Kind of a homey place, likable staff, colorful Santa Cruzians shuffling in and out with their hipster wear and crunchy hair (well, some of them). A couple of old men are huddled at a nearby table trying with all their might to work out a crossword puzzle. Even the flies get in on the action every now and then.

I miss doing this. I like coming to coffee shops and writing, but I so rarely get the chance. I should make the time to do it more often, really. This place is a little out of the way compared to wear we live, but I’m sure I can find a place just as good in Aptos for weekends when I just don’t feel like being cooped up in my office.

I want to keep ordering coffees, but I feel a little like peeing, and I don’t want to pack up and lose my seat by going up to the bathroom. I’m set up at a sweet table and I don’t really want to lose it. Dilemma!

Tya and I are making mental lists of stuff we want to rush-pack and take with us if we get evacuated.

Needless to say, this is not altogether the best feeling I’ve ever felt.

In other news, I’m all about getting the Wacom Cintiq whenever i have a spare grand floating around to drop. It’ll probably have to wait until Christmas realistically, however. The next thing on my list is a 24inch iMac, if only because we’re upgrading to them at work in about a month and I’ll be damned if I use a lesser machine in the home nerdstation than I do at work!

More later. There are some things I’m really itching to talk about here, but I can’t yet. I may start vaguely skirting the issue, though and post some related periphery posts about it.

This particular Monday, as you no doubt realize, had the terrible misfortune of being the one after that filthy bitch Daylight Savings Time reared her fantastically ugly head, stuck out her tongue and blew a wet, germ-spraying raspberry at us all.

So I got to wake up in the dark again, 6:40am, wondering just why the hell I agree to do this after all these years, wondering why I haven’t just explained to everyone that I just don’t DO Mondays and that whatever it is I have on my plate that day will just have to wait until the much more agreeable Tuesday to follow.

I zombie through the morning as usual, shower, dress, mumble barely coherent and somewhat incomplete elements of conversation at Tya, pet the dog, mention hello to the cat (who is not a morning person, either, and totally understands) and then grab my things and head out the door.

My desk at work welcomes me back like a cruel bastard, gloating; its face in the form of an Apple cinema display brightly (too brightly) beamed at me, inviting me to please stare back at it for the next 9 1/2 hours, and offering no consolation whatsoever.

I slo-mo through some emails and proof corrections, feeling the agony of the day’s first hour lumbering by before the Monday production meeting. It’s a blur of quaint chit-chat and business as usual, everyone being dragged back on the same page, given direction for the week.

Finally time for coffee, a chance to have a bowl of cereal. Wander down to the in-house food counter and order the usual – quad-shot cappuccino, skinny with cinnamon. I grab a small bowl of some sort Special K and a pint of milk; Walk it back to my desk, letting the aroma from my 4 mouth-watering espresso shots embrace me. Delicious mistress.

With the morning just beginning to grind out of first gear and into the flow of things for the day I get an icy splash of mild disaster to remind me – this is not my day. Three bites into the cereal and… somehow it slips from my grasp, spilling partially on the front of my shirt, and landing in a heap of milk-sogged mess on the carpet at my feet.

Touche, Monday.