Peet's Coffee

Yesterday at Peet's on California St., the pretty blond female barista bent over to pick something up from the floor.

I couldn't help but notice that she had tattoos on both sides of her love handles.

I saw this in a flash of course, as she is a limber young woman and picked up whatever she was seeking in an instant.

The tattoo on right side of her love handle appeared to be a detail from Van Gogh's painting "The Starry Night", and the left a portrait of Olive Oyl.

But I could be wrong.

Is lovehandles one word or two words? It should be two words, love handles.

I'd ordered a pound of Major Dickason which the pretty barista ground for a cone filter, as I'd specified. She asked how I wanted to pay.

Credit card, I said, punching in my pin #.

While I waited for my coffee I tried to remember what it was like to live in a world where I didn't need a password or a user name.

That was a long time ago.

There was just one Peet's coffee shop and it was in Berkeley. CNN was only just beginning, an 24 hour news station that was so hip a person as sophisticated as Paul Virilio regarded it as an avant-garde performance piece.

Now CNN is the local news--baby found in dumpter in alleyway in Erie, Pennsylvania--with national scope (a tiny bit of intl. in stuff thrown for credibility), delivered by a person who looks like an aspirin tablet.