The Disappointment of Starbucks

Tonight I dragged my laptop out to Starbucks in order to meet a friend who had mountains of homework to do and I figured I'd get a chance to do a little blogging (I am falling behind... still want to write about Mamma Mia, fantasy football, my first week of school). I was wrong. Apparently Starbucks doesn't have wireless in our state because they contract with some company (T-mobile?) that doesn't service this region, therefore they can't actually get wireless because it would break contract to use a different provider. This seems absurd. So I ended up working on other things and not doing much of that either.

There was this group of guys and one girl talking loudly. Loudly enough that everyone in the entire place could hear every word of their conversation and it wasn't that interesting. Still I was unable to tune it out. We both breathed a sigh of relief when they finally began to move toward the door breaking up their little party. Still they lingered, loudly. Then, much to my dismay two of the men remained. What followed was a real heart to heart. Apparently the acoustics are really good there or these guys didn't mind a room full of people hearing about how much the one guy loved some girl named Kim. They were highly sentimental which might be nice in a film or in a pair of friends I know, but this was much like watching an unfamiliar soap opera for the first time. I was mildly horrified and fought to suppress laughter. I mean, there were times when I had an actual guffaw ready to break free and I managed to smother it into a snicker. Together, my study buddy and I tried to come up with legitimate reasons for why we were each laughing our asses off in the middle of the coffee shop when we, for the most part, were sitting together in silence. Much as we were annoyed by the incessant (did I mention loud?) chatter we also didn't want to hurt anyone's feelings. Go figure. Finally we gave up and went for margaritas where we could talk freely about the 30 minute conversation we had just overheard and about life in general, all pretense of homework pushed aside.