When Coffee Snobs Fall From Grace

The other day I was helping with what we at my work call Worker Food. Worker Food is this program where we all put in a certain set amount of money and with the money, the Worker Food Committee makes a budget and buys fruits and vegetables from our company. Then they display it in this kind of makeshift "store" we have, only the store is "free"-- or you take on the honor system, based on your weekly $$ contribution.
The company sells the produce to us at cost, which is very nice. I'm not on the committee currently, but I was subbing for someone who is, who had to miss work that day. So we were cleaning out the old produce and displaying the fresh stuff when I discovered three cans of this Starbucks Double Shot Espresso and Cream stuff.

Well, I'm a coffee enthusiast, shall we say, and I like good coffee, recently roasted and ground up right before the brewing. I don't like Starbucks, and I only drink it once a year on my Christmas pilgrimage to see my family, because it's the only coffee that's slightly better than the coffee from a fast food joint along the seven hour car trip. (Why drive? Because there are lots of Christmas presents in the car.)

And yet, the fact that someone had put these weird little cans of espresso-n-sugar in the Worker Food seemed serendipitous... so I took one and tried it. I poured it over ice and actually drank half the thing before the sweetness became overwhelming and I stopped. But it actually wasn't half bad. Now, see. Someone's going to kick me out of the Blue Bottle coffee line next Saturday, outing me as someone who not only drinks Starbucks, but drinks it out of a CAN.

A Head for Business and a Body for Sin

I'm fascinated by a new manager at my work who wears horrible clothes, like straight out of the 80's, and I'm not talking cool 80's fashions worn with a 2007 sense of tongue-in-cheek; no; I mean 80's shoulder pads, big square navy blue women's suit with ill-fitting skirt and huge gold double breasted buttons, a loose polyester scarf around the neck, and closed-toe, high but thick-heeled clompy shiny pumps. I feel badly for her.

Whenever I see her and am stunned anew by the hideousness of her clothing, I think, "I've got a head for business and a body for sin," which was one of Melanie Griffith's lines in the movie Working Girl. This woman reminds me of that era of work fashion. Th funniest part is, everyone else dresses casually at my work. I mean, it's a vegetable warehouse, for God's sake. Most of the people are warehouse workers and truck drivers, our office is grubby, and we're always on recycling bin duty or kitchen duty or some other dirty duty. Her dressing up is so weirdly out of place, which is what makes it so fascinating!

Pink, Poodles, Paris

The moon is full tonight, and the weather is so mild it hardly seems like we're in San Francisco. It was a wonderful night to take a long walk, and good thing, because I would have been forced out of doors regardless of the weather and the moon's cooperation by my insane downstairs neighbor (that's always one of my common whiny refrains-- "insane downstairs neighbor"... the only thing I say more often is "insane boss") Anyhow my INSANE DOWNSTAIRS NEIGHBOR bought some tacky little paintings or photos or something like that, apparently from Ross Dress for Less, or perhaps Marshall's, and was hammering nails into the walls to hang them. At first I thought maybe she was building a piece of furniture from IKEA, in which case all the hammering would make sense. But then I went outside to escape and saw that she was hanging all these little 8" x 10" frames with ugly pictures in them in a row on her living room wall. It looks like she's decorating a dental office in 1989 in Rochester Hills, Michigan.

Don't ask why but this got me thinking about color and style and my current cell phone, the Sanyo Katana II in "Pink Fascination". I like the phone... I don't like a lot of bells and whistles and accidental connections to Mars for $10 a minute... just a nice basic but not clunky or outdated cell phone, and this phone fits my criteria.
Okay, I really do like the color of it, but the only other colors were black and gray. If there'd been red I might have gotten red... Sometimes pink is a little gaggy, like who would carry a pink cell phone except the silliest of the silly? It goes along with having a dog who weighs less than a coconut, and carrying said dog in a handbag...

Retrolite, Bakelite

My newest bauble is from Classic Hardware--they make this plastic jewelry and they call it "Retrolite". It's supposed to be an homage to Bakelite. There's a wonderful little antique shop near my home and the woman who owns it has owned it for thirty years! One day she told me all about Bakelite--how it was this miraculous plastic and it was used for knobs, appliances, etc. It was incredibly strong and took color very well. Then they started making napkin rings, bracelets, pendants and other jewelry out of Bakelite because they could make the colors so vibrant and beautiful. Then, people who worked in Bakelite factories started getting sick. Yup, Bakelite was toxic. So, no more Bakelite.
Now, people collect Bakelite--the finished products aren't toxic, it was the manufacturing process.

(Boy, that was a pretty crappy explanation of Bakelite, but you get the idea.)

A Sucker is Born Every Day

Although I've grown out of See's Candy, as far as their chocolates go (they were always around at Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter, and Halloween when I was growing up), I still love their square lollypops. My favorite ones are the butterscotch and cafe latte flavors, and the chocolate flavored one is pretty gross... like a Tootsie Roll... that type of weird artificial chocolate flavor. They used to have peanut butter, which was gritty and kind of weird, too.

Now comes this Pumpkin Spice flavor... I had to try it. It's kind of strange and waxy or plastic-y at first, but then it's okay. Overall it's like that vanilla pumpkin spice flavored product that they pump out of an enormous jug at Starbucks. One of my friends loves that stuff. All through the holidays she carries around an enormous Pumpkin Spice latte from Starbucks, although she only sips at it and never drinks more than a few inches of it. She found the one Starbucks in San Francisco that had still had Pumpkin Spice into February last year.

If you try See's square lollypops, definitely go for butterscotch or cafe latte. I think you could safely skip Pumpkin Spice and you'd not be missing anything.

From Harry Potter to Mary Gaitskill

I was happily reading a copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows when DD said he had to return it to someone at work. "You can't just take it away from me now..." I protested, but he promised to buy it for me the next day. (Cut to a full WEEK later... I still don't have the Harry Potter book...ahem.) Anyhow, I began reading a book of Mary Gaitskill's short stories which someone lent to me. The book is called Bad Behavior, and the stories are mostly about characters who are somehow getting sexually involved with each other, and their inner thoughts about each other, many of which are quite mean and unkind. I guess that's realistic. One of the stories is "Secretary", and it was the basis for the film "Secretary" starring Maggie Gyllenhaal. The original story is very interesting; it ends after the attorney spanks the young typist once, for making typing errors, and after he makes her pull up her skirt once. After those two incidents, she doesn't go back to work for him any more, and the story ends.

Barbra, Soft as an Easy Chair...

It's Barbra week here on my blog. I love Barbra Streisand. It's practically genetic-- my mother loves Barbra Streisand and I grew up thinking Barbra was the right music to clean house to, to have dinner parties to, and to take a bubble bath to! Fortunately, DD also loves Barbra Streisand, or else we probably couldn't be together!

This is my favorite Barbra Streisand style era-- when she had long, flowing hair and looked very soft. Kind of like Gisele Bundchen... except Barbra came much earlier, of course!

Of Nails

Last Friday I was getting a manicure at the end of my day, which was around 3:00 pm, and my co-worker R. came with me in order to take a break in the middle of her day, which wasn't going to end till well into the night. She wanted to get acrylic nails put on, but she didn't have an appointment and not everyone at the salon applies acrylic nails, and no one who applies them was there at the time. "Well, just get a regular manicure and get the acrylics next week," I said. But she was really bent on getting acrylic nails sometime in the very near future, like probably Saturday.

I was really surprised when she showed up Sunday afternoon at a party we were both attending-- without acrylic nails. She's a very determined person. But it turns out her boyfriend dissuaded her from getting them.

All the talk of nails made me think of this teacher I had in 8th grade for Social Studies. She made us copy the preamble to the Constitution out of our textbook while she read the newspaper. She had super long, curly nails, painted dramatic colors like metallic ruby red and purple.

Then I started thinking about this song by Lil' Kim (with Lil' Shanice) where Lil' Kim goes, something like, "Keep my hair done all the time/even got a manicurist in the booth while I rhyme". The song is "Shake Your Bum Bum" and involves diamonds like disco balls, Dolce and Gabbana flip flops, and Lil' Shanice's anus.

Briefly, I remembered Florence Griffith-Joyner, the amazing athlete known as the fastest woman ever. Now that is something-- the fastest woman ever! She was also known for her flamboyant running clothes and her long, dramatic fingernails.

Speaking of long, dramatic fingernails... last but not least, there's Barbra Streisand! Her long nails are a signature style, and they're almost always painted a natural color. They're very elegant, but sometimes they're downright distracting, like in the movie The Prince of Tides.

Hmm, maybe long nails go along with confidence and power.