Ode to Joe's

Thanks Robert, it's nice to know people are keeping tabs. I've just been so Busy!

First off. Bad news, folks, and I'm trying to keep my head about myself...
You know that coffee shop I always mention I'm blogging from?? You know, the one I go to to write my novel, work on homework, eat yummy sandwiches, ice cream, my source for chai, a good game of pool, a social life? The place I read my prose and poetry at open mike-night on Saturdays to groups of people who can appreciate the written and spoken word and who share their own... pretty much my home-away-from-home for the past four months...that one? Its official name: A Cup of Joe. ...Cup o' Joe's.

Yeah, that one. Anyway, it officially closed its doors Friday night. That's right, out of business, no longer open, shut down. The reasons are many and complicated and political and sad. If we're lucky it'll reopen in a new location soon, which, people tell me, suggests hope. But I liked that location, I liked the feel of that place, the central-metro-urban cultural feel and all that that entailed... I loved the people who worked there, some of my best friends these past few months...

Lets just say, and it's redundant: it goes to show how much our economy really is failing, when small businesses struggle so much like that. Anyone who knows me knows how against the 'doom and gloom' attitude I am - I really won't go into it - but times are getting strange to me. I admit I'm young, I don't know or understand a lot of what happened in history, or what's happening now. But this is what I see:

A war, gas prices rising, talk of recession, denial of recession, people going into shops bargaining for lower prices - this costs too much, why's this cost so much, can I get a discount? - "milk $4 a gallon"... small businesses not making enough, being shuffled out by the bigger dogs who have more money. The patterns of our world... it's a little scary to me now that it's actually a reality first hand, you know what I mean?

So the hope? Maintain that community feel now more than ever, find it where ever it can be found; know who your neighbors are, do the things you enjoy most. Cup o' Joe's might reopen somewhere else. In the meantime the group is meeting at Cafe Marmalade, a place I've never heard of, a place I've never been. I really hope to see all the same faces - or at least a lot of them- there. That'll at least make if feel a little familiar. Ever notice how when things just start getting stable, that's when an earthquake hits? Sure, you can call it 'change'. I suck at dealing with any kind of change. I finish a book, I get depressed for a week, wishing to be in that same story and knowing no matter if I reread it, it'll never be the same...

Alright. I'll stop.

So what else have I been up to? The good news? I finished out my first semester of school in seven years! (that's a funny nonsensical sentence - you get what I mean;) I'm done with summer (more difficult change to deal with, really) semester and headed on to fall. I've had a couple of job interviews, still waiting to hear. Hopefully I'll have a couple of big announcements to make by the end of this week! I hope! Summer semester was awesome! I've never done as well in school as I did this time around! I got a couple of good pieces of writing out of it, too, and lots of useful knowledge. Other than that, I've been working on getting my little girl registered for First Grade! (Can you believe it!) and working on making my apartment a little more homelier, sorting out my collection of books. They've been all over the floor of my living room all weekend and I absolutely love it, the stacks and piles and I can pick one up at random and just get lost in the prose!

I got a new CD: Mike Doughty - I highly recommend his stuff, it's great!
And I wrote a couple of new poems for the first time in years. Did you know I write poetry too?
Other than that, just trying to keep my head about myself...