Sometimes you gotta go where everybody has your back

This morning a customer handed me a heavy, Dwight D. Eisenhower silver dollar to pay for his morning cup of coffee.  It's rare to see any coin worth more than a nickel, much less a full dollar.  As a matter of fact, I don't think I've EVER had someone pay with a Dwight-buck before.*

It reminded me of when I lost my first tooth.  I had a small coin collection at the time, and it was the biggest coin I had ever seen.  I still have the collection, a variety of nationalities and denominations, some with holes, some with beautifully lacing vines, or birds with unfurled plumage.  A Dwight-buck isn't a very pretty coin, just a giant bald head.**  But it has a nice sturdy heft, the kind of dollar that sends a postcard to Uzbekistan instead of buying a bargain burger.***  I laughed as I remembered my dad, a coin aficionado, telling me about the bald man on one side and the liberty bell on the other.  I held it up for my boss/friend Randy (angry_barista) to see, smiled and tossed it in my till.****

Half an hour and 300 lattes later, there was a lull in the early morning flow.  Randy shook out a fresh garbage bag, and said, "Did you hear what that guy said?"
Me: What guy?
R: The guy by the garbage a while ago.
Me: .......?

So the story goes:
When I showed Randy the silver dollar, the man by the garbage saw it and joked to Randy,
Dude-Man: Do you think she even knows who Dwight Eisenhower is?*****
R: Um...yeah, I think she knows exactly who that is.  She's actually very smart, and she had her masters.  She's a teacher.
DM: Oh, um, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to offend...
R: Yeah.

At this point in the story, both of my coworkers were sticking up for me before I could even think to be offended.  And THAT was my take-away this morning: sometimes when strangers are stinkers, you're lucky enough to be surrounded by friends that have your back.  Talk about a early-morning feel-good!



*Not to be confused with a Schrute-buck

**My apologies if you're an Eisenhower fan.  Or bald.

***That's an aliteration.

****He's not so much "angry" as snarky, and committed to good coffee.  SERIOUSLY.  Gooooooood coffee.....

*****For the record, my typical customers are fantastically nice people.  I love the good natured people of my store.  This guys was an anomaly.

This Is My Life

Beetles.  Scorpions. Locusts.  Centipedes.  Frogs.  Sheep testicles.

This may sound like a line-up of Fear-Factor challenges, but it was actually the MENU of dinner last weekend!  The university hosted a faculty trip to Kaifeng, which is known locally for a great night market and good food.  Apparently "good food" actually means mind-blowing I-can't-believe-people-eat-this type food.  I wandered around gajillion food stalls and watched hundreds of snacks get boiled, fried, pounded, seasoned and served.

I limited myself to new encounters only, looking for new stories to

tell....and wow, did I find a few!  Insects definitely have a crunchy factor, but the taste was actually pretty good - fried, crunchy, spicy - really not so bad as long as you could get over the fact that you were eating wings.  My favorite were the beetles.  The centipede proved challenging when one of my friend's got a leg stuck in his teeth.  It took him almost a full minute to disentangle it.  You know that terrible mental image you just got of the dangling bug?  I got to witness that firsthand.

The biggest challenge for most was the sheep testicles.  Frankly, we

aren't sure if it was sheep or goat, but we ARE sure which organ it was.  Carefully sliced, scored, chopped, boiled, then stir-fried in delicious ways, but even the food vendor was surprised to see a blue-eyed white chick order it.  We passed it around the table, challenging each other to try a bite.  As it turns out, the real challenge was chewing it...and chewing, and chewing, and chewing....

I've been terrible about updating my blog lately - my sincerest apologies - but I just HAD to tell the world about this little adventure!

What a day this has been!

The street where I live

Today is one of those days where I walked down the street and thought, "Yeah.  I really live here.  I'm on the OTHER side of the world, surrounded by Asian people...and life is AWESOME."

This is something you never forget, but often fail to realize.

It's so cool.

Today I feel like one of those interesting people who do something different.  Tomorrow I might miss rain, or coffee, or fireplaces, but today is fantastic!




P.S. For those of you who sang or hummed the title of this blog, you are correct.  Music points for you!  Bonus point if you changed the photo caption to 'The street where you live' and sang that as well.