I made it up to Cambridge at about 7, picked up Carol at the sub-let, and we went out to eat at Whole Foods in north Cambridge. You can get a decent meal there that’s cheaper than going to a restaurant, and with much better people-watching.<\/p>\n
I opened up a tray of cheap sushi. Carol stole a piece of my avocado roll, then started on her chicken soup. Two young women, both blondish, apparently sisters stood at a cash register nearby: both smiled readily but both had a firm set to their mouths that I felt indicated strong wills.<\/p>\n
Look, said Carol, that woman has mesh bags. Three youngish people shopping together, all with pale skin, milling about as their groceries got rung up; they had mostly vegetables and bulk food. I said, I used to use mesh bags all the time, but then I had two break on me and I stopped trusting them. Carol said, They have canvas bags too — look, that one has a beautiful design (drawing of a moon and plants, labeled “People’s Coop, Ann Arbor”).<\/p>\n
Carol went to get another cup of coffee. A middle-aged man walked by, thick lenses in his glasses, medium brown skin, friendly expression, half-smiling half-bemused; I characterized him in my mind as a software engineer, though I had no good reason for doing so.<\/p>\n
A slight woman wearing a Muslim head scarf and an employee apron kept walking past us, apparently a manager overseeing the cash registers. She was short but there was no sense of her being small.<\/p>\n
Carol got up to ask one woman where she had bought her boots. The answer: Filene’s, five or six years ago. Carol sat down and said, I should have asked her what brand they were.<\/p>\n
The food was long gone. Carol downed the last of her coffee. We got up and left. Another cheap date for Friday night.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I made it up to Cambridge at about 7, picked up Carol at the sub-let, and we went out to eat at Whole Foods in north Cambridge. You can get a decent meal there that’s cheaper than going to a restaurant, and with much better people-watching. I opened up a tray of cheap sushi. Carol […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-411","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-boston-cambridge"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=411"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/411\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=411"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=411"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.danielharper.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=411"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}