Several the usuals were away this week (out of town), so I had no high hopes for turn-out -- but though the crowd was small it was certainly punchy!
Since our own locals were being out-of-towners elsewhere, it only seemed reasonable to interact with some non-local out-of-towners in Cambridge. P. had already begun to do this by the time E. and I arrived from rehearsal, with someone in town from North Carolina on business. He was a great karaoke fiend and sang us his son's rendition of the song "I'm sexy and I know it" (hockey-themed: "I'm Gretsky and I know it"); though I was a bit worried when at the end of the night he told us, "I drive better when I've been drinking than when I'm sober. My wife's always telling me, oh you gotta drive -- better start drinking!" -- just before driving to his hotel five miles away.
Before the end of the night, we decided we'd probably be best off ordering some pizza at Cinderella's, and were somehow approached by the table next to us, a group of brothers visiting, originally from Chicago, spanning nearly a couple of decades in age. When I mentioned I was from nearby Indiana, the youngest expostulated that he went to school in Indiana, at the best school of the state -- Notre Dame.
I laughed and countered that no -- that school was located in Bloomington, to which he responded with an inflammatory remark by inserting a particularly flexible adverb in between "best" and "school" to describe IU. After that I was not so interested in conversation, particularly after one of them made some about assuming one of our crew had "just met me tonight." Perhaps an upshot of the evening was just that I felt lucky to live in a place where the out-of-towners don't make me wish I lived elsewhere? The Cantabrigians I know are pretty great.
