No, I'm not dead. I'm still alive. And I've actually decided to grace
you with my presence for a little while.
As listed in the post below, I was very busy with the book...until
about Friday. Then the DSL went out. We have no internet access at our
house right now. As you can imagine, this is driving the husband nuts
(Mr. I Spend 15+ hours per day on the internet), and it's working its
voodoo on me as well. Fortunately, however, we live in the city: there
are a few free wi-fi hotspots within walking distance of the house,
which makes life convenient. The only issue I have with the coffee shop
that I'm currrently posting this from is that---ahem---the coffee sucks.
Gack.
It's horrible. Tastes more like the roasted carcass of Juan Valdez than
it does actual coffee. Blech. Not to mention, they roast their coffee
in the store. Mmmmmm. Yummmy. NOT!.
I used to work for a coffee company. There were reasons why we had an
actual roastery, operated by an actual roastmaster, and one of them
that was that we didn't want our customers to smell the fabu smell that
is burnt coffee beans. You'd think roasting coffee would smell good,
right? Brewing coffee smells good, right? Why should the actual
roasting process smell bad? Well, it does. The first reason is that
this place focuses on the French Roast---which as we all know is
designed to bring out the bean to its utmost charred and oily stage.
The second reason is that they have one roaster for all their coffee
and they're not cleaning it between batches of light roast and French Roast.
Hence you have the smell of burning coffee bean oil floating throughout
the shop because to roast your own coffee in the shop is quaint.
Gack. This doesn't smell good. I don't know what the hell they were
thinking when they decided that in-store roasting would be their sales
hook, but it wasn't smart
Anyway, beggars can't be choosers, right? Right. Anyway, while the
smell of roasting coffee is making me gag, and---of course---with this
being the Minneapolis Province of the People's Republic of Minnesota, I
can't smoke to my heart's content in here, there are still some perks
to this gig: one of them being having a good laugh at people trying to
parallel park. It's humorous. Do they not teach people how to do this
in Driver's Ed anymore? There is one spot right in front of my window:
prime coffee shop parking, if
you can maneuver your car into the spot. This spot has gone unoccupied
for about a half hour: three separate cars have tried to park in it,
and all three drivers have failed to back their cars into the spot,
which is actually about the length of a 1976 Cadillac Eldorado sedan. A
volvo wagon didn't crank her wheel hard enough and wound up about a
foot from the curb. Seeing her failure, she just pulled her car back
out in traffic and jammed around the block. Some Japanese SUV did the
same. And a itty bitty Nissan as well. It's pretty funny to see them
slam on the gas after one measly attempt to parallel park. You can tell
just by the way they slam on the gas that they just don't want to
bother with it; that it's too difficult and that they have better
things to spend their time on. Well, that's fine I guess. As long as
you can park in other places where you don't have to back into the
spot, but you live in---dare I say it?---a city, where parking is
scarce. If you can't parallel park by now, kids, you might as well just
start riding the bus. Ah, anyway, if you're in the neighborhood, stop
on by. I'm going to be here for a time, making my purchased coffee last
as long as I possibly can.