Coffee Crew: 1 year later
Well, it's been exactly 1 year since our last Coffee Crew meeting and subsequent blog posting (not counting Rich's last attempt to be hip to the blog community). Quite frankly I'm astonished Steve has not noticed this fact yet. Why has it been so long? What events transpired in the last year that overshadowed and pushed Coffee Crew into near obscurity? Well, for one, the arrival of Steve & Sue's children (plural) obviously had a big impact on the amount of free time the duo has had to not only host Coffee Crews, but in fact WRITE anything at all to be read. Rich has been spending more time with his family, especially on "Family Friday Nights", Linda found herself a man, Joe found himself a job, and I find myself.... well, relatively unchanged, actually. However, in lieu of Coffee Crew writings, many of us has taken up maintaining our own Blog sites: Steve, Toni and I all have regular entries in our respective Blogs, which can be accessed through any of our profiles. Someday we all hope to jumpstart the weekly meetings and continue the tradition of fine writing, fine food and fine conversation, but in the meantime feel free to visit any or all of our independent blogs for an in-depth look into the warped, distorted mind of a coffee crewer.
posted by Paul G. at
7:09 AM
4 Comments:
The only problem with replacing coffee crew with blogs is that I use my bolg very differently from how I write. To me the blog is more of a way to amuse and entertain friends than an actual writing exercise. If you were to judge my writing by blog alone, you would probably wonder who in the world hired me to write for a living, and what they were smoking at the time.
I am sorry I missed the great era of the Coffee Crew, and I hope one of these days it starts back up again. I am starting to enjoy writing fiction again, and it would be nice to share and get feedback, as well as have that motivation to get something done before Friday! :-) But family does come first I guess. It is only us poor saps who are still single for whom this sucks.
By
Toni, at July 7, 2006 at 6:13 AM
Ok, first of all, Paul f**king RULES for making this blog entry and remembering the ol' Coffee Crew. But I'm not surprised...he has always been an enthusiastic Crewer from the time he first came around after the first few meetings. (The exact date? Go check the early blog entries. It's all documented with a good ol' fashioned nod to Thymenage.)
Yeah, what happened was that I stopped being a motivating factor in arranging the set ups and took a "you guys let me know when and one of us (Sue or I) will try to make it," but then nothing ever really gelled. It's weird because, in particular, Paul, Joe, and Rich all had become pretty hands on with setting up the weekly meetings and hosting the parties, so it's not like I did the lion's share of the administration (beyond the very early days). But, even though it belonged to all of us, maybe there was the sense that the Coffee Crew was sort of like my baby, my pet project, since I came up with the initial idea and really worked to get it going early on. So maybe it just lost steam when I wasn't able to be one of the engines. Who knows?
It might be an easy excuse to say we all needed a break, but I don't fully get that, because it was SO, SO much fun. So much more fun than you'd think any quote-unquote "literary group" could be. But maybe there was something to that on account of the fact that it was so great it was almost like a rich, rich dessert that was too much to take. I mean, consider...
It started out simply enough, but once we hit our groove, we stayed out later (making 3 AM a "normal night"), we ate MORE food and the meals got MORE elaborate (From home cooking to Joe B.'s insane quantity of tasty italian treats and desserts), and we laughed longer and harder with each week.
All I can say is it was quite a trip. I had one vision in mind when I started it, and what it ended up being was in some ways the same as the vision and in other ways different, but one thing is sure: it exceeded every expectation I had in terms of how much fun we really had and how we really got close to one and other and made some new friends and strengthened some existing friendships. And, we learned a lot about our oinions on "Star Wars." (Reaganomics, of course. *eyes roll skyward*)
Maybe I'm being melodramatic, but I don't think really think so. We had some fun. It was "regularly scheduled" fun on a near weekly-basis. No stress, no pretentiousness. It really was all good.
A future for the Crew? Dude, I'm always game to try. Hell, I even talked about doing a webcam thing so that either Sue or I could attend and the other would do so through iChat or something. Why not?
Unfortunately there is already this sense that the Crew was this moment in time where lightening was caught in a bottle. Most magical things in life that involve social activities—in my experience—are, in fact, thing that are finite and last only for a little while.
I wouldn't put the Crew in the ground yet. I'd like to see us make a comebnack, and we can see if we still have "got it." Yeah, Toni, you did miss the classic days, but I'm glad you got to be at the last one—which, unfortunately, was when we were already starting to fade. But I'm glad you got there, because if we do get it going again, I know you'll be a regular participant and and enthusiastic one, and that's really what made the Crew great. To say it another way, "You'll fit in fine."
It's not about being "poor saps who are single." It's also not about "family coming first," although it does. It's just about a bunch of stuff that happens and the way the things go. The Coffee Crew was never something we did because we didn't have as many family obligations and needed something to fill the time. We did it 'cause we liked it. And I will do what I can to do it again when the time is right.
On the subject of blogging, I'm with both of you. The blog did become my replacement Crew and I do write many things on the blog that would be at home in the Coffee Crew. However, I also wrote different things for the Crew that wouldn't work as well on my blog. In a perfect world, I'd keep doing both.
By
Steve, at July 13, 2006 at 8:42 PM
I say...let's bring back the Coffee Crew. I miss it. I really do. We need our java. Hell, I'll even buy one of the fucking T-shirts if you guys want me to.
By
rassmguy, at July 17, 2006 at 7:03 PM
(((I say...let's bring back the Coffee Crew. I miss it. I really do. We need our java. Hell, I'll even buy one of the fucking T-shirts if you guys want me to))))))
Nah... we're all way past that now. We realize how silly and immature the thought of all wearing Coffee Crew T-shirts were.... Just the idea...Sheesh! God that's just crazy.....
We all got Coffee Crew tattoos instead.
So, Rich, where would you like yours? XD
By
Paul G., at August 22, 2006 at 2:15 PM
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