Thank you, tourists!

No, seriously!

Mr. Wonderful and I went out for a fun evening on the town over the weekend and landed at an establishment known for its views of the city from arrangements of couches and armchairs.

(Side note: for those familiar with the place, their recent redecoration involved swapping out the leather upholstered seating with, well, something that sure ain't leather. Mr. Wonderful and I had a fun time trying to place what it was and why it felt familiar. "It's like... fancy raincoat material. No, I've got it, it's a reincarnated backpack!" And so on. We surmised that they must have been going for a more *sleek* and *modern* atmosphere. Or something.)

Anyway, we were ensconced in the latest that fabric technology has to offer, apparently, when a group of fellow patrons asked if the remaining seats around our coffee table were free. They settled in, and, because they were quite friendly (and I'm nosy), we learned they were out of towners. Out of towners spending their tourist dollars in our fair city, and not, as far as I could tell, the kind of out of towners who would amble across a busy waterfront thoroughfare, oblivious to the traffic gathering on either side of their crosswalk. But I digress. They were lovely people, we chatted about the sporting event on the TV in the corner of the room, and their plans to attend a wedding the next day at a location the could describe only as "at a lighthouse." (Oh, how very Maine!) They laughed and joked that our next round was on them, and we laughed back, not only to be polite, but I think a little bit because we've become the type of people for whom more than a drink or two before heading home to the comforts of bed is in itself laughable.

So, our eyelids getting heavier than they should have been at 10:30 (oh, for shame! we are old...), we asked our server to bring us our check. Lo, the lovely out of towners were in fact not just being polite and making smalltalk, and had somehow, magically (telepathically? in any case, extremely slyly) added our bill to their tab. Mr. Wonderful and I stumbled all over ourselves with ineloquent gratitude, exited a bit embarassed by said ineloquence, and walked to our car with an extra spring in our collective steps.

Thank you, friendly folks from Maryland and New Jersey, wherever you may be today. I hope you enjoyed a wedding free of monsoon conditions, and that your travels home were safe. I'll stop cursing the out of state license plates on all the extra cars clogging up our roads from now on, as they may be filled with people as lovely as yourselves. At least until next summer.