Running around, working, sleeping, getting up too early; tired, get up
the next day, traffic, "go to bed earlier.....no way" ;no time to watch
T.V. read or blog. Whine, whine, whine. One heck of an interesting
life.....right ? No! Not all those things. My life is really more 'fun'
than all that routine minutiae.

I would probably go crazy if that's all there was . Making observations in everyday passing of events is very interesting and enlightening. And that is only part of the whole picture.

Saturday we went to the Apple Pan. That Hamburger place has
been around long before any of us were born. It's this little hole in
the wall, that when you walk in through the antiquated springy screen
door , you are back in the 1940's. I don't think any inch of that place
has ever been changed. (except maybe for painting the walls.) There is a
u-shaped counter encircled with little black stools, that are
permanently rooted to the step-up ledge above the floor. What is really
amazing is that any time of day that you happen to enter this little
joint, it is always crowded with people lining the walls; sometimes
2-deep.

I always memorize the people standing around (there are no
'waiting' chairs) so that I know when I'm next to sit down. If you don't
take note of the other people standing around, you can't go up to someone who just sat down on a stool if you don't know if you were there first.

On this particular Saturday night I saw two guys sit down on two empty stools .
I really thought that I had been there first. So I walked up to one of
them and told him so. " No", he says to me," I saw you when you walked
in here." Whoops! Before I retreated back to the wait line, he said,
"Hey I can get rid of my friend if you want to sit here instead." I
laughed apologetically, said thanks and moved back.

We must have waited at least 15-20 minutes before we sat down to order. But that's normal. You wait because it's the best hamburger in the city, maybe in
California. You have a choice of two Hamburgers: Steakburger and
Hickoryburger. Both are out of this world. You can also order an
incredible Tuna Melt with the tuna filling so huge it spills out on the
sides. I can see why this place has been able to hang on for going on 60
years. It has built up quite a reputation and I guess the
'word-of-mouths' passes from one generation to the other.

I like to watch people, and I would look around periodically to check things out
while I was gobbling my Steakburger . This tall man walks in who looked
very cool in his sort of turned-up collar jacket and hung out at the
wall. He was probably waiting for someone. I was looking at him as I had
been gazing at others in the last few minutes. But I stared a little
longer because he looked familiar to me. Lately it seemed everyone
looked familiar to me. He looked at me and I was wondering if he thought
I was flirting with him, so I looked away. I mean Luigi was sitting next
to me and I was not flirting! His girlfriend finally showed up. I told
Luigi that I thought they made an odd couple. He had a lot of presence
and stood out in a very attractive way. His girlfriend was kind of a
mouse. Wow, Why was I being so judgmental? He kept looking over and I
started to get uncomfortable.

Eventually they moved over to the other side of the room to sit down. I walked out of there, and for the rest of the night I was trying to figure out where the heck I knew him from. I know that I know him. But from when and from where?

My mother would have said that this guy was from my past life and the reason I
felt uncomfortable was because there was something that had been left
unfinished between us and needed to be taken care of. When? She would
say "In your next LIfe." Go figure.

Ciao,
Peach