How can you tell it’s happy hour at a Keys bar? The bike rack is full.
My work life is filled with “givens.” It is a given that my two Nam vets and my part-time co-worker will be sitting outside on the deck when I arrive to open. It is a given that the first thing [...]
Oh no, not again, I thought as I watched him hoist his paints and brushes and head toward the front door. Predictably, the moment he took two steps away from his car, it began: the high-pitched whining and barking that would not cease until he packed up his paints and his brushes and went home. [...]
I made it home just fine today, despite the two rum and sodas. I was supposed to work a double, but it was only 10 hours. I needed the rum and sodas because I wasn’t ready to go home after the double that wasn’t. Because it had been a day that felt like ten. Which [...]
Longer ago than a long time ago, I applied to Duke University as a transfer student. I had just spent a year off from school amassing a stack of newspaper clips bearing my byline at my first reporting job (okay, I was a lowly intern), and I will never forget the pride and thrill I [...]
I have never been a book club person, which, when you consider I have multiple books swirling about in my head on an hourly basis, is somewhat ironic. The first and last time I agreed to attend a book club gathering was many years ago. I grudgingly bought the current week’s choice, “Letters from Vietnam,” [...]
Most local folks in these parts live today while thankfully leaving behind or only looking forward from what used to be–running through their drinks while running in their places, silently cheering themselves on as they cross the finish line that means they never again have to live who they once were.
I used to own… I [...]
“People actually drink at 7:30 in the morning?” asks a friend who works in an office far, far away from here.
“Oh my God, seriously, you have business at that hour?” asks another from another city.
“They must be complete and total alcoholics,” frowns another who lives close by.
Yes.
Yes.
Probably. Maybe. Actually, I don’t know.
Because just when [...]
A restaurant god exists somewhere out there, I am convinced, for the sole purpose of sending in a wonderful guest just when you despair that human beings are at their most hideous when they go out to dine.
She came in exactly at five o’clock when we opened, pausing at the bar to chat with another [...]
“What color are these tablecloths?”
Um, beige?
“No, the actual color. You know, like “Sandy Pebble” or some other real name of a color. I need to tell my sister’s decorator the color so she can get her carpet in this exact shade. It’s just what she’s been looking for!”
Well, um….
“Maybe you could ask someone who [...]
Her hair curled in frizzy clumps as it flew away in the soggy tropical air. His pale face glistened with a combination of sweat and grease as he struggled not to notice how stifling the soggy tropical air felt on his Minnesota skin.
Her glasses slipped down her nose. He pushed damp bangs off his forehead. [...]