I'm a people-watcher. I really enjoy hanging out on the mall benches with the old codgers whose wives are shopping and they're patiently waiting (and people-watching) for them to return so they can go get a bite together at the food court. This book I read recently -- "Bird by Bird" by Anne Lamott, recommends people-watching because they are all such fodder for characters in fiction. I've been really noticing that a lot lately. You can be most objective and observant about that with strangers, because they tend to not realize that you're watching them and thinking all kinds of weird things about them. Plus, the fact of not knowing them makes them all the more intriguing. Today, for instance, I was eating lunch in my favorite sports bar (it's close, the food's good, and I can smoke, my bad!) -- and a woman walked in that I couldn't take my eyes off of. From a distance, and without my glasses, she looked young (probably because she was tall and slender), and I immediately thought "severe, angular, with geometric-Vidal-Sassoon hair". Later when I was leaving (and had my glasses on), I almost gasped because she was much older than I'd originally thought. Add to that description: "brittle sags". (Is sags a word?) OK, that's very rude, I know.

Well, tonight at dinner at our favorite diner (I rarely cook, my bad again), there was a family at a nearby table that might as well have been a cartoon. It was Mom, Grandma, junior-high-aged daughter, and Dad. I don't know how Dad coped. The three females, I swear, were all in competition to (unknowingly, I presume) mimic that godawful lady-boss on "Will and Grace". You know who I mean, with that searing, high-pitched-screamy-voice that makes ME at least turn the channel? Oh. My. Gosh. Loud, too. I think Grandma was Very Hard of Hearing, and so the volume was pumped up to include her in the conversations. (Then Grandma would respond really really loud, and really really high-pitched). I never once heard Dad utter a word, but it would have been just white noise anyway.