I Am Probably Cursed....

Seriously, like some sort of preemptive Catholic in the confessional I am going to ask for forgiveness ahead of time, on this one, is that OK?
This blog will have absolutely nothing to do with books and/or book-related ephemera!
“Please forgive me, Reader, for I am about to foolishly blog myself.”
“Te absolvo.”
“What? No penance?”
“Your penance, my son, shall be to re-read your own blog and check for spelling errors and such things!”

So, tonight, after work, I was at Starbucks, in the Chapters bookstore.
“No way Cipriano, that is such a unique place to find you, after work.”

Yeah, so there I was.
Spiders were calling each other on their Spidey-Cellphones© …. “Yep! He’s back. Same damn guy. Commence attaching cobwebs from his head to that one pillar there, the one he sits next to all night long.”

So, I’m sitting there reading Emma Donoghue’s new book from off the display rack in fine forbidden fashion, [without paying for the book] because I already bought a copy and sent it to my Reading Partner in the mail and I don’t make enough money to be able to afford buying TWO copies of the thing….. and I’m sitting there and this couple walks by, and the woman says to the guy… “I want something cold. Get me something cold.”
She walks away, and he makes his way to the counter, taking out his wallet.
And it hits me. I realize something.
I have never once in my life ordered a cold drink at a Starbucks.

Yet I have been here a million times.
And on really hot days. Like today. It had to be 150 degrees, in the shade.
I still order just a standard coffee, and the hotter the better.
Summer, Spring, Fall and Winter.
I care not the season.

So the guy orders something.
A frappuccino.
I don’t even know what a frappuccino IS?
And remember now…. I LIVE HERE!

I look up at the sign board, listing all their drinks…. mochaccino, macciato, frappuccino, Al Pacino!
And then my mind goes back to last summer, on Vancouver Island.
Out on my brother-in-law’s boat.
A whole herd of us zipped around on the ocean one day, between Nanaimo and Parksville.
At one rocky promontory, he pointed out to us a gorgeous house… secluded. Really inaccessible, unless by parachute.
“That house is owned by Al Pacino,” he said.
I can’t reveal to you how he knows this…. it’s classified information.
Suffice it to say, he knows the INTERIOR of that house.
Here is another shot of it, from an angle where a gigantic picture window looks out to the rising sun.

And here is the thing.
Mr. Pacino is never THERE!
Like, it is just one of those things…. similar to the fact that the condo, directly across from me, even the exact same level in the air, is owned by Alanis Morissette. But again…. she is never there!
[Ask my telescope!]
For about five years now… no curtains or blinds on any of the twenty-foot high windows.
Nothing inside. No furniture. Yet…… it is owned.

But see… if I had that kind of expendable money, I would not only know what a frappuccino is, I would also have been able to afford that second copy of Landing, by Emma Donoghue.
But alas. I am me.
Probably cursed for making fun of Catholic sacraments in a former, and present, life!

**************