Every workday morning (almost), I cruise in to my local neighborhood Starbucks.  I’ve performed this ritual with such repeatability that I have been able to formulate fanciful economic theories centered on coffee, Starbucks coffee to be specific.  I’ve blogged on this topic before, as recently as yesterday, but this post has nothing to do with that.  Because I do perform this ritual almost daily, all of the baristas know my name.  Unfortunately I do not know theirs.  Starbucks does not use nametags, which is probably a good thing.  Anyway, there is this guy that started working there earlier this year, so he has been around for a while.  He has always been rather loud and talkative and this Friday morning was no different.  When I walked up to the register he greeted me, “Hi ya, Mark!  How is your morning going so far?”  After some thought, the mists finally cleared enough for me to respond to his question, “You know, most of your customers have not been awake for as long as you have been.”  “Oh believe me, we know”, he responded with a big grin on his face, all the while deepening his voice for the word know, “Last week, I had a lady try to pay for her latté with her library card.”  “Maybe she was just trying to checkout a latté, instead of purchasing one”, I lamely responded and then moved on as did he.  This little vignette began my day.

I walked with Barbara before lunch.  Dan and I spoke with Don, who had been on a two-week travelogue and then managed to get some work in too.  Those were probably the main highlights of my day.  This last week has been a long work week, but thankfully it is also the last full week of the year.  We had customers visiting us this last week, so things were a bit more hectic than usual.  I still have four more workdays next week, but they should be relatively quiet.  I might actually get some work done.  Friday, was Anne’s and her kid’s last school day of the year, so she is now in full Christmas mode.

Friday night, I was only able to coax Anne away from her sewing machine for a dinner, but not dinner and a movie like I had hoped.  We went to Mai Lee, a Vietnamese restaurant that has recently moved nearby us.  It is off of Hanley and I-64.  We inadvertently ordered the same dish, just with different meats (chicken and pork), so it wasn’t the best introduction that we could have had.  Our favorite Vietnamese restaurants have been Little Saigon in the Central West End and Lemon Grass on South Grand.  Little Saigon is more Paris Vietnamese cuisine, so it is not all that comparable.  Lemon Grass and Mai Lee have much more in common.  For years now, Lemon Grass has been the go to guy for sesame tofu balls.  This has been a staple on our holiday table since Dan gave up eating most meats.  Mai Lee claims they can make this dish too, even though it is not on the menu.  I think that we’ll give them a test run first.