A beautiful morning

I ventured forth to obtain a sandwich from an enormous corporation to serve as my breakfast. The storms of the night were gone, and the remaining clouds were as rich, creamy and textured as a watercolor. This made the Hancock Building and the other spikes of steel which line the eastern sky seem much closer than normal, like they had been pulled inland because of the rain.

The birds were out in force, doing whatever they do in the mornings. One tiny black one with a yellow beak hopped across the hood of my car as I waited at a light, stopping only to chirp at me as it passed. A congregation of gulls had come in from the lake to murmur at one another on the signs and rooftop of the Burger King on Chicago Avenue.

There's a bakery I'd never seen before just before Damen Avenue. The Bleeding Heart, which appeals both to my fondness for ghastly things and my political orientation. I wish I'd seen it before I'd purchased a sack of food at McDonald's. Each letter of the name is laid out on its own wooden circle, painted an unfortunate pink. I plan to wander back there in the next couple of days, to see what it is like.

Last summer, the combination music store/cheap diner (boasting the "Best Sloppy Joes in town," served under a wall of used guitars) experimented with having a curbside coffee cart. I pulled over out of curiosity and they gave me a free cup in honor of being a new customer. The cart is no longer something they do. My guess is that they were handicapped from the start simply by being situated on the north side of the road. The cars who can pull over most easily are pointing at poorer neighborhoods. Had they crossed the street and picked up some of the traffic headed east, toward the financial and business hub of the city, they might still be there.

Or maybe they just gave out too many free introductory cups to folks like me, who are not generally up and about during the morning hours. At any rate, I never returned to buy a cup.

The rain seems to have cleaned the air, washing away the recent rash of heat in the process. I looked at the glow in the east, slightly to the left of the Hancock Building, so easily mistaken for the Sears Tower even by lifelong residents with a poor sense of geography. I looked at the layers of clouds and the birds and the buildings.

It was a beautiful morning in Chicago.

150°

At a Dunkin' Donuts waiting for a cup of coffee, an impatient woman joined the line behind me and ordered a large coffee. The woman who took her order was new, still in training, and had some trouble with the cash register. The trainee then asked several times what the woman would like in her coffee. The woman ordering the coffee eventually made a glottal sound like a tiny cough to punctuate the beginning of a short burst of sigh.

"Jesus!" she said. "I shouldn't even be in here. I work at Starbucks!" She threw two singles onto the counter and looked around nervously. She did not seem to notice that I had begun to laugh at her.

*****

Today, at an entirely different Dunkin' Donuts (I like their coffee, OK?) I called my friend Micah, with whom I would be working for most of the afternoon, to see if he wanted me to pick him up something.

"I was just about to call you," he said before I could explain the purpose of my call. "I'm on my way to Starbucks. Want anything?"

I like coffee synergy.

Two days ago, Micah owed me $45. Yesterday, he owed me $50. After I bought him the coffee this afternoon, the total rose to about $52. I do not like where this is going. Especially as the person I know who might most easily break someone's leg is none other than Micah. I can't imagine he will let me hire him to do himself harm should he fail to make good on his financial obligations to me.

Plus, it'd be terrible if word got out that I'm not charging him interest.

To get Micah to smile like that, I just said "look stupid" over and over again in a very soothing tone, like I were giving direction to a small child. I think this shot was immediately after "OK, good, now: stupider."

*****

I think I saw some corner boys in my neighborhood today, standing blithely on the corner. They stood more or less facing one another, but angled so that together they had a nearly 360° view of the surrounding area. They didn't seem concerned about anything in the world, except for the fact that they were clearly watching all sides for trouble. I hope it was just a coincidence, that they were going about some other business. It's not like I don't think there are drugs for sale in my neighborhood, but I'd rather not have such openness about it so near to my home. That's the kind of behavior that usually leads to stray bullets prematurely ending the life of one of the local children, or the teachers at the school up the block.

Or me.

*****

I was up in Wicker Park, where I took a couple of pictures. One of the Double Door (on the Flickr page in color and then again in black and white because I couldn't decide which one I liked better) and the one at right: a currency exchange which was advertising a current temperature which was off by well over a hundred degrees.

To provide an illustration of how hot 150° would really be: when making a latte or a cappuccino, the milk is supposed to be heated with the steam wand until it reaches 140°. That's as hot as you can go without burning the milk.

I was at the same currency exchange many years ago on a first date. I hadn't had a chance to get my paycheck into the bank, so I brought it with me, and this place was the first stop of the date. They refused to cash it (it was for too much money, or so they claimed) and I was forced to ask her if she could pay for everything we did. I cannot recall ever seeing her again.

Spent a chunk of time browsing the stacks at Myopic Books, one of my favorite bookstores. The store is crammed with books on several floors. It is simply lousy with books of all types and vintages.

The fiction section—which starts on the rickety "balcony" and continues on the first floor—requires a map and a guide to navigate properly. There are cats roaming the aisles, or sleeping on the ledges. It is a terrible store to enter in hopes of finding a specific volume, but, as my friend Craig pointed out, it is a wonderful place to come across a book. I came across a couple of books for myself, and bought a copy of Kurt Vonnegut's Palm Sunday for Craig, because I think he'll really like it.

"Hey, that's the dude who died recently," he said as I handed it to him.

"Yes," I said, somewhat wearily. "The very same...dude."

*****

Still have not quite untangled myself from the Dayworking. I expect Monday will end it, though. I hope Monday will end it. Should any of my coworkers or my supervisor log in to check my blog, I would really like to be done now, please.

Craig asked me what I was doing at work today. I told him it would be really difficult to answer the question without going into a lot of detail about what it is I actually do. Craig, like most people, has no clear idea what tasks I actually perform for money.

"I half expected you to say 'graphic arts stuff,'" he said.

That's certainly going to be my response next time.

*****

I have no intention of showing you pictures of all the people I mention on this blog, but I happened to have some fairly nice portraits of both Craig and Micah on hand.

*****

How have I been blogging for this long without ever using "coffee" as a tag?

This oversight has been corrected.