The long lunch

Having just returned from a long lunch, I am left wondering, why I don't do that every single day? It's not as though we ate much, I had a banana and my date had a salad, but we sat and talked and gossiped and laughed for 90 minutes. It was so much fun and I was walking back to my office, a huge smile on my face, my happiness hanging out like a badly dressed obese clown and some guy walking toward me saw my enormous smile and said "what's so funny" and all I could muster was, "everything."

One of those days.

I have said this before, at least I think I have, that this is going to be a great year. It started out great, it had an ebb and flow when I had trouble taking out the trash one day, slipped on some winter ice and nearly broke my hip, or something, but I stand before you, sitting, and the pain in hips, feet, knees and shoulders is all self inflicted and I feel like superman.

Especially in a screwy economy, people feel pressured to be competing, to be working at their desk or at least appearing to be working. All of this makes the extended lunch even better. See, it's hard to focus on work when you are focused on fun. The two rarely mix, at least for me.

I like the idea of taking time mid day to just enjoy. The sun is shining, the beautiful people are out walking around in sexy shoes and really, things are hardly ever as bad as they seem. What I find is that we are almost genetically predisposed to find drama and danger more interesting than a light lunch with someone incredibly attractive, scientifically sexy and with a mature sense of humor.

Maybe that is the problem. See, I spend a great deal of my lunches alone, working, reading, blogging about working and reading, and then I realize I should be out with smart and sexy people, planning clandestine meetings in hotel rooms not booked in either of our names.

I was completely drunk this weekend, or it felt like it, and I kept thinking, if I am going to be this drunk, I need to take advantage of it. Then I fell asleep.

The joy of an extended lunch is that it removes you from the games people play. Oh sure, there was the waitress who demanded our attention and had to keep telling us that she was a student at CMU, which if memory serves me correctly is a breakfast cereal manufacturer. So, stop with the bragging, you work for Captain Crunch.

There is a point to this. If you are one of the readers of this blog that lives in almost any other time zone, turn this blog off, shut down your internet, call someone silly and fun and meet for lunch with no limits on money or time spent. Try to stay away from the alcohol, just because they seems to mess with returning to work.

If you are in my time zone, you should just call me. I am good for at least another 2-3 bananas.