DrunkenBlog

The quiet sweetness of a day well spent

Many of the geeks I know are at WWDC or gearing up for it, and half the rest of them are gearing up for whether or not Apple will or won't announce they're switching to x86 CPUs and whether this will or won't be a good thing. Of course I'll be sucking down what info is out there and pinging around to those who went, but my day was spent pretty far away from technology.

It started visiting a friend, then meeting up with the drunkenlawyer for lunch since he was in Chicago with his girlfriend -- which he swears exist but I didn't actually see -- because there were a few things to discuss and meeting face to face was overdue. It ended up being a three hour lunch, and involved two white russians, a blue moon, seafood, and key lime pie.

Sadly, I was unable to talk him into shots, and he was walking fairly steadily as I left, which isn't so great for my reputation but probably is for his relationship. For the record, drunkenlawyer:

• Isn't as tall as I thought he'd be.

• Had a horrible opening line involving a drunk commissioner Gordon that I'm going to assume he'd been saving up for days at least, which caused some groans, but was a more amusing way of recognizing each other than my original idea: "You shouldn't be able to miss me. I'm the tall irish-looking muppet guy with the goatee."

• Picked up the tab for lunch. Key phrase being, "I insist." He did let me grab a few drinks though, and he did enjoy the Blue Moon. You don't argue with a lawyer when he wants to pick up the tab. Actually, you should avoid arguing with them about anything.

• Was worried about going into a diabetic coma from some real Chicago deep dish pizza for lunch, but promised he'd get to it before he left. Other things I was unable to introduce him to due to lack of time:
  
  • Lawry's prime rib.
    
  • Real, vienna-beef Chicago-style hot dogs.
    
  • An italian beef.
    
  • An irish carbomb.
    
  • Rippers, which if you've never had them, are basically hot dogs or italian sausages deep fried until the casing splits open in places. They're deformed looking, but oh-so-good.
    
  • Ed Debevic's, which is a bit of a Chicago tradition. It's a 50's style diner known for its waiters and waitresses who get up and dance on the table while being intentionally rude.

• Is a really smart, really nice guy. I came away with mental notes on all sorts of terms that deserve a google. When you're sharing a meal, the three best types of company are usually:
  
  • Someone you love.
    
  • Someone who loves you.
    
  • Someone who knows much more about a subject you're interested in than you do, and is willing to share that knowledge with you.

Basically, drunkenlawyer is the kind of guy most of my readers would enjoy having a drink with even if he wasn't so heavily in my corner. I'm told Trevor is someone at the firm helping too, but unfortunately Trevor wasn't along. If there was a bummer, it was that I had to pass on tickets to the play Jewtopia which would have been a blast but I had to make the last train.

I'd stopped by the OSCO's on the way to the train and picked up a few cans of Starbuck's double-shot espresso in order to feed my brain while I sat and worked on one of the next interviews for the site, but ended up missing the train by a few minutes. While I was hanging out, I meandered into a conversation with two security guards who, as it turned out, were going to be working to 2AM.

I decided they needed the expressos more than I did, and gifts of caffeine are second only to gifts of alcohol in being a universal way of the lines of trust. The chick let me play handle her taser, while the guy filled my wait with tales of the weird things he's seen on the trains while he's worked them.

Now the sun is starting to go down, and I'm sitting back in a double seat being lulled to sleep by the motion of the train and the hypnotic chatter of four elderly brits on vacation sitting behind me, primarily discussing the merits of digital versus their old film cameras when it comes to traveling and pictures of their grandchildren. There's a sense of the surreal hearing a guy pushing 80 extolling the virtues and downsides of a microdrive.

Technology is an amazing thing -- I love it -- but there's a quiet sweetness to a day we can overlook when our ears are stuffed with white earbuds. There's a hiss to technology that drowns out the soupy din of the people and lives around us, and all too often I forget the hiss is an addition to life and not it's normal state.

I may or may not get those questions for the interview done tonight, let alone getting around to harvesting the tidbits surrounding WWDC, but that's OK. At worst I can just leave the earbuds in a little extra tomorrow to give the hiss its due. For now I think I'm going to pull them out and turn around to ask the old brits about their trip to America and whatever other stories they have to tell.

 Posted by drunkenbatman
    June 04, 2005, at 09:35 PM