Drinks at the Board of Trade.

I got cheap tickets to the opera again last night, and beforehand I went to meet a friend at the bar in the Board of Trade building downtown since we would be dressed up and it was around after-work time and plus too I hear that the worse the economy gets, the stronger the drinks get.

(Which is true, one whiskey on the rocks for 45 was a tumbler-full with like two ice cubes, and I was only sobering up four hours later when the opera was ending; the bartender mixing a gin and tonic was dumping gin in a glass and then adding a few drops of tonic, it was incredible to watch).

Anyhow, my friend wasn't there yet, so I sat down at the bar next to this older black lady with a short haircut who was in a business suit ("Lydia"), and of course we started talking about the opera. As it turns out, she's wanted to go because she's always up for something new, but never has been, because she didn't realize that they had subtitles.

"And can you meet people there?", she was like.

"Not really," I was like, "Most everyone sticks to themselves and the people they come with."

"Well," she was like, "Is it a good place to work the room with your eyes?"

Somehow she had mentioned at astrology at some point, so I changed the subject, and she started saying that the last time Uranus was at this point in its cycle, it was in 1930, and that's when the stock market was at its worst.

Shortly after that, my friend showed up, and though I try not to ask people about their professions since that's an obvious conversation topic, that was the first thing he asked her.

"You know Bill Gates?", she was like.

"Yeah, of course," my friend was like.

"Well, I was married to a Bill Gates-type guy and got divorced, so I haven't had a job since 1988," she was like, and then she explained to us that she has a nice condo downtown and makes the rounds of bars every late afternoon/early evening.