Now It Feels Like Home

I found the nearest local coffee joint to the new domicile: Smokey Row.

It's just a few blocks up the "hill" (those scare-quotes are for my readers who live places where there are actual hills, not the geographic pimples that pass for hills here) from the new World Headquarters. Bottomless cups of tasty dark brew, yummy cookies, free wi-fi, and a good vibe -- not corporate at all (yay, locals) but not "we're way too hip for you, old man" either. It's also big enough to cater to my agoraphobic tendencies... I actually have a decent swath of caffeine-consuming real estate all to myself instead of having to go all Swayze on people: "This is MY coffee space, this is YOUR coffee space." And -- super double bonus -- tonight's patrons include a snarky local weatherman (pardon me, meteorologist) who's trying really, really hard to pretend that he doesn't notice being noticed, but still can't resist giving that "yep, you really are seeing ME" smirk to the noticers. Hilarious.

(You may now mock the postmodern cliche of me writing about trying to look like I'm not noticing someone who's noticing that he's being noticed by someone else. Done? Good.)

I fear I will waste a lot of time (and put a lot of miles on my kidneys) here. In fact, I'm wishing I had the laptop from The Company (that one run by The Man) instead of my netbook so I could do tonight's site deployment from my booth.

Nutshell review: Two very twitchy thumbs up. Time for another refill!