brought to you by Starbucks!

I was at a piano lesson with my piano teacher from high school because I missed her, because I had time, because I wanted to work on my classical music again, and we were trying to set up a recital time for me, but time was short because I'm leaving for Ecuador on the 19th. We opened up a schedule and she asked me when my flight was, and I told her I hadn't yet booked my plane ticket, but I would probably be flying Wednesday evening on Delta, because they had the most convenient flight to Miami, where I would have to catch my connection to Quito.

It was really important we get together before then, so together we counted backwards to today to see how many days remained until the 19th. There were 10 days.

"That's so soon!" She said.

"I know," I said. And then this rush of anxiety came up. "I have a lot to do in the next 10 days."

Then I woke up, the oh-god-insomnia kind of explosion into the dawn, where you don't gradually wake up and blink your eyes a few times, you are just suddenly AWAKE, and you know you're not going back to sleep any time soon.

Not that I didn't try to, seeing as it was 4:30 in the morning, and I couldn't just get up and throw all the lights on, because there were two French boys sleeping a few feet away from me, and they were tired.

So instead, I waited around until 6 a.m. and left the house for the only place I knew would be open: Starbucks. I read a fascinating indictment of San Francisco's BART system in J. Allen Whitt's "Urban Elites and Mass Transportation," and then finished watching DIG!, this pretty-good documentary about the Dandy Warhols and the Brian Jonestown Massacre. The first was all about how BART was conceived of (and, therefore, serves primarily) downtown business interests, yet was paid for by tax-financed bonds under the guise of affordable transit. Booooo! The second was mostly about what happens to you if, despite being a musical genius constantly compared to Bob Dylan, you are an egomaniacal asshole on heroin.

I have overwhelmingly negative feelings about the corporatization of America's public spaces. But, this morning the Bucks was a great hideout for me. When I walked in at 6 a.m. and asked for a decaf, both of the guys laughed at me. What do they know that I don't?