late-april lunch time
This morning was I was feeling sort of off. There are times that working in a big office building are terrible, even though the windows are big and I can see the sky—it's like watching a movie, and makes me feel disconnected from reality. The sounds of my office are inorganic: the HVAC system, the clicking of mouses and keyboards, the phones. I suppose the clearing of throats and the clicking of heels are coming from humans, but they don't make me feel less isolated.
Weighing my afternoon lunch break options, I decided to go to the Ferry Building for a mocha from Blue Bottle. (I wanted some combination of caffeine and sugar, and although a frappuccino sounded delicious, I decided that would be a bad precedent.) The Ferry Building (or Faerie Building if you're special) is the slow/local/natural food epicenter of the Bay. Although it's super touristy, it's also super delicious, and only a 5 minute walk from my office. Blue Bottle is one of SF's small batch coffee roaster places with a short menu of exquisite espresso drinks & single-cup brewed drip coffee.
I drank my mocha quickly standing up at a seating area (or it may have been a shelf ... I was facing the wall, focused on my mocha & the Mozart clarinet quintet I was listening to).
Feeling somewhat slow from the milk—and not yet sparkly from the sugar & caffeine—I headed outside. It was somewhere in between warm and slightly chilly. Today I am wearing a button down shirt and a light sweater, but left my scarf at home in the rush to catch the bus. When the sun came out it was glorious and not a bit too cold. The time in between the bursts of sunlight made them all the better.
I walked all the way out on the pier, away from most of the people, and hung out with some pigeons and seagulls. This is around when I think the caffeine kicked in, and I was thankful not to be Mormon. It turns out seagulls are very hard to sneak up on. Something about having their eyes on the sides of their heads makes it very easy for them to keep an eye on you (or me) while attending to other matters, such as nibbling/scratching at their wing pit (like an arm pit, you know?). After scaring away all the available birds, I watch a sail boat for a while and mostly paid attention to the wind.
I have perhaps not given enough credit to the role of Mozart in this lunch break's success. Solon recently gave me some music to listen to, including this recording by Martin Fröst and some other talented people. As usually, it's hard to put into words the state that this music evoked in me. Some combination of being outside, being caffeinated, and listening to Mozart clarinet music made things much better.
Weighing my afternoon lunch break options, I decided to go to the Ferry Building for a mocha from Blue Bottle. (I wanted some combination of caffeine and sugar, and although a frappuccino sounded delicious, I decided that would be a bad precedent.) The Ferry Building (or Faerie Building if you're special) is the slow/local/natural food epicenter of the Bay. Although it's super touristy, it's also super delicious, and only a 5 minute walk from my office. Blue Bottle is one of SF's small batch coffee roaster places with a short menu of exquisite espresso drinks & single-cup brewed drip coffee.
I drank my mocha quickly standing up at a seating area (or it may have been a shelf ... I was facing the wall, focused on my mocha & the Mozart clarinet quintet I was listening to).
Feeling somewhat slow from the milk—and not yet sparkly from the sugar & caffeine—I headed outside. It was somewhere in between warm and slightly chilly. Today I am wearing a button down shirt and a light sweater, but left my scarf at home in the rush to catch the bus. When the sun came out it was glorious and not a bit too cold. The time in between the bursts of sunlight made them all the better.
I walked all the way out on the pier, away from most of the people, and hung out with some pigeons and seagulls. This is around when I think the caffeine kicked in, and I was thankful not to be Mormon. It turns out seagulls are very hard to sneak up on. Something about having their eyes on the sides of their heads makes it very easy for them to keep an eye on you (or me) while attending to other matters, such as nibbling/scratching at their wing pit (like an arm pit, you know?). After scaring away all the available birds, I watch a sail boat for a while and mostly paid attention to the wind.
I have perhaps not given enough credit to the role of Mozart in this lunch break's success. Solon recently gave me some music to listen to, including this recording by Martin Fröst and some other talented people. As usually, it's hard to put into words the state that this music evoked in me. Some combination of being outside, being caffeinated, and listening to Mozart clarinet music made things much better.
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