This one is for my darling Vic....

I was reminded this week that this blog is how a lot of my oldest and dearest friends keep track of me. A lot of times, I think about posting and am turning over my days in my head, and while there are stories there that touch and amuse me, I usually think other people would be bored by them. What I keep forgetting is that I started this blog for me, as a way to get stuff out of my head, and the happy by-product was that my friends and family could follow my days. So, I sit here this morning with a renewed commitment to my blog and regular posts.

Almost every morning, I stop at Allison for my morning coffee. It's right across the street from where I park, a really charming little storefront coffee house. It has a garage door on the front wall that rolls up when the weather is nice, making the whole place seem very open. There are small tables and chairs, armchairs and couches, and the obligatory wireless internet that it seems no coffee house can do without. They also have great coffee. Not just good coffee, great coffee. The staff is laid-back and unhurried, so you might wait a few minutes longer than if you ran up to St@rbuck$, but my lattes are so smooth and frothy, it's well worth my wait.

Now on to my gripe. I have only one, really (other than the one about how one of the staff misled me when he said they do all their own baking, and then I was there when the baker was delivering bread, cinnamon rolls and cookies, and the guy confessed that they only bake everything ELSE). It's that a lot of the regulars don't bathe. I don't mean like funky hippy B.O., I mean nasty, never-seen-a-bar-of-soap-before-much-less-touched-one stink. Sometimes they look to be homeless (look, I used to work with the homeless here, I've got no beef, but most of them aren't up and hitting Allison at 7am, nor would they spare the cash for a frou-frou latte), but more often they are just dirty - good shoes, no holes in the pants, but FILTHY. What the fuck is up with that? You're such a connoisseur of coffee that you'll go off the beaten track of the mall to get to Allison (and the coffee isn't any cheaper than the other place), but you won't take a damn shower? Or wash your hands? I swear, the guy behind me in line today not only had a smell so bad it was almost visible in the air, but his hands were dark with dirt and grime. C'mon - you eat with those hands?

Some say this is part of the local color of living in a place like Boulder. Maybe they're right. Lord knows I wouldn't have had much else to write about so far this morning....