Skip to main content

Southern Writers

After saying how much I like southern writers, I picked up "The New York Times BESTSELLING AUTHOR DOROTHEA BENTON FRANK Lowcountry Summer" but before I was fifty pages into it, I realized I would rather be watching "The Real Housewives of Atlanta" and the "Real Housewives" of anywhere is a show that my I put a V-chip on. Fortunately, I also picked up a copy of Her Fearful Symmetry (Audrey Niffenegger) and that is holding my interest.

Mike and I went out to a restaurant on the lake last night. This is a place where we usually watch all the activity on the nearby bike path, the ferry dock, and the boat marina, but nothing was going on last night. I can't believe it was too hot to even take out your sailboat if you are fortunate enough to own one, but it must have been. We people watched the two couples at tables on either side of us instead.
The first couple came in and sat down while apparently finishing up an argument they'd been engaged in. He spent the entire meal sighing loudly and rolling his eyes from time to time. She never once took her thumbs or her eyes of the texting she was doing on her phone--except for a couple of times when the phone rang and she talked to whomever was calling. That looked like a fun time.
The second couple were older and were the demanding type starting from the moment they walked in and did not want to sit at the table for two they were given and wanted a table set up for six instead right on through wondering why they could not have this or that not on the menu. They kept the waitress hopping and probably left her a dollar tip. At least they weren't loud about it.
Several years ago we were visiting the Outer Banks in North Carolina. We had supper one night at a seafood restaurant that was right at water's edge just past the fishing wharf. There was a demanding couple there. The deal with the restaurant was that they served local fish, fresh from the fishing boats each afternoon. This particular couple were outraged that they couldn't order a Maine lobster and they were quite loud and obnoxious about it as well. There was no Red Lobster restaurant in the area, so I guess they made do.
They say it takes all kinds, but surely there are some kinds we could do without?

Comments

  1. I agree about Dorothea Frank. She is truly awful. If you haven't read Lee Smith, I think you would like her but go for her earlier books, not her latest.

    ReplyDelete
  2. There's nothing to ruin an meal like being seated next to obnoxious people. It always amazes me that they never understand why people avoid them.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Oh dear, I am probably in the obnoxious catagory. When I dine out it is ususally with friends and we laugh long and loud thru out the meal. Is that why they put us in conference rooms??

    ReplyDelete
  4. thanks for stopping by. On my way to crab dinner, but hope to come back and read some of these posts!

    ReplyDelete
  5. People watching is fun. My husband likes to do this at malls. Sometimes he engages the men waiting for their spouses in conversation. He talked to one little older man at the food court a while ago while he (my hubby) was waiting for me. Then a month ago when we were there again, he saw the same man. It was ten years later, and the fellow was surprised to be recognized! They had a good laugh at still waiting at the same place!

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

I appreciate readers' comments so much. You don't even always have to agree with me.

Popular posts from this blog

It's TIme

 It's been a while since I have posted anything and even my reading your posts is falling by the wayside. I am in Florida now. I have a yard where little attention was spent on landscaping for the past years so I am slowly and (somewhat) methodically addressing that. I also volunteer to work at the pollinator garden and the edible garden I helped install at the UU grounds and I took over the volunteer job of cleaning out the overgrown community garden by my neighborhood mailboxes. The neighbor who was doing that got sick and could no longer attend to it. It's a bigger job than I'd thought at first -- not only overgrown with weeds, but the plants that are wanted there are in life and death competition for each others' spaces. And two walks a day, morning and evening, so Levi can keep up with addiction to canine social media and a daily rousing came of stick or ball midday take up another chunk of my time. I have a weekly meditation group that I co-facilitate, and my own

New Furniture

 We went shopping for a new couch. I liked this one, the first store we went to. Of course it would be an impulse to buy the first one so we trekked around to other stores -- something we liked more, a better deal? No surprise that we ended up going back to that first store the next day and purchasing that couch for our living room. Also a matching love seat for the den where we watch TV. Because I had replaced my old love seat with two recliners. We couldn't keep three households worth of furniture after all. Well, my recliner was not big enough to accommodate both Levi and me. Poor boy had to watch TV from his bed on the floor. There! This is much better! Spoiled much? The little tail on the floor belongs to his toy squirrel, Buddy. It's like having a toddler with the need to be picking up toys or risk tripping over them. But his very favorite play thing is that bathmat that can be found anywhere but the bathroom floor.

Walking

 I have always been a walker. Now that I have a high energy dog there is no excuse for not getting out there. And the weather is not an interfering factor here. Early morning and early evening are our preferred times so even when it gets hot we should be okay. We can get quite a long walk going around the neighborhood, greeting neighbors out working in their yards or walking their own dogs. But the landscape changes quickly just beyond the confines of the housing developments. It could be described as natural Florida or as sites of future housing developments. I do prefer the first option. And I really enjoy being out in natural areas so I often opt to head to a nature setting. I would have liked to put a picture here. Unfortunately my iPhone has made a unilateral decision. It will no longer be sending my photos to my computer. Why? I have no idea. However, we may be walking along happily enough -- me listening to the birds or trying to identify wildflowers and other plants while Levi