The Love of Coffee Shops

I love a good coffee shop. The music that walks the line between jazzy and hipster, the smell of coffee, the din of conversation punctuated by loud exclamations of delight or disdain, the overheard relationship drama, the variety of people, the random comments from people about my massive stacks of books on [insert appropriate paper topic here]...there is simply a vibe that a good coffee shop gives off that I can't explain but still adore. If you ask me what I would like to do I will likely answer that I would like to go sit in a coffee shop and talk. This is something I do with my closest friends as often as possible. I have a dear friend who is married and she and her husband have a standing coffee date on the weekends. I think this is delightful. As a student I have another level of appreciation for the coffee shop: they are also excellent places for me to hang out and do homework. This is particularly true if it is somewhere that I am unlikely to run into anyone I know. The downside with this setup is that inevitably I have to get up to use the bathroom at some point. This leaves me with two options. Option one: pack up all of my stuff and take it with me to the bathroom. Option two: leave my stuff at the table and ask someone nearby to watch it for me. The problem with option one is that I have a lot of stuff, so packing it up is not a simple process, and I don't want to lose my table (actual spread-out-and-study space is at a premium in coffee shops near the University). The problem with option two is that I have to figure out which of the random people in the coffee shop to trust with my things. This is the dilemma I was confronted with while working on my paper in Starbucks this afternoon/evening. I have come to the conclusion that coffee shop studying works much better with the buddy system in place. If there are two of you, then you will always have someone to watch your stuff while you run to the bathroom. This makes life much simpler.


This picture is from a couple years ago. My dear roommate, who I refer to as Gabby on the blog, came home with me for Thanksgiving and so naturally we went to Starbucks and chatted it up. Can you believe that before I took her to a Starbucks she had never been to one? Yeesh.