Seriously, only half way through January and I'm already sick of trying to eat right.  (And to make it even worse, I didn't even try to eat well the first week of January...)

The first time I truly remember loving coffee was after scuba-diving in Hawaii.  My dad and I climbed out of the Pacific Ocean into the boat, amazed by what we'd seen in the tropical reefs.  But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't spit the salt-water taste out of my mouth.  Then the dive crew brought us steaming cups of chocolate macadamia nut coffee and fresh pineapple.  Aloha.  I don't know if a cup of coffee has ever tasted so good as it did that morning.  

I really like coffee even if it usually pales to that cup.  And the fact that I get to drink a little bit of Chocolate macadamia nut coffee while I'm a sitting in my cubicle typing this makes today much brighter, even if I'm not rocking in a boat on the Pacific Ocean.  

Something else that makes today a good one: we're taking a roadtrip to San Francisco this afternoon.  I spent about an hour last night getting the right music set-up for the drive, which I imagine I'll be doing the majority of.  It may seem silly that I made several cds for the trip but that's really only a portion of the silliness.  It gets even sillier to imagine that Claire will let me listen to any of it while she's awake.  I suspect we'll be listening to more Raffi and Disney music early on.  But I'm really looking forward to driving tonight, when everyone's asleep except me and maybe Emma.  There's just something unexplainable I love about driving in the night on a highway.  Maybe it's the coffee. 

BTW, if you're in San Francisco and want to hook up this weekend for, um, coffee, drop me a line.

We have a bag of Seattle's Best coffee blend in our cupboard.  I bought it at the grocery store, because pretty much the only other brand they had was Starbucks, and I take issue with buying Starbucks coffee.  I don't mind Starbucks so much, but they're straight coffee isn't my thing.  So I didn't think Seattle's Best could be any worse.  I've made it a couple of times and have come to believe otherwise.  So this morning at 4am, when the only kind of coffee bean in the house was Seattle's Best, I was pleasantly surprised to realize it was much better than I remembered it.

Of course, that could have just been the lack of sleep talking.  Regardless, I was able to grind through a scene in the rewrite I knew wasn't working and figured out how to make it work.  So who knows?  Maybe there's some magic to the Seattle's Best bean after all. 

Otherwise, it was a very pleasant weekend.  We discovered the new Thai place that opened close to us was actually pretty good.  Saturday, we went to see Stardust with Emma's brother and had a good time, although I think I enjoyed the movie slightly more than either Emma or Will.  Finally, last night we went down to Laguna to meet up with Will's girlfriend and her family and have a picnic dinner at sunset.  There were lots of dogs there, which both terrified and fascinated Claire.  

I got my coffee-maker all set-up so the timer would go off this morning and it would automatically start making the coffee.  I love that function.  It's nice to have a cup of coffee ready to go as you roll out of bed.  However, getting the coffee-pot out of the dishwasher and putting it underneath the drip would've helped.

Bummer news: my local comic book shop closed down. I went by last weekend to pick up some comics and they were gone.  I hadn't been there for about a month so I had no idea it was going.  I'm really floored, because it was a guy and his son who ran it (his son was a few years younger than me) and the shop had been in my town probably longer than I have.  That's the second local comic book shop to go out of business within a year.  

I think this means I'm off of buying serial comics.  At least for a while.  Civil War's over.  Eternals is finished.  I won't be able to get Daredevil anymore, but I can pick that up in the trade (and really, I hate all the adds in comics and love having anywhere between 5-10 issues mashed in back-to-back in a trade, so it's probably for the best.  Still, I'm kinda bummed.  I wonder what that guy and his son are doing now?  As far as I knew, that comic shop was there life. 

As far as reading comics goes, I'm about halfway through the final volume of Seven Soldiers.  It's worth it just to see Frankenstein doing his best Hellboy impression (minus the tongue-in-cheek banter) while fighting off a killer swarm of zombie rodents and insects.