People!

Doreen was working late (ish) last night, and we had not been out for a drink alone together in a while. So we decided to try a new little wine bar that just opened this weekend down the street called SoVino (South American wines according to their tag. We didn’t have any of those. Not that we don’t like them, we just didn’t see any we wanted to order.) We walked over there about 7:10, and sat outside as the temperature is starting to cool off in the evenings.

We started with a couple of nice glasses of California Sparkling Wine. But this post is not about the wine or the food. It is about a fellow patron.

We had just been sipping our wine for a while when this skinny dark haired woman comes bouncing out of the restaurant. She has a cigarette in hand (Houston recently banned smoking in all indoor buildings – bars included) looking for a place to sit down. Inexplicably, one of the busboys had just placed a “reserved” marker on the table next to us (there were several empty tables) and she said, “Oh, this table is reserved!” and we told her to go ahead and sit down. There were no people coming to that table for a while.

SO she sat, and she chatted. And I mean chatted! She told us that she was about to sell a house that she had owned with her ex-husband, and she had a three year old kid, and oh my! did she ever want to move back to Austin! And he ex-husband was from east Berlin, and you know he was really good with the cats when they had cats so she thought that he would be a great father and he was an extremely talented bio-mechanical engineer and now he was in sales but he was moving back to Germany because he couldn’t take the stress and she just had ristoline and goddAM but that hurt and her father moved out of his condo so she could move in because her ex husband was satying in the house and did she mention that she was closing on her house tomorrow?

Whew.

They her fiancé came outside, looking like an imperious controlling, demanding jerk and said, “Karen, the doctor was wondering where you were.” She hopped up and went inside.

Not more than five minutes later she came back outside and asked if she could sit with us!

We said sure, and she proceeded to tell us how “Lance” (her fiancé) was really a nice guy but he was under a lot of pressure because he left his big law firm for her and opened up his own practice and he has to do all the copying and phone calls and scheduling himself and he is working on a really big case and she wants to move into West Univeristy with him because he has a nine year old daughter and they need to go to good schools and Lance’ parents are living in the house that THEY should be living in but they aren’t moving and they are getting married in Napa in November and it will only be a small wedding and she had to give her two dogs away and don’t you dare judge me because you don’t have a three year old kid and I am allergic to dogs and Lance has a dog and he is now living in a condo and her father is giving away the dogs tomorrow and she is very sad about it and if you don’t approve why don’t YOU take the goddamed dogs and I met my ex at a New Year’s Eve party and he was really nice and smart but growing up in East Germany down weird things to you and I only smoke two to three cigarettes a day.

Check, please.

Nice to meet you, good luck, and enjoy the rest of your life!

Whew.