Coming back from my lunch break, I stopped in the bodega that I stop in after eating lunch every day to pick up a cup of coffee. Every day I say I want a dark coffee, no sugar. But today, after going there for a couple months, as perhaps a Christmas present, they knew exactly what I wanted as soon as I walked through the door without my saying a word. It was so lovely, to feel in busy midtown that someone knows you, even if they just know how I like my coffee.

Things are getting incrementally better and better. This was a level I wasn't expecting to reach and so its emergence, like jumping on to a ledge randomly in Super Mario only to be whisked away to some secret bonus level, made me smile ear to ear, not so much for the thing itself, the secret level or the coffee made how you like it, but for its unexpectedness, the ability for pleasantries to surprise you, me.

I have been slacking off for the past hour and have to finish this interview in half an hour now (eeks!), but afterward, I am going to go see some art that I am itching to see (namely Sue de Beer), then laundry, then perhaps a bar (in an ideal world, dancing), and then New Jersey tomorrow morning.

Thank God, thank fucking God, for coffee and rock and roll. They saved my life.