Spanish Coffee

It's been a strange week. Yumi left on Tuesday, and a friend called to set up a date for Thursday. This is unusual for me because I'm not a hot guy, unless you count what my sister says and what her friend Maureen says (but Maureen has a thing for geeks anyway). The strangeness continued when my cousin left a message telling me to watch Kiss Kiss Bang Bang. I bought Robert Downey Jr.'s album after he performed on Oprah, but I don't think I'll see the movie, plus Val Kilmer creeps me out.
I was a little surprised that my friend wanted to get together, and I didn't really know how to take it. I figured that I'd just sorta show up and play it by ear. Well, she didn't whisper any Spanish in my ear which turned out to be good because it wasn't really a date afterall, but it was kinda weird. We sat and talked about nothing for 3 hours. She said that she had wanted to get together for coffee (or maybe something stronger), which at first I thought meant espresso. I thought about it some, and realized that she meant getting together for a drink. I had a few things to take care of that day, namely setting up a line of credit at my bank. When I go to the bank, and to the doctor I wear a suit or something similar. This time, I wore light brown corduroy-like trousers and a chamois-coloured faux suede jacket that I affectionately call my slut jacket. I figured hey why not? I'm at that age (see earlier post), and who am I trying to impress anyway? I went to the bank (late, but not my fault), and bing bang boom got a line of credit for $60,000 just like that. No job, cash poor but a lot of equity and investments - Plus it helps when your sister works for the bank because they give you a break on the interest (or so they say...) I met up with my brother who proceeded to touch my slut jacket with his grimy little grease monkey fingers. I seriously considered placing a few snot rockets on his uniform, but noticed that no smudges had been left on the faux suede so I let it go.
On the way home from the bank, I read a letter from the City to my sister, using my best approximation of what a city clerk sounds like. My sister cut me off and asked me why I'm working in accounting, and not doing voice work. Well, there are a lot of unemployed voice artists out there, and I'd rather be an unemployed accountant and not have an agent. Besides, the last person to take career advice from my sister was Des: Des wasn't happy about his career so my sister asked him what he liked to do. He said he liked to eat, and that he was even good at it. My sister encouraged Des to join the professional eating circuit. Off went Des to practice how many hot dogs he could shove down his throat in five minutes etc. and lo, Des was actually really, really good at eating. He placed highly in a few contests and even won one or two. Sadly, Des entered a pie eating contest that summer, and the poor guy succumbed to a previously undiagnosed allergy to blueberries. Death by pie, not a bad way to go I guess but that's why, in a nutshell, I take career advice from my sister with a grain of salt.
I didn't have to rush about nearly as much as I thought I had to. I went to City Hall and did some research for my sister with regard to the letter I got in the mail. The City is seeking approval to open a small scale pharmacy around the corner from my flat. Ding Ding Ding! As a skeptical property owner, this makes me think that some unscrupulous pharmacist is looking to make some quick money by opening a methadone clinic front in my neighbourhood. I didn't really care, but knew that my sister would, so I did my due diligence and checked out the application. I never actually said "methadone clinic", but that was the first thing the project co-ordinator said to me "It's not going to be a methadone clinic". That made things easy, in fact I'm kinda glad there will be a pharmacy close by. The next closest one I can think of is down in Chinatown, which is kinda far to walk if you need medical attention.
On the way to meet my friend, I bumped into one of my former co-workers in the HR department. She said hello and then started asking me all kinds of questions that I sorta felt were none of her business. I do this thing when people ask me questions I don't want to answer. I lie, except I make up a lie so shocking that the person usually stops asking questions. She asked me what kind of job I was doing now. I told her that I got back into gay porn. Owing to what little I knew of her background, I figured this would get her to shut up. It did. We walked for a bit and then she went her way and I went mine.
I went to meet my friend and we ended up going for coffee. She had come all the way downtown to borrow a CD which I thought was a bit excessive, but some people are real music lovers. So much for "something a little stronger", and my slut jacket. I froze my ass off for nothing. We talked about London and the differences that exist here. Some good, some bad. She said that her partner wanted to move back to London, but that she wouldn't go. I guess any city where earning $46,000 a year, and making ends meet is still a struggle probably makes London one of the least attractive places to live. I tried to convince her that Paris is much nicer. She nearly spit her coffee in my face. She said she'd rather live in dirty old London than dirty old Paris. I'd live in dirty old Paris any day. We talked and talked and talked and talked. I ran out of coffee and offered to buy her a Chantico because she said that there is no way that Chantico is anything close to chocolate con leche. I figured she was wrong and decided to prove it. Chantico is a lot closer than she expected, and said that we needed churros. I told her that I don't do churros. We talked some more, and I asked if she was hungry. She said that the Chantico had filled her up. Okay, I admit it, I didn't understand that. I was waiting for the cafe to kick us out, but it must have been a 24-hour Starbucks or something because the baristas just kept offering us free samples. I was running out of things to say and had given up any hope of watching Survivor but if we weren't going to have dinner together, I had to bail. I figured it was about 10:00 because I don't have a watch, and knowing that she had a long trip ahead of her, I told her that I had to get home. It turned out to be only 9:00 so I was able to salvage the last 40 minutes of The Apprentice. All in all, the day wasn't totally uneventful.