Shame on you
I should write an ode to Starbucks boy. Something to the effect of "I love you because you are awake before me, and awake enough when I visit to sell me legally addictive stimulants, and to be able to make it taste goooood!" (Insert sexy noises here.)
Man do I love caffeine. I read an article the other day about how you are either part of the Starbucks culture or someone who shuns it. I personally love starbucks, jitters, maxwells, spot, basically any coffee place alive. Trying to pick which one I loved more would be like trying to pick between my non-existent children. They are all lovely in their own ways. As long as the caffeine content is high I can put up with just about anything (thought I might be a little cranky if you make it wrong b/c it's early in the morning and I'm not a happy morning person.)
I come by the grumpy morning person honestly though. I once got yelled at by my father for reading the paper in the morning. That's right - reading the paper. It's not that I had taken the paper from him (it was sitting on the kitchen table), nor was I reading a section that he wanted (it wasn't even cracked open yet). It was just because I was there to take out his frustration that he was late for work. So I got yelled at, around 630am, for reading the paper. (If you knew my father when I say yelled at - I literally mean he was screaming not like a small chastisement for this "infraction." )
So - I claim that my morning grumpiness is genetic. (I don't try to be grumpy - I'm just still sleeping and I'm not always aware of what I'm doing. I wonder if this is what sleep walking is like....)
The other day I went to lunch for a co-worker who was leaving. I ended up driving in a car with my boss and basically three hourly employees that I work with. The restaurant we were going to was about 5 minutes away - so this is not a long car trip. The talk in the car was the most insipid vapid conversation I've heard in a long time. My boss and I are sitting the front seats not joining in - b/c there's nothing to say or add. It's just talk about how long it takes to drive to work, what the best route is, how long lights take etc. Ummmm who cares? The ride back started out the same. . . but there is this little shack on the side of the road - that kind of looks like an outhouse w/o the toilet or a ticket booth or something. I made some comment to my boss about what do you think that is for? And who would pay $50 for it? So he starts in about a book that he read back in the day "The phantom tollbooth" - and I started asking him about it - then we started comparing it to the chronicles of Narnia. The back of the car was dead silent during this exchange. I don't think that any of them had read nor heard of either of these books/series. We asked them if they had read either books - they're all in about their early 50s - so I expected that they would have read them as kids. None of them had read any of them - they hadn't even heard of them! I would by no means call myself well read - but it's the Chronicle of Narnia! there was even a movie a few years ago... you could have pretended to read the books and just talk about the plot in the movie. We aren't rude enough to correct you if you are wrong - we'll figure out that you just watched the movie and not say anything about it.
Maybe they are just all of the same personality - they don't have that escapist tendency to read a book and be able to escape their boring day to day life. I grew up reading. My mom found it was a good way to help us get ourselves to sleep. At bed time we would be able to read - and didn't have to fall asleep - as long as we were in our rooms quiet. This of course became a ritual - and a method to help ourselves fall asleep. We would read a few pages in bed and immediately be zonked out. (Rather ingenious Mommykins - props to you!) We always had a ton of books around and would regularly go to the library to read. (There's no way we could have afforded or stored all the books that we read as kids.) She never really forced us to read - but it was always there as an option.
So we read a ton of books as a kid - I'm not sure how wide the selections were - but we were reading. To this day I still read a ton. I definitely go through phases - and I think my selections are much more varying now than they used to be. The problem is that I'm not as responsible now as I was as a kid - and I have to buy the books otherwise there's a high probably of gaining a ton of library fines for missing or lost books. But b/c there's not a due date - I end up taking a lot longer to read things. It's nice to be able to read something entertaining though - instead of tons of technical material and articles. The problem is that I start books - and then don't finish them for a long time and start reading like 5 or 6 books at a time. This is not a good way to be. Then you either don't remember everything that happened or it takes you a while to get back into the groove of the author's writing style.
If anyone has any good suggestions for books I should read - bring it on. I don't discriminate (much) on what type of reading it is - fiction, non fiction, I'm always just for just about anything.
Man do I love caffeine. I read an article the other day about how you are either part of the Starbucks culture or someone who shuns it. I personally love starbucks, jitters, maxwells, spot, basically any coffee place alive. Trying to pick which one I loved more would be like trying to pick between my non-existent children. They are all lovely in their own ways. As long as the caffeine content is high I can put up with just about anything (thought I might be a little cranky if you make it wrong b/c it's early in the morning and I'm not a happy morning person.)
I come by the grumpy morning person honestly though. I once got yelled at by my father for reading the paper in the morning. That's right - reading the paper. It's not that I had taken the paper from him (it was sitting on the kitchen table), nor was I reading a section that he wanted (it wasn't even cracked open yet). It was just because I was there to take out his frustration that he was late for work. So I got yelled at, around 630am, for reading the paper. (If you knew my father when I say yelled at - I literally mean he was screaming not like a small chastisement for this "infraction." )
So - I claim that my morning grumpiness is genetic. (I don't try to be grumpy - I'm just still sleeping and I'm not always aware of what I'm doing. I wonder if this is what sleep walking is like....)
The other day I went to lunch for a co-worker who was leaving. I ended up driving in a car with my boss and basically three hourly employees that I work with. The restaurant we were going to was about 5 minutes away - so this is not a long car trip. The talk in the car was the most insipid vapid conversation I've heard in a long time. My boss and I are sitting the front seats not joining in - b/c there's nothing to say or add. It's just talk about how long it takes to drive to work, what the best route is, how long lights take etc. Ummmm who cares? The ride back started out the same. . . but there is this little shack on the side of the road - that kind of looks like an outhouse w/o the toilet or a ticket booth or something. I made some comment to my boss about what do you think that is for? And who would pay $50 for it? So he starts in about a book that he read back in the day "The phantom tollbooth" - and I started asking him about it - then we started comparing it to the chronicles of Narnia. The back of the car was dead silent during this exchange. I don't think that any of them had read nor heard of either of these books/series. We asked them if they had read either books - they're all in about their early 50s - so I expected that they would have read them as kids. None of them had read any of them - they hadn't even heard of them! I would by no means call myself well read - but it's the Chronicle of Narnia! there was even a movie a few years ago... you could have pretended to read the books and just talk about the plot in the movie. We aren't rude enough to correct you if you are wrong - we'll figure out that you just watched the movie and not say anything about it.
Maybe they are just all of the same personality - they don't have that escapist tendency to read a book and be able to escape their boring day to day life. I grew up reading. My mom found it was a good way to help us get ourselves to sleep. At bed time we would be able to read - and didn't have to fall asleep - as long as we were in our rooms quiet. This of course became a ritual - and a method to help ourselves fall asleep. We would read a few pages in bed and immediately be zonked out. (Rather ingenious Mommykins - props to you!) We always had a ton of books around and would regularly go to the library to read. (There's no way we could have afforded or stored all the books that we read as kids.) She never really forced us to read - but it was always there as an option.
So we read a ton of books as a kid - I'm not sure how wide the selections were - but we were reading. To this day I still read a ton. I definitely go through phases - and I think my selections are much more varying now than they used to be. The problem is that I'm not as responsible now as I was as a kid - and I have to buy the books otherwise there's a high probably of gaining a ton of library fines for missing or lost books. But b/c there's not a due date - I end up taking a lot longer to read things. It's nice to be able to read something entertaining though - instead of tons of technical material and articles. The problem is that I start books - and then don't finish them for a long time and start reading like 5 or 6 books at a time. This is not a good way to be. Then you either don't remember everything that happened or it takes you a while to get back into the groove of the author's writing style.
If anyone has any good suggestions for books I should read - bring it on. I don't discriminate (much) on what type of reading it is - fiction, non fiction, I'm always just for just about anything.
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