And a good morning to you, guys. Anyway. Last night was the capstone on a weekend that seemed to include drinking more often than it didn’t. Now, I had injured my foot that morning (overnight, actually) and was having trouble walking for most of the day. So I get downtown and head for coffee and … closed, due to Memorial Day. Aw well, still, over to the bar and I sit down and about to tell M about my foot when she says “Oh! And guess what, I got in a car accident on Saturday night!” Well, all right that wins.

Seems she was in a cab going home and the cabbie rear-ended someone else at speed. She’s all right, just really sore shoulders and arms from where she hit the partition. Still it was such perfect timing. So we discussed that for a while, until we both noticed Val was a bit hyper.

Val comes over to me and starts talking in this sing-song Valley-girl cadence. “So this weekEND, I went shopPING, and I got some dresSES and I look so FLY.” she rushes out. M comes over, raising an eyebrow and wondering why I am laughing. “Tell her, you tell her,” demands Val. So, I say, in an utter monotone and with a nice good 3 second pause after every period: “This weekend. She went shopping. Bought dresses. Looks fly.”

But Val was quite the little spaz last night. She sat, for a while, and muttered various phrases over and over again while drinking tea. And then she’d get up and go work and come back and start making all of us, and I mean all of us, a bit nervous.

Now where I normally sit is right at the corner of the bar. To the left of me there are two seats. To the right, nothing. In front of me the rest of the bar stretches. To the left, those two seats, the far one is normally where whomever is working sits to eat if possible and hang out some.

So I’m sitting in my seat and two guys come in and take the two seats to my left. Val comes over, annoyed at me. “Why didn’t you slide over and save my seat?” she demands. “Well, because there are three seats you want me to sit in all at once, and there is only one of me. Do you see how that doesn’t work?” “You couldn’t slid over and done something.” “Done what? Set people on fire? Flail? Whimper? Whatever, sit in Hammerpants’ seat until he gets here.” “You still shoulda done something.”

Of course when Hammerpants got there he managed to almost cause the place to burn down. M put a towel on the coffee maker to heat it up and asked him to remind her it was there. He forgot, of course, and she noticed only when the towel started to burn. Smooth.

Val also came up with a new word, a sniglet really. Mafondle. Manhandle + Fondle = mafondle. As she used it: “And then they were all mafondling my pizza!” Mafondle. Use it, love it, know it.

Mafondle!