honey, honey, how you thrill me

Today was excellent, overshadowed only by the fact that I have to go back to work tomorrow. I spent the morning at the Peet's Coffee beside Books Inc.; this gave me a great hour of journal-writing while drinking a latte, followed by some nice browsing through the bookstore. Then I restocked on groceries and did two loads of laundry before meeting Katrina for an afternoon at another cafe. The cafe in question was called Coffee Bar; it seemed overrun by people who work at our company, since I recognized one girl, Katrina knew another, and there were at least a couple more with bags or shirts or laptops that indicated membership in our unholy fraternity. It's unsurprising that it was overrun. It's perhaps the trendiest cafe I've been to in the entire city. There are two levels of seating, an outdoor patio, lots of big tables that force strangers to sit together, and a gorgeous late-afternoon view of Twin Peaks through the glare on the two-story windows.

It was a nice place to catch up with Katrina. It was also a swift and brutal reintroduction to the San Francisco scene after my time in Iowa. When I'm home, I rarely leave the house -- I think I left the house three times in the six days that I was home. And when I do leave the house, it's not like there are teeming masses beyond the fence. So even though I'm now used to the different worlds in which I live and appreciate the idiosyncrasies of each of them, the first day back in either place is a bit strange.

The vast differences in coffee choices in my two homes are perhaps the most difficult to deal with. At home, my favorite "coffee" beverage is "cappuccino" made from powder at the convenience store where I used to work. It's little wonder that the first time I ever had real (or at least realistic) cappuccino, at the Stanford CoHo during Admit Weekend when I was seventeen, I was bitterly disappointed; where convenience store cappuccino is heavily sweetened and utterly lacking in espresso, coffeehouse cappuccino is espresso with just a bit of milk and foam. While I now like real cappuccino (provided that I add some sugar) and frequently order it for dessert when I'm at a nice restaurant, I don't think I'll ever forget the letdown of my first taste of real cappuccino.

Somewhat shockingly, I've now lived over a third of my life in California. I never thought that this would happen. I think I'm far from figuring out where I want to live during the next phase in my life (as an aside, in my journal today I decided that I'm officially out of the post-college phase, but I don't know what the name of my new phase is), and that's mostly because a) I don't like commitment, and b) there are things I love and hate about both Iowa and California, and regardless of where I am, there are things that I miss about the other. Maybe I should just pick up and move to a neutral territory (like Switzerland?). Of course, I still need a job, and so I'll likely stay here for awhile, but when I'm caught up in the excitement of writing and creating new stories and having more adventures, it's very hard to let my pragmatic side regain control.

Okay, since I like getting paid, I should go to bed so that I can go to work tomorrow. Goodnight!