Bought stuff to make coffee with over lunch (water filter, cordless kettle, french press, a couple canisters for coffee and sugar). Went to Sutton Place to get some ground beans, and was about to check out when my pager started buzzing. I'd forgotten a meeting. D'oh. Mercury is still retrograde. I have two more weeks of this. Urk.

Remembered this evening that the new Steely Dan was out today. Went by Barnes & Noble. Out of stock. They'd received all of seven and were sold out by noon. Went next door to Worst Buy and gave them the first money I'd spent there since August of 1998 when it took me three hours to buy the MagicTV receiver. Didn't have cash, either, so there's a credit card transaction there. Oh well.

Then stopped at Tysons to try to find a spoon for work coffee purposes (done for two bucks at Crate and Barrel) and some sealing pouring thing to keep milk in at work, since if I put cartons in the fridge people will assume they can just use some of that in their coffee and I won't have any left. People are bastards that way. There was the one person at an old job who mysteriously used my whole milk if it was in the fridge, but who only replaced it with skim milk, thus missing the point entirely. Didn't buy any such vessel, but determined if I buy snooty milk at Fresh Fields it'll come in bottles which should serve the same purpose - people will recognize it as belonging to a person and not the floor and will leave it alone. I hope.

There is something wrong with this. I spent nigh 100 bucks on shit for coffee - a drink that makes me burp incessantly, gives me heartburn, and messes with my nerves if I drink too much of it. And I'm already high-strung enough without caffeine jitters to go on top. Ahh, such is the life of a coffee-obsessed geek. Filter water. Boil water. Put coffee grains in french press. Pour water. Wait. Push plunger. Pour coffee. Be slightly less cranky.

I guess that's it. I spend almost a hundred bucks so I can be slightly less cranky. Oh, and it'll give me a good 15 or 20 minutes worth of futzing around in the office, which is always useful.

(2000-02-29)