The diner was closed for the evening and a light snow was beginning to stick, coating the streets in a thin milk-white haze. I didn’t want to ride my bicycle home: I’d had a few too many close calls on these slick roads before. I headed over to the train and got a ticket, one way out of downtown, back to my home out near Evans. As I waited for the train, I noticed a young woman standing alone under the awning, shivering in her thin coat. “Hello,” I said. She smiled one of those tight, half-smiles, the ones that most people interpret to mean “I don’t really want to talk, thanks.” I usually just take it to mean “Try something better.” So I did: “You look pretty cold. Would you like to wear my jacket while you’re waiting?” I took it off and offered it to her. “No thank you,” she said. Another tight, half-smile. It wasn’t looking very good, but then I wasn’t really sure what my intention was anyway. I think I was just lonely. Forget about it.

Work has a curious way of becoming routine. It’s strange, when I started working at the diner, I was frustrated because I wasn’t experienced enough. I kept bumbling up orders, forgetting to ask what people wanted, I don’t think I even cleaned tables properly. I thought: “well, soon I’ll get the hang of it, then it will be easier.” It did, but easy quickly turns into boring, which if not addressed right away can turn into hatred and disgust. I’ve seen it too many times in my working life. It doesn’t matter what I’m doing-oh, I’ve tried so many: driving a bus for the city, bike messenger, filing papers at a law office, handing out free samples of questionable products on downtown streets, building fine furniture nobody wants to pay for. The diner job was like most; I didn’t really think it was what I wanted to do, but I needed a paycheck, and it fell in my lap. It got me by day to day, and that was enough. Or so I thought.

The town, as usual, was abuzz with the latest news that some politician had done something they weren’t supposed to. People were poking at newspapers and making faces. It must be hard to be a public servant: habits or deeds people would immediately dismiss in their friends are now cause for self-righteous anger. I think this time it was about misappropriating funds for a trip up to the mountains to go skiing. I didn’t blame the guy, heck, it was the best snow year in decades. I was going myself the next day. It had been hard for the ski areas at first, dealing with the climate change. The season started later in the year now than it did a few decades ago, and ends sooner. More late autumn and early spring days of tennis or golf or shopping on the new rooftop malls. Some of the lower elevation ski resorts had to shut down for being a bit too warm. The higher, colder ones, like Arapahoe Basin or Breckenridge are still around, and when the temperatures finally drop, all that extra moisture in the atmosphere just dumps down in storm after storm. We just hope for a few days of sun in there.