Anniversary

It's been a normal day. Work, errands, dishes, laundry. Brushing and bathing dogs. Supper and CNN. But that's just fine with me. Two years ago today, as Bob and I, the dogs and the cockatiel ricocheted down Wildcat Canyon in the Acura through smoke and flames, and later as we sat stunned in a downtown hotel room, knowing we'd lost our home to the fire, watching apocalyptic t.v. news reports and wondering where to go, what to do next, on that Oct. 26, we would've given anything for a normal day. It feels good now to be two years down the road and back home at Terra Nova. Though not everything is yet in place, we've come a long, long way toward reclaiming a sense of normalcy. Generally speaking, most people don't appreciate "normal" nearly enough. Sometimes we even confuse it with "boring." But that all changes once you've really experienced "abnormal".

How Do You Spell Relief?

With headlines shouting louder day by day, warning of an impending bird-flu pandemic projected to kill 50-150 million homo sapiens (not to mention what it would do to chickens and cockatiels), it's been a real relief to learn that the U.S. government is already on the case. In fact, President Bush himself has studied the threat and delegated our protection from the deadly H5N1 virus to that peerless team of civil servants at the Department of Homeland Security. You know, the same bunch that did such a stellar job in the Gulf States during the recent hurricanes. Washington's defense squad has hit the field just in time. According to this morning's news, H5N1 has now traveled from Asia to Turkey and perhaps Romania. From there it's only a sneeze or two away from Western Europe, where it's likely to hop a redeye from Heathrow, de Gaulle or Frankfurt to JFK, Dulles or O'Hare. Thank goodness DHS is standing guard. Otherwise, I don't think I'd be able to sleep at night.

Training Days

After three weeks of intensive Starbucks training, I'd like to report that being a barista is a lot harder than it looks. It turns out that making lattes and chatting with customers is only part of the gig. There's also spinning (Starbucks-speak for wiping tables, dumping ashtrays and sweeping up muffin crumbs), hauling big buckets of ice, mixing up pitchers of mocha and Frappuccino base, even mopping and cleaning bathrooms.

And then there's the lingo to learn. Having taken years of Japanese, a high-memorization pursuit if ever there was one, I've been surprised and downright humbled by the subtleties of cup-marking. For example. You'd think by now I'd remember that CRM is caramel mocha, not caramel macchiato, which is simply CM.

It's challenging, too, to learn all those buttons on the video register. Screen after screen of buttons. Oh sure, they're all laid out in semi-alphabetical order, but somehow that doesn't seem to help when you're facing a line of eight people, all desperate for their morning caffeine fix, and somebody orders a triple grande 140-degree half-caf tuxedo with 3 splendas, no whip. So then you toggle back and forth among the beverage, syrup/milk and modifiers screens, hunting and pecking like mad to enter all that before you forget it. You forget it anyway, of course, and then you have to ask again. Sometimes more than once. This is ridiculous. Granted, Starbucks is built on the concept of custom drinks and legendary customer service, but it seems to me that in drinking coffee, as in writing fine prose, modifiers should be kept to an absolute minimum.

Baristas also have to learn dozens of drink recipes and be able to recall them almost instinctively while juggling two, three or even a half dozen orders at once. This ability alone immediately separates the veterans from the novices. While my colleagues are whirring around, filling rows of Frappuccino cups, I'm moving in slow motion, trying to remember whether it's one or two pumps of mocha in a grande. At times like this, a simple spinning assignment comes as welcome relief.

Of course, I am being paid for my efforts. In fact, my first paycheck, covering my initial 16.25- hour week, topped a hundred dollars. Two more like that, and I'll have my initial investment in black Dockers and white polo shirts covered. But at least I can drink like a La Jolla socialite. From half an hour before a shift until half an hour after, my usual grande, decaf, nonfat lattes--or anything else I can dream up--are free. Which makes it tempting to splurge. Today, for example, I think I'll ask for organic milk.