The Little Things

I loved it in Albany when I'd see people on the street I knew, or when the shopkeepers knew my name. Which was frequent.

Now that I actually live in a for-real small town, I'd expect that sort of thing to happen all the time. Which it doesn't. Although having fifteen years in Albany helped, I'm sure. But I do run into a lot of people I know biking around town, which is funny as it usually takes me a moment to place the face.

But last week Greg went to coffee with some gamers he knows who live up here. They recommended two restaurants in Eureka—you know, The Big City—and yesterday G-man and I went to one, the Laotian one. It was pretty damn tasty, especially for a pair of Bay Areans jonesing for Asian food prepared by actual Asian people. Which this was. And as dinner was winding down, and we'd finished mopping our plates with the last of the sticky rice, one of the two women running the place said, You're new faces, haven't seen you before. Yes, this is our first time here. We drove down from Arcata. Then she came out from behind the counter, introduced herself, and shook our hands.

Now today, as I came blustering into the PO after a windy, wet, rainy day of mailma'amery, carriers, clerks, and managers kept turning to me and saying, Hey! You've got cookies in the cage. The cage where we keep our Extra Special Mail? Yes!

Angela, the woman who cuts my hair when I get around to getting it cut, had dropped off a bag of homemade cookies, as promised. I'd run into her at the market up the hill, both of us buying the day's lunch special. And when I told her how I'd been since I'd last seen her, she said, Oh you sound like you need some cookies. Which I did.

And that is a typical Humboldt day: crummy weather and warm-hearted people. I love that.