Read me the letter, baby. Do not leave out the words.

"Stories and cigarettes ruined lives of lesser girls, and I wanna know, 'cause I want you to know."

Here I sit in a Tully's coffeehouse in downtown Seattle, waiting for the Rem Koolhaas-designed library (look at the pretty picture) to open and then take a jaunt over to Eastlake to get my two laptops restored to their former glory. I'm hard as hell on these poor machines; I've got to replace a keyboard and CD/DVD drive in one and an LCD screen in another. Here's a tip from the clumsy to the clumsy: Don't set your laptop in a perilous place, and if you do and it falls? Don't grab desperately at the monitor. It will seriously screw up your day.

Since March, when I moved out of my flat, I've been hanging in places remote to the city--even when I was less than three miles from the downtown core, I pretty much stayed in the attic bedroom my friend let me occupy for the six weeks before I moved in with my parents. I was tired of the city and now I am remembering why. There are two sort of business-y, hipster-cool guys with product-smeared hair sitting over at the next table and they are talking loudly about their condos, women, cars, and how young people say they look. I'm a little nauseated by the whole thing.

Am I intolerant? Many would say yes. But those creeps don't know what they're talking about! (God, now I know his name is Joey, because he's recounting a story about how he was trying to leave a club but nobody would let him go: "C'mon, Joey! Get back here, Joey! There isn't a party without you, Joey!") I suspect that my basic problem is that I really don't like people. They annoy me. I wish they would stop talking. Their coffee orders are astoundingly self-centered. "Yes, Give me a vanilla soy no-fat double half-decaf mocha with whip, not too hot." They pay for the complicated beverage with a credit card, which doesn't go through the first two times. They get a cell phone call while waiting to sign the receipt. They talk loudly and laugh boisterously at banal corporate jokes.

Let me be a bit clearer: I hate people. Well, except for you and you and you and you--over there, in the Levis and black t-shirt, making me a drip coffee with cream. And my family. I don't hate them, I just prefer to keep our time together short and sweet. The drive-by get-together, bookended with important errands that cannot wait.

I was born in Seattle, and I know the city like the back of my hand. I drove a cab here and lived in loads of neighborhoods. Plus, I've been fired from so many temporary jobs in the last couple of years that I could sit here looking out the window and say, "Yeah, I worked in that building, and that one over there, and the Rainier Tower and to the west, I worked in the WaMu tower and then up 4th where I worked at City Hall..." and so on and so forth until the person across the table from me lapses into a coma.

I love this city, but mostly I love this city 10-15 years ago. I loved Ernie Steele's dive bar all smoky and boozy with ripped red vinyl booths, half-baked waitresses and awesome greasy breakfasts. I loved Steve's Grill, on 5th Avenue, open all night--the nice Greek lady would recommend a good meal for the middle of the night. Au revoir to the Doghouse with its grouchy-ass middle-aged waitresses and the guys from rock bands slumped in their seats, trying like they were avoiding the fans and paparazzi. I loved it when Linda's was the cool bar for beer and shooting stick. I miss Moe's. I don't like NuMo's. What this means: I also hate change, and I'm getting old.

I'm moving away from Seattle in two weeks. I'm taking a tiny cottage in a small town in Eastern Washington where the population is largely Republican and mostly in their late 40s. I will scare them with what I prefer to call my "quirkiness." I rode over there a couple of weeks ago, househunting with my mother, her friend--our real estate agent--and the friend/agent's husband. The agent is hard of hearing and she and my mom love to talk. Consequently, I sat in the front seat shouting, "She SAID..." for about nine hours on the hither and yon. Fortunately, her husband, Vernon, kept pretty much quiet, except when he was helping me to translate. Inevitably he got things wrong. I would shout "She SAID I wonder if it'll be raining over there" and the agent would ask "What did she say?" and he responded, "she says she wants to do some reading later on." Sort of like that game "telephone," only with old people.

One thing I noticed was that they had friends in common whose names were old-fashioned, like Muriel and Frank and Lucille and Myrna and Randy and Phyllis. From what I could make out, in between the shouting, Myrna has just gone through her fourth divorce, was now penniless because she let her last husband keep the house in his name, and is through with men for good this time! Frank is in a property dispute with his brother, Clayton, because of some double-dealing that I couldn't really follow since important details were left out, apparently because they had been discussed on a previous excruciating road trip. It seems Randy had a stroke and is on the mend but his daughter won't come visit him because of some indiscretion involving the daughter's babysitter, 15 years ago. Personally, I have never met anyone with these kind of soap opera highs and lows. My friends just bemoan that their mom won't accept their lesbian lover or Jubilat rejected their poetry submission yet again. Or maybe that they've been on the low-income housing waiting list for three effin years.

Hey? Have you ever been fired from a job because of frequent absences due to your nervous breakdown and been tempted to stroll into the office and say, "Hey, Lucy! How's the baby? It's been ages! Is Bill around? I'd love to touch base with him on where he is with his department! You guys looking to hire anyone?"

I have. But that's because of the nervous breakdown. One tends to think like that under certain conditions. Even so? I guess life isn't too bad if I can sit in a coffeehouse all morning, writing silly blog posts.

"It’s got me out of my head, and I don’t know what I came for..."

And nah, that's not me. It's Pete Yorn. He's tells it like it is. Or that's what I heard.