I've got it all backwards.

Living in the city and working in the country is disorienting. It's all backwards. You're supposed to live in the country and work in the city, right? Driving to work in the dredge of slow traffic as you all join in the depressed comradery expressed by that barely-perceptible head nod. The type with the distinct difference between the nod that starts low and goes high, and the one that starts high and goes low. The former seems to say, "Hey. Welcome to the group. Nice to see you," but the high to low simply suggests "This sucks."

It's all high to low.

But I'm sailing past all of this comradery at 75mph in the opposite direction. It's no less depressing, though, and there's nobody with which to share the depression through that high to low nod of the head. I just get to be equally depressed at a higher rate of speed.

So woe is me; Stuck at a job in the country doing everything I can to make each local fully aware that not only do I not want to be spending nine hours a day in this town, but also that I have more refined tastes from living in the bigger, faster city.

Then I went to Stacy's.

Not that it was my choice, but in this job you go to lunch where everybody else goes, or you spend an hour alone. Today it was decided to patronize the gem of the cheap run-down establishments, Stacy's Buffet.

The building itself looks like a mixture of modular houses all parked in just the right position to provide shelter for a common feeding trough capable of providing enough grease for all of Southeast Ohio. The sign out front is nothing more than a banner with the restaurant's namesake tied to the original sign of whatever unlucky establishment last found itself unable to pay the bills. There's a covered porch stretching across the entire length of the building just like you'd see at Cracker Barrel, only this one isn't for decoration. It just is. In fact, nothing at Stacy's is for decoration. It's just stuff sitting where stuff ended up when somebody who last moved it decided to stop moving the it. There it sits. The tables and chairs are a collection of the area's not-so finest tables and chairs, yet if you look close enough long enough, you can find two that match.

The line to get into the buffet isn't long, but it does exist; solely at the oblivity of the long-since retired lady working the cash register.
One product.
One price.
$5.99 plus tax.
$6.41.
...All day long.

Nothing here moved fast, and this lady was

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