Life is Good

Oh, man.

What can I possibly say about the past couple of weeks?  

I went to camp here with KC North:

It was awesome.  I'm sure I'll write more about it later.  I had an incredible time.  I didn't realize I missed leading Young Life so much, but a perfect combination of really fun girls, an awesome leadership team, and camp made that very obvious.

Two days after getting home, I came to see these people:

Yep.  Dusty and Sara.  They're 2 of my favorite people in the world and they live in the beautiful Pacific Northwest, so I like to come see them often.

Together, we went here:

Ah, the Canyon.  A place that holds a very large chunk of my heart.  It was wonderful to see friends and to spend a solid 8 hours in 2 days simply sitting on the porch, talking about life and drinking coffee.  Not to mention the game playing.  I miss that.

And now I'm back in Washington.  Sara and I are drinking very good coffee and talking (and talking and talking) and playing on our computers.  

All this to say:  Life is good.  Very good.

Oh, and I no longer work at Grand Street Coffee.  I'm OK with that.  But I need a new job.  Yeah, I'm back to that.  Look forward to a return to job search blogging.  Hope you enjoy it!

Toilet Bobby

It is easy to pinpoint my favorite thing about working in a coffee shop: getting to know the regular customers.  

It is an interesting group of people who love their coffee and I love seeing the smallest little snippets of their lives.  I, being me, feel as though I know these people.  I've made up names and personalities and entire lives for them in my head.  

In fact, my coworker Nicole and I have turned guessing people's names into a game.  Everyone who comes in, we give a name to based on what we think would fit their personalities.  The problem with this is about half of our customers have actually told us their names and the other half we have made up.  And I can't for the life of me remember which is which.  So I'm sure to call someone by the complete wrong name any day now.

Some of my favorite customers so far are Rob, the guy who brought the same coupon from Ink in 4 times to get a free cup of coffee and Bobby, who very excitedly talked about how awesome our toilets are for a while.  Then there's Lynn and Tyrone who describe themselves as "early morning workout enthusiasts," Tom who journals for a while every day, and Frank, the self- (loudly) proclaimed small business owner with lots of suggestions.

It is an interesting cast of characters daily and that feeds my soul.  I hope to create a warm and welcoming place for them to have an awesome cup of coffee, time, and the environment to feed their souls a little as well.  I really enjoy coffee shops.

Also, my coworkers are awesome and when it's slow we play Uno.  We have a running scoreboard going and I (no surprise here) am dominating.  Really, they're all super cool and I've enjoyed getting to know them and laughing at funny coffee shop randomness.  

Oh, and SYTYCD starts tonight.  

Life is good.

Song of the Day: Dancing by Elisa (also a little taste of what we can look forward to all summer... easily my favorite show on TV.)

Cool Kids Play Board Games

I haven't written on my blog in a few days and that is mainly out of protest since nobody at all answered my awesome and thought provoking question from my last post.

Or any of my questions.  Ever.

It's fine.  

I'm not mad.

(But seriously, they're not rhetorical questions.)

On to more pressing matters: 

We had some friends over for dinner and games tonight.  (Awesome!)

We played Scene It Battle of the Sexes and the girls lost.  (Not awesome.)

It was one of those nights that I didn't even so much care that I lost (a shocking statement from me, I know) because I was just glad to have people play games with me.  And to cook dinner for people.  And to simply hang out and tell stories and laugh.  I miss that part of community.  

So I'm going on a mission to make everyone in KC love staying in and watching movies/playing games as much as I do.  That's easier said than done because the young, single, 20-something crowd here loves a good night out.  I'm not a total lame-o, I do enjoy going out for dinner/drinks every once in a while.  But I really like to talk to people and that is hard to do in a bar.  And I'm too broke to get anything but water.

Answer: lure people to my home with the promise of food and fun, then deliver.  It is a fool proof plan.  (Not too many people at once though.  I get overwhelmed.)

I now want you to go back through this post and pinpoint when I gave up any semblance of trying to seem cool.  

Song of the Day: Green Eyed Boy by Haley Bonar