Ready for the day

A cup of coffee, my notebook, and the newspaper at Panera's. Ready for the day.

Coffee on holidays

I make really awful coffee, but yesterday the weather was nasty, and I did dust off my Mr. Coffee 3-cup maker. It wasn't too bad--I even added a bit of chocolate raspberry flavored coffee.

"Going out" for coffee is something I've done for about 50 years--starting probably when I worked the counter at Zickuhr's Pharmcy in my home town. That's when it was $.10 a cup and I'd get a dime tip and all the town's gossip for free. It is still a social event, at least for me. No matter what McDonald's or Caribou or Cup 'o Joe's I enter, I see a group of regulars solving the day's problems. That's why I have a special blog about coffee shops. So you see, I've been on the other side of the counter too.

Today is "black Friday," and I chatted with two women who'd come to Panera's at 6 a.m. when they saw the huge line snaking around the K-Mart lot waiting for it to open. They were enjoying their coffee and some holiday rolls while sorting through a pile of newspaper ads and inserts. The younger one said she'd worked at K-Mart for 3 years when she was a teen-ager and just wanted to see what it was like on the other side. But not that bad!

Python cowboy boots

He's a regular at the coffee shop, always conservatively dressed. We nod and share the Wall Street Journal. Today he was wearing cowboy boots, a huge step away from his usual attire, so I just had to ask. Turns out his company was sending him to Texas a while back, for what I've forgotten, or maybe he didn't say. So he went on e-Bay and ordered "some costumes" because they were to dress appropriately. He'd taken quite a liking to the boots and bought four pair.

"Are you sure they call them costumes in Texas?" I asked.