized license plate that said --

VATICAN

When I got downtown and was waiting for the bus to go home, I ran into an art history graduate student I know who I didn't know was married and her husband, who was visiting from California, and since she had just finished her dissertation proposal the night before, they had spent the entire day out sight-seeing and had gone someplace for a nice late lunch, and were now heading home on the bus. The bus was packed and they sat a few seats behind me, and since I couldn't talk to them, I pulled out my book I had been reading and started reading, and like twenty minutes later when I looked up from my book and looked around, I caught the eye of the graduate student who I know and she smiled and was like, "I got a picture of you reading."

"Why?", I was like.

"Because you were really serious," she was like.

"Well, the book is good, but not so serious," I was like, and I held up --

She laughed, and this well-dress old black lady who was sitting in the row of seats between us gave out a chuckle and said, "I bet that is good," then she was like, "And did you see one time where he got a big smile on his face?"

"Oh," I was like, "That was the part where Tempest Storm came home on Christmas Eve from going out shopping and her husband accused her of having an affair and kept on yelling at her, so since she had always heard the scar on his face was from cut glass and he was afraid of glass, she took the set of crystal wine glasses that was one of their wedding presents and threw all twelve of them at him one by one."

They didn't say much, even though I forgot to add the next part where later in the night he got angry again and she went to leave to go be alone somewhere and collect herself and he followed her to the driveway and kept harrassing her and she tried to run him over with her car.

A long time ago, by the way, I had asked the art history graduate student to go to midget wrestling. She didn't go.