Trident Cafe & Booksellers, Boulder, Colorado, November 18th.

I walk in with big snowy wet clomp clomp boots and wipe them on the synthetic wet red rubber-bottomed rug.

A big light warm cheerful crowded cafe.

So crowded I help one lady out with her to-go mugs of coffee and promptly have to myself squeeze in the door against the back of a man waiting in line. He helps me in when he feels the door pushing gently against his back, “Oh, sorry, didn’t see you he says.” Instead of waiting in the long line, which would be a 20-minute investment of time (one I’m normally glad to do, sans phone, it’s relaxing to just be and talk with folks and look around my world) I find a table, instead.

It’s snowy out so it’s crowded in, and a table is just opening up, a red-haired lady is leaving, I ask if she’s leaving, we smile and laugh and say funny little things and I make myself comfortable at her table after helping her bus her green tea in white porcelain pot and cup and saucer.

I take off my big coat and make a joke with a lady about it keeping her warm from any drafts as I hang it on a big brass hook behind her, then sit, facing the gently falling snow outside the big gold-lit windows, and get back to work on my laptop. I sit my bum on the laptop case, as I always do, I’m tall and my butt is small so it both raises me up slightly and cushions my tush.

When the line dies down a little I get into it, wait and chat with an older lady friend of mine and we greet a little Gerberish baby with red hair and not a single wrinkle on her little face with big gray-blue open mostly-curious eyes. I chat about Thanksgiving and moving to Canada and get my Americano in my favorite “square” mug and a glass of water which I thoroughly enjoy, realizing I’m dying of thirst after a lunch of pasta and a bike ride through the snow to a new craft and maker’s shop in a big tall Victorian on a hill.

I’m thirsty!

“Nothing better than drinking water than when you’re thirsty,” I say to Graham.