Gotta keep this up

I’m in a good place.

The weather is great, and I’m in a nice beer garden to celebrate the fact. I was planning on doing a photo run, but my ambition faded when I saw this place. I’ve ridden past it time after time before, but this time I stopped. Good choice. I like Casey Moore’s because of it’s off the beaten path location and because of the good beer. The location is very conducive toward writing. To bad all I’ve got to say now is that I need to get to an outlet. Maybe I will do that photo fun after all.

Update: Got power, and a garden burger’s on its way. Good stuff. I’ll even look for some wifi.

I’ve got an assignment for one of my classes that is stumping my group at the moment. We are challenged to design a device that will pick up an empty soda can lying on the floor. The device cannot be controlled by the hands or feet and it must be built of recyclable materials. It cannot scoop, and it cannot touch the floor. It must be used by a person walking by the can without them breaking stride. Tough challenge, no? The professor made it more exciting by changing the assignment from last years challenge so that we can’t look toward lessons from the past. The last challenge was to build a bicycle powered machine. Any ideas out there?

No luck on the wifi, so I’ll be posting this later.

So, while I wait for the burger, I think I’ll keep writing. And to keep the writing about something, I’ll write about this place. The customers seem to be pretty loyal and are mostly regular. There is a cat over yonder, but no one’s paying it much attention. That, however, is mutual. It seems that everyone else coming in is being carded, I somehow wasn’t. I guess I don’t look like a trouble maker. This is the kinda place where people go to hang out after a hard day of class or teaching. The mix is mostly younger people with some professor types thrown in. I’m two blocks west of Mill and a bit south of University, so I’m definitely in the residential neighborhood. Not too many apartments around, but I would like to live in this part of town since I’m right in the heart of the action. Also, the waitress let me choose between a tab or up front payment, something that many of the places out here just don’t do. I’m liking the babble of voices around me. I’m just the lonely guy over by the gate, another customer, that one, the computer dude and a hundred other names. Too bad this Heffe is running low. Time to gauge the attentiveness of the staff.

Too dark for sunglasses now, and the night is cooling off.

Burger came.

Second beer came.

This place has had a steady flow all afternoon. They get quieter, but they never get dead. My waitress let me know that they’re not hiring right now, but they need people with server training. I found out that Scottsdale Community College offers said training for thirty-five dollars, and that they offer the course online. It takes about 4 hours.

They don’t card the cat.

So I’m sitting here, running out of things to write, but the beer glass is half full from my perspective. I get to keep writing for a while. They’ve got empty tables still but not too many. They’ve got rope lights draped off the trees and the fence, so that people can see their food and drinks. It’s much better than floodlights. I’ve got time to kill. I’m five minutes away from my dorm by bike, or fifteen by foot. There’s some music in the background, over unseen speakers, but it’s not very noticeable. The interior of the establishment is what would be called “cozy” in a real estate catalogue, but right now it’s not the place for me to be. Outdoors is cooler and fresher, without the crush of all the people inside.

A guy just came in wearing a high school re-union shirt, “25 years later.” I wonder sometimes who’ll even go to my first, 10 year, high school reunion. Where will they be? Who’ll have done what? I can guess at those who end up addicted to academia, and those who can’t stand the university environment. I’ve kept in touch with some people some of the time, and a few people all the time. Still I wonder who’s going to be more evolved from the person I knew at Highland. I’ve had some learning experiences and I’m sure that most of the others have too. I’m wondering who I’ll be shocked by, who has had the most consecutive hair colors, who has the most piercings, who’s gotten the most ink. I know some people will hardly change, but they won’t be the people I expected. Two of my friends have already gotten married.

I’m racing now: I’m trying to hit 1000 words before the end of this beer.

Facebook is an interesting place. It is virtual, however I know people in Connecticut better than I know people on my own floor. There is an interesting phenomenon in which people are more honest about their actions, misdeeds, feelings and thoughts in the virtual environment than they are in the physical. I was tempted to write that they were less honest in the real world, but Facebook is a real world in that it exists and that people interact within it’s bounds. It is real even when it isn’t a physical location. I can have slow conversations with people without hearing that person’s voice, or I can participate in fast paced repartee, zingers flying through the internets and comebacks appearing from a third of the way around the globe almost instantaneously.

It’s getting louder now, and more people are here. It’s almost time for me to be on my way.

1000 words hit.