The Grind and Bitter Coffee

So after a ten-day break from work I am back in business with my nose to the proverbial grindstone. Monday was set aside for checking e-mails, phone messages, and reacquainting myself with my mustard-yellow coffee mug. Oh sweet, sweet coffee mug how I missed thee. Your brown tinged yellow reminds me of a far off time and distant place when I was naught but a blurry-eyed infant and my feces was the same comforting shade of yellow. Your faded blue logo triumphantly declares “Colorado Oral Surgery Center” and compels my mouth to numbness as I relive the sedated experience of impacted wisdom teeth extraction. Oh sweet, sweet coffee mug how I love thee. Like yesterday I don’t plan on doing any real work today, just thinking about it and visualizing it. I gotta ease into the flow. There was a fleeting moment of vacation when I panicked. Oh my dear pagan lord, how can work function without me? My coworkers and bosses who depend on me must be tragically bloodying their monitors with their ruptured foreheads as they desperately cry out for my return! What have I done? What have I done!? Then I reminded myself that I work for the Colorado Department of Transportation and I chuckled mirthlessly at my lapse in sanity.

Did the coffee thang at Stella’s Sunday. Something about the afternoon was off kilter, bad juju or something. I think it started when SSDiabolique, Slack Grabber(LC), and I showed up 20 minutes late while Anti-Shen and Tiff killed time at Stella’s. The conversation ping-ponged around randomly until it hit the net and went afoul. Anti-Shenry explained how at the tender of age of 9 he politely opened a restaurant door for a random lady and was promptly bitched out by the woman as she stepped through the door. The emotional scar still remains with him. Tiff then explained how she finds door opening and other chivalrous acts insultingly demeaning. Anti-Shen quipped that her attitude is probably a reflection of insecurities pertaining to self-sufficiency and independence. Tiff did not find this amusing. Eventually they compromised, agreeing that door opening was an acceptable gesture but door closing was insulting because it symbolically traps and cages the individual. SSDiabolique and I raised our collective eyebrow at this idea. I make a point of always opening her car door and politely shutting it for her. This act is one of those conscious promises I made myself when we started dating and it has morphed into a ritual that reminds us of days long past. Ah, well. See what happens when we miss a weekend of coffee camaraderie.

Down the street you can hear her scream "you're a disgrace," as she slams the door in his drunken face, and now he stands outside and all the neighbors start to gossip and drool.
...and so it was written, shenry at 9/17/2002 09:51:00 AM.
...and so it was appended with .