Iron Fist

In my office building there is an oversized lobby, and in the lobby there is a coffee bar, and at that coffee bar, once upon a time, there were three young ladies that worked the morning shift and, for reasons that still continue to defy scientific explanation, seemed to really, really, like me.

I have never figured out how this happened.  I am not especially charming first thing in the morning and, as we discovered not so long ago, I am not at all cool.  Yet the baristas at this coffee bar apparently liked me enough that one morning they decided amongst themselves that I would never have to pay for another cup of coffee from them again.  From then on, they would wave away my money every time I tried to purchase another cup-full of my favorite morning vice.  It got so that I merely had to walk in the doors in the morning, smile, and say “morning, ladies,” and then I would get weak in the knees because immediately afterwards I would find a huge cup of fresh coffee in my hands.  If I had known that getting hooked up with free coffee was that easy, I would have given this whole “talking to girls” thing a try a long time ago!

Tragedy struck a few months ago when all three girls from the morning shift gave their notices with a month of each other, and as they left one by one I watched my limitless well of caffeine goodness dry up.  Well, I suppose the amount of coffee available didn’t exactly dwindle, but my willingness to pay a few bucks for it every day had long since vanished.  I initially had high hopes that my “arrangement” could some how be made to continue with incoming staff, but this proved not to be the case (unsurprisingly, since I’m not sure how I’d “arranged” to not have to pay in the first place).  There was also the minor factor that most of the new morning shift were dudes.

It’s not as if buying coffee every day is at all a burden, but after getting it gratis for so long I resented forking over dollars for it and so slowly, twitchingly, I began to wean myself off my three-cups-a-day habit.  I even switched exclusively to green tea for a while.

Still, sometimes only a big cup of strong black coffee will do the trick, and so one morning last week I grabbed my travel mug off my desk as I prepared to leave the office for an off-site meeting and dropped by the coffee bar.  I hadn’t gotten to know the new staff quite as well, but I’d talked to the guy on shift that morning several times before, and we made small talk as he filled up my mug.  I was reaching for my wallet as he set my drink down on the counter when he surprised me by waving his hand casually and saying, “Aww, don’t worry about it.”

“Whoah,” I said, caught off guard.  “Really?  Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure,” he said, smiling broadly.  And then he winked at me.

I am totally counting that as a point for me.

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No, seriously, I’ll be gone.  Out of here.  Unless you’re one of those people who reads blogs in the evening, in which case I’ll probably be home.

Bright and early, in fact at the time this post is scheduled to be published, I’ll be hitting the road, headed for the coast.  Our summer has had its climatic ups and downs, but at least we’ve got the benefit of it extending through the month of September, it seems.  And so I shall be at the beach, looking for some good surf.

I’ll probably snap a few photos, and I’ll keep my eye open for any seals, and after I’m done surfing I imagine I will eat a lot of barbecue, because fighting the ocean all day can make you pretty hungry.  Hopefully the ocean won’t look like this when we get there, because I need a day in the water.

See you around!

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I am long overdue for saying thank you to Hilly for saying such nice things about me, and I think that as a result of the award she gave me I might possibly have two new readers.  Maybe three.  I can barely read and write, much less count, so welcome to everyone who’s just getting here for the first time.  I don’t really know where to tell you to start, most of what I write is tripe, but I’ve always been fond of this post, and I thought this twist on a meme turned out decent enough, and this one seemed to upset people a bit so reading it is optional.  I enjoy sunrises and long walks on the beach.  I run around town taking pictures of shiny things and the occasional dark thing.  I got to hang out with a bunch of other bloggers once or twice.  I guess there were a few times, really.  Oh, and I like to ride my bike.  Sometimes with other people.  That’s about it, really.  And now I’m bored talking about myself.

But…Hilly did say we should feel free to pass on the award, and so I think I will.

You can’t say he’s really new to blogging, because he’s been commenting around the Intertubes for years now.  He was even at TequilaCon, so now I get to say I knew him before he got big.  Erstwhile globetrotter and now breaking new ground in science as a grad-student, you can call him ‘Sir’, and he writes over at Etcetera Etcetera (blah blah blah).  I’m not sure if it was coercion or threats that finally prompted him to start a blog, but just a few months ago start one he did, and I’ve been enjoying every minute of it.  You might want to start with this especially vivid trip down memory lane, or one of his movie reviews, or a method for dealing with the idiots we run into every day, or what happens when innovation backfires, or even just start at the beginning.  He is also fond of giving props where they are due, almost weekly.

I think that’s enough links now.  I’ll break the internet at this rate.  I’m going to bed.

Thanks for stopping by!

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I don’t seem to be able to sleep in on the weekends anymore, convulsively kicking awake at six or seven in the morning, sometimes going back to sleep when I realize what day it is, and sometimes not.

Today was a ‘not’ day, but after sitting up in bed and spending a few minutes letting the morning sun warm my face, I decided that since it was shaping up to be beautiful out, I was going to get out of town, even if just for an hour or two.

In Portland, this is pretty easy to do.  A half hour drive east and you’re in the scenic Columbia Gorge, and you can take the old highway and get up to a pretty good vantage point.  Here, I brought you some pictures:

That one is looking east, and this one is looking back west:

It’s nice to get away every once in a while and remember that there’s more to the world than the streets and houses you see every day.  All the blue reminds me that I am overdue for visiting the coast this summer – here’s hoping that September stays warm long enough that I can log a few trips before the rainy season starts again.

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YouTube’s first incarnation was not as wildly successful as the one you all know today.

It’s Friday, people, go out and have fun.

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