Taking My Laptop Out For Coffee

So one of my odder quirks has been that I've never been a laptop-in-public kind of guy.

Part of it is paranoia; I'm worried that I'll drop the damn thing, or that someone will swipe it. Though I'm way too careful for either of those to happen, so it's all rather senseless.

So I've had this new laptop for about a year, and bought a bag to carry it in with it, but I hadn't used the bag at all, except when I moved the laptop to the new apartment.

But today I finally sucked it up, and took the laptop out with me. Actually put it on a table in a place that serves coffee, and let it live off its battery for a while. Knocked out about 10 pages of my rewrite. Felt nice.

It helps that I've finally found a great place to go in the afternoons, when I get stir-crazy being in the apartnent and need to get out.

I've been prowling my new neighborhood in my car, looking for the perfect coffee shop. Generally in the past I've often wound up sucking it up and going to a Starbucks or a Coffee Bean, though I don't really like the coffee at either.

And though there are two Starbucks within a half mile of my apartment, both have terrible parking.

My needs are small. I don't really need a place to plug in my laptop. I don't care about being on the Internet in public (it's nice to be away from the distraction).

All I need is a place where I can camp out for a couple of hours without feeling rushed, where the music is low but not too low, where there are enough people to make people-watching interesting, but not enough to be too distracting. Good coffee is a plus too.

So anyhow, I found it. Ironically, it's a place I've been in before, a small place that specializes in gelato, but which also has great coffee and tasty baked goods.

A place that's fairly dead in the afternoons, so I can camp out at a table in the window, read and write without being disturbed, and occasionally watch the people passing by.

Today, as a bonus, totally randomly, I looked up to realize that they were playing the new Rilo Kiley CD in its entirety. Quietly, but not too quietly.

Nice.