Category: Before

I’m not sure why, but the light on the cap of the Space Needle isn’t on tonight.

It’s in right under the wire: The February Beans for Breakfast Print Calendar. Download it, print it out, and spend your month with it.

76 kb PDFs:
Letter Size
A4 Format

There are 88 Starbucks locations within five miles of my home. (via Phil)

I didn’t specifically set out to avoid caffeine today. But I spent the whole day without a sip of tea or a drop of cola. It’s possible that this was my first caffeine free day in ten years; or maybe my body has started producing its own caffeine.

I finally put most of my used book inventory up on Amazon, and aside from a quick trip to the weblog meetup, I’ve spent most of the day tweaking the inventory database and scrambling to get books shipped. The first book ordered was Color Me Beautiful, the ’80s guide to choosing the right colors for your wardrobe.

What do you think it means?

People sitting behind me at the movie theater:

“Is that Cherry Coke?”

“It’s regular Coke. I decided not to get something that would make you vomit. Actually, they were out of Cherry Coke.”

“I remember the first time I had Cherry Coke was when we went to see the original Batman.”

“Oh. That was the one with Bruce Wayne.”

“And it was directed by Tim Eyman.”

Three girls with three distinct hairstyle archetypes sit at a sidewalk table outside a cafe. Each girl has a to-go cup of coffee and a cigarette. The cups are turned with the cafe logo in the same direction. A fourth girl sits in a chair ten feet away, and ten feet from her, a photographer shoots picture after picture of the four of them with a camera that’s the size of a lunchbox. The girl in the foreground sits in profile to the camera and looks distracted at the other side of the street. The girls at the table are background. They make listening faces and laugh at imaginary jokes. They re-point their cigarettes after every second shutter click, never aiming them in the same direction twice. After ten minutes of pictures and repositioning, the girl in the foreground gets up and takes a cigarette from the pack of Parliaments on the table. She takes takes a few deep drags and then puts it out. She returns to her chair and the shooting resumes. The girls in the background take occasional puffs on their cigarettes to keep them lit.

The girls in front are dancing and twisting around to some unheard music. In the back seat, there’s a guy hunched over, pointedly having no part in this. He looks out at the people standing in the sidewalk, makes a face and draws little circles in the air around his ear. (“They’re crazy.”) Then he hunkers down further into his seat and lowers his window a few inches, like he’s trying to air the car out, and the music filters out onto the sidewalk.

Here’s a fresh new printable calendar for the first month of the new year. It comes in your two favorite paper flavors, both 80 kb PDFs.

Letter Size (U.S. & Canada)
A4 Format (the rest of the world)

This afternoon, I saw a taxi roll out of a garage and turn into a parking space on Twelfth. The windows, bumpers, grill, and rooftop sign were covered with brown paper. It had just been painted or in being prepared for painting. Whoever was inside was driving blind.