Labor Day

Monday, September 7, 1998
One year ago: More than One, Many, Much

I had coffee this morning with JP, whom I had contacted from his Yahoo personal ad a little while back. He's a few years older than me, a manager at Boeing. He has a son, twenty years old, and he has been divorced for quite a while, I think! He seems to be coming off a breakup that is recent enough to still be a sore point.

We had arranged to meet at Habitat, an espresso place on Broadway. I think I've ended up there before because it's close to a major intersection, so I'm confident that people can find it! There is Microsoft money behind it, so it's run on a non-profit basis.

I walked down the hill from my place, earlier than I would have chosen. It was a cloudy, cool morning; could the Seattle summer really have ended? We had orginally planned to meet at ten AM, but JP wanted to make it earlier because he'd be working a swing shift later in the day. So nine o'clock in the morning it was, and I did get there on time. JP is a tall man with very short hair. I recognized him by the red shirt he said he'd be wearing; he'd seen pictures of me from this site, of course.

We chatted over coffee for him and an irish cream latte for me, accompanied by a scone and a slice of quiche. (Shame on me! I've just realized that he shared the quiche with me, but I didn't offer him one bite of the cranberry scone!) JP has lived various places over the years, and hasn't worked at Boeing for his entire career. We share an interest in opera, but he has seen more live performances than I have. I've seen much more opera on laser disc than I've ever seen in the opera house! He is planning a trip to Austria this winter, but it will be a non-skiing trip for him to a skiing resort. If I went to Austria, I'd go to the Salzburg Festival!

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JP went home to get ready for work, and I took off to do some shopping on Broadway. I bought many used CDs from a stall in the Broadway Market, about half swing and jazz and half classical. I was very glad to find a few more Cecilia Bartoli recordings, and one from "the other tenor" of the Three Tenors (Seinfeld reference), Jose Carreras.

I wandered through Fred Meyer. Is Fred Meyer like Target? I haven't found another general merchandise store like it. I bought a pack of plastic hangers, hair clips, a small gadget for easier chignon construction, and a bottle of anti-bacterial handcleaning gel. I plan on keeping this last item with my dance shoes, since trying it out at the Russian Center the other day. Maybe this will prevent cold transmission this winter! I thought about buying some sandlewood oil in the "natural food" section, since someone recently told me that he likes that scent and I recently used up the bottle that I'd had for years. But I decided to buy it elsewhere (note: foreshadowing!).

I walk across the street to the scent shop, which was where I had intended to buy the sandlewood oil. Oops! Closed for Labor Day! So I continued walking down the street. By this time it was warm and sunny, a beautiful day! When I was about to start waiting for the bus that would take me back up the hill (Gee! How lazy a bus pass can make me!), it occurred to me that I could walk down Broadway to Pike and buy the oil at "All You Knead," a massage supply store that I'd been meaning to check out. So off I went.

Of course, when I got there, that store also was closed for the holiday. Rats!

So I went across the street to the Bartells drugstore, and bought some "Hi-Vitamin" massage oil that had sandlewood as one of the scents that had been added to it. I also bought four small flip-top plastic bottles, for mixing a neutral lotion with various scents, or for filling with shampoo and taking to work, etc. I don't know what sends me into these buying frenzies, but I was completely in that mood today. All of Broadway was one big Costco for me, and I was wandering from one end to the other. At least all the things I bought were useful (barring the CDs) and not very expensive.

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My final purchase of the day was some Chicken Chow Fun, to go, from that nice Chinese place I ate at during the festival with my friend A---. And I lucked out; the bus was just pulling up as I walked to the stop!

The rest of today I was writing, writing, writing, getting caught up on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. What a fun weekend!