4 posts tagged “coffee”
My evening:
Flaming crepes with rum, coconut, and ice cream. I suspect the point behind the flambé was to burn off the alcohol in the rum. They did not succeed.
Followed by a Gym Class Reunion Party. We played tag and four square and drank. Pictured with me in phys ed glory is my incomparably lovely friend Annabelle.
For the win!
My morning:
On the one hand, I felt a bit guilty for stomping loudly all over his choice piece of real estate. On the other, he's a rodent and I don't want a broken ankle.
I did a spirited slide tackle in the first half, which resulted in the surprisingly painful scrape pictured above. Good thing I wore my short-shorts last night, as it'll be a while before I can rock them again.
My afternoon:
My local coffee shop has a selection called "Whim of the Barista". It costs $5, and is exactly as described: based on their highly variable and very whimsical inclinations, these excellent and extensively-trained (and many other adjectives for which I have no room) baristas whip up whatever the hell they feel like.
Most of them make it very clear that this drink isn't an exercise in democracy. If you order The Whim, you don't get to inquire or make requests. You can mention things that you don't like, and they may or may not huffily oblige. Imagine Google's "I'm Feeling Lucky" button, but with espresso and spices. It's like playing with fire: dangerous, irresistible, fascinating. Even though I'm terrified of paying $5 for a drink I hate, I can't stop ordering them.
This week I've had an iced latte flavored with cinnamon and peanut butter, and a latte with cocoa, ginger, and nutmeg. This afternoon's whim: a savory-sweet clove cappuccino. I continue to be enslaved by the whims of the baristas.
This past Sunday I subjected Richard to the many delights of making holiday merriment with me. This exquisite, once-a-year sort of torture is typically inflicted by a parent or guardian, but seeing as we're on our own now I thought it was time to start a whole new tradition of pain and suffering.
Ah, the fond memories I have: lovingly placing ornaments on the tree only to have my mother move them to a more suitable location moments later, fearing for my life as I teetered precariously atop our feeble step ladder and attempted to correctly identify the staple end of the staple gun, cringing each and every time "Candy Cane Sugary Plum" scratched its way into my ears from the United-States-Airforce-issue LP that Pop inherited from his older brother Mike.
I pulled out my meager collection of decorations along with the 18 CDs of Christmas music my mom was nice enough to burn for me and set out to get my Christmas on. I take it as a good sign, as I've been pointedly un-jazzed about Christmas since Pop died 4 years ago.
We were off to a promising start, as Saturday's impromptu massage trip to Watercourse Way unexpectedly led us to the perfect tree-topper: a little silvered-glass bird.
(For those who don't know, we have a weird thing for birds. Not that weird, I suppose, relative to the whole wonderful world of weirdness... but it's a bit weird that we have any sort of thing for birds. He's Pigeon. I'm Dove. Our house is the nest. Our stuff is seed. Seed is paramount. It goes on and on, in a revolting couple-insider-joke kinda way.)
I dragged Richard to Target, where I tried to elicit his feedback on various things which were of absolutely no interest to him (e.g. what sort of stocking do you want, do you like this or that color bauble, should we try tying ribbons on the tree?). He stayed buried in his phone as much as possible, finally fleeing for asylum in the portable electronics and gaming section.
2 hours and nearly $200 later, it was time to select a tree. Unimpressed by the too-tall trees and too-large pricetags at Grandpa's Christmas Tree Lot (and, to Richard's point, the suspicious absence of anyone who looked even remotely like a grandpa), we headed over to the Summer Winds Nursery. After establishing that there were no tree sizes between 1' Table-Top Trees and 6' Trees for Real Grownups That Probably Won't Fit In Your Small IKEA-Clad Apartment, we set out to pick "the one". This easily took eight times longer than it needed to, and involved asking Richard many more inane questions to which he didn't know or didn't care to know the answers (e.g. is he too fat at the top, doesn't he look a little lopsided, are you sure he's not taller than him over there?).
On the ride home (which offered no rest for the weary, because I insisted on playing Christmas music the entire way), we named our tree Phillip. We then used him as a channel for slinging personal insults at each other on our way to pick up some hard-earned Starbucks. For some inexplicable reason, Phillip has a voice like a girl.
Once the trimming and carrying and other man-jobs had been completed, Richard busied himself with work while I tore around the apartment like a maniac. Lights went up, everyday knickknacks were swapped out for wintery ones, and the repugnant holiday classics blared from my JBL Creature Speakers. There was bad singing and even worse dancing, and much serenading of Phillip. There was also the breaking of two baubles in rapid succession, followed by me shrieking and Richard gently chastising.
I insisted that Richard help out on the home stretch, and I needed to restrain myself from relocating his ornaments just the way my mom used to relocate mine. I did, however, make some casual placement recommendations. :0)
Determined not to sleep away yet another perfectly good Saturday, I set the alarm for 9:00am. Predictably, this resulted in me actually getting out of bed around 9:30, and coaxing a grumpy Pigeon out of bed about an hour after that. A full week of soccer and social gatherings had left my house miserably devoid of food, so we set out for our typical weekend fare at Coupa Cafe.
Phrasing it in these terms makes it sound as though we were out the door in a blink, but that's never the way with us. Two hours of drinking coffee, tooling around online, and watching the final scenes of Shaun of the Dead had us laggingly heading out for breakfast at 1:30pm. I wasn't daunted, though, because we had a $20 gift card in-hand and had probably missed the lunch rush.
Or not.
As luck would(n't) have it, Coupa was packed to the rafters. There wasn't a single table free -- not even outside. The line hugged the entire length of the counter and refrigerator case, and extended back into the "These tables are reserved for two or more patrons with food orders only, please" room with the fireplace in it. And in that crowd, not a single face I recognized. Who are these people? And where do they get their nerve? Don't they know we're regulars?
I've never been a regular anywhere before, so I feel entitled to a certain sense of entitlement when I go to Coupa. We practically live there. We've easily spent $1000 there since moving to Palo Alto in May. Would it kill people to have a little deference? If it were me infringing on someone else's turf (and it has been me more times than I can count), I would slink silently into an obscure corner like a thief in the night, move as little as possible while sipping my soy chai, and vacate the premises as quickly as consumption would allow. These people were flamboyantly enjoying my space without any regard for my months of dedication, and it made my blood boil.
In fairness, yeseterday was one of those days when I generally hated just about everybody. Let's be clear about this: I don't like hating, being annoyed by, and/or not trusting perfect strangers. I can't embrace or even be indifferent to these kinds of feelings, which I think (hope?) is what distinguishes me from a real jaded person.
Defeated and slightly annoyed, we headed elsewhere. On our way back to University Avenue we did a little window shopping at Mansoor & Gore Jewelers, which one Yelp reviewer astutely notes is "the perfect antidote to chain jewelery stores." I'm a sucker for unique, arsty jewelry, so I adore just about every piece this shop carries. They had an entire case full of gorgeously rendered gold, white gold, and platinum bands, each perfectly considered down to the last detail. While I don't want to be overly optimistic until I get a proper look next week, I think we've found the spot where we'll buy my wedding ring. w00t.
We ended up eating an unremarkable but altogether tasty Mexican meal at Andale, then headed to Starbucks for our second cup of the day. On our way across the street, a homeless man with no teeth approached us for change.
"Any spare change for a peep show?" Of course, he actually said "pizza" -- which makes a great deal more sense -- but the confusion is readily explained by the aforementioned lack of teeth.
Starbucks was in its usual holly-jolly holiday form. Red cups, snow flake mugs, peppermint drinks, Christmas CDs, teddy bears bundled into tiny down jackets, holiday bean blends, gift cards wrapped in red felt envelopes. It made me wish that the earth would swallow me whole.
I haven't always hated the holidays. In fact, it used to be one of my favorite times of year. I was one of those sickening people who walk around humming Christmas tunes and lovingly stroke the evil little stuffed bears that show up in Starbucks way-too-early.
To be completely cliche and depressing about it, the holidays started to unravel for me when my Pop died a week before Christmas a few years ago. Since he was a man deeply in love with God, his family, and good food, Christmas marked the high-point of his year. He had every album, every knickknack, every sqaure inch of his house decorated. When I went away to college, one of his main priorities was to ensure that I had tree in my dorm -- he went out and purchased me a small "Charlie Brown Christmas tree" just so I wouldn't miss out on the cheer while fretting over my end of term papers.
You can't imagine how it all makes me miss him now.
Add to that my increasing loss of a sense of family. For better or worse, holidays will always be all about family in my mind. Don't get me wrong... I have a wonderful family who is a hugely important part of my life. Unlike the days of my youth, however, they're not a regular part of my daily life. They're not, to put it bluntly, in my face all the time.
I'm not trying to say that having your family forced upon you day in and day out -- adjusting every minute detail of your schedule to the all-consuming shared schedule, having them poke into every corner of your stuff and your business, being unable to do the things you want without constant criticism -- isn't annoying. I'm merely saying that it wraps you up in something intangibly wonderful... something that I often notice is absent from my life now. As much as I wish it were so, my friends and even my Pigeon can't give me that same feeling. I'd like to think this is partially because they were carefully chosen by me rather than assigned to me. It also doesn't hurt that they can't or won't bring themselves to torture me in that pointedly familial way.
The last four paragraphs compressed into a tight little ball and bowled into my gut while I was waiting for my Americano. This lead to big, swelling tears, which I quickly tried to brush away before making an ass of myself. Crying in Starbucks. Super. All that suffering and my coffee wasn't even good.
On our way back to the car, that same homeless man with no teeth asked me for change again. I said in a perhaps-too-snippy tone, "I just gave you all of my change," to which he simply replied, "Oh," before shuffling away to his next conquest. I can't count how many times I've chastised myself for failing to recognize the unique humanity in each every person I see on the streets -- for grouping them together dismissively. This was an ironic turn for me. I certainly don't expect to be the shining, salvational star to each and every person to whom I give some change, but you'd think he'd remember me from 5 minutes before.
Outside Hahn's Hibachi we saw two small birds lying inexplicably dead on the sidewalk. There's nothing particularly remarkable about it, but it's the kind of thing that makes you search your mind for something remarkable that you might be failing to glom onto. We stopped and stared down at their sad, unmoving little bodies for what seemed like a long time.
After a moment or two Richard said, "It's sad to see them so still. They're meant to be so full of life."
He was exactly right, and the fact that he would notice and say
something like that with an earnest melancholy in his voice is exactly
why I love him.
Another charming trait: I always spill whole cups of coffee. Despite my relatively quick reflexes, spilled coffee renders me impotent. I just pause -- a vision of tranquility in time and space -- and watch the entire contents pour out and all over everything in slow motion.
I almost did it again just now. I should be put in a bubble.
