a vestige of thought...

After my violin lesson this morning I drove to Kenwood (since I was out in that direction) to pick up my paycheck. It was only about 9:30 when I got there, and the checks weren't ready yet (apparently my boss is at least as much of a procrastinator as I). This made me rather depressed, as I was very nearly broke and didn't want to have to wait until next week to cash my check. To cheer myself up, I wandered into the very cheery, Christmas-decorated Starbucks on the other side of the food court. I planned to get a chai latte with my last three dollars, but one of their specials caught my eye: a pumpkin spice latte. I am very fond of all things pumpkin (pie, bread, candles, etc) so I decided to give it a try. It was very good and, to my delight, not very coffee-ish at all. I have decided that Starbucks' success rests mainly on the fact that, while they do have "real" coffee drinks, they provide very sophisticated fake coffee drinks for people, like myself, who prefer the image of drinking coffee to actually drinking the stuff. There is something about Starbucks, so I think, that makes one forget they are in the middle of the suburbs and think for a moment that they may be in Manhattan. Perhaps, though, this thought comes only from my watching the movie You've Got Mail too often.