First I pour myself a cup, bring it to my desk, and some random fly that was buzzing around the room dive bombed directly into the cup. I cannot simply pick out a bug from my coffee and continue eating. It's contaminated. The entire thing has to do.
So, a short while later with a fresh cup of coffee, I start dunking my granola bar in it. Granola bars dunked in coffee makes them how and soft and yummy. However when it was down to about half a nub, it slipped out of my grasp and sunk to the bottom of my coffee. Curiously enough, granola bars do not float; they sink. So my bar is sitting somewhere in the murky depth of my coffee, fizzing ever so slightly and now and then a bit of oat will come floating to the surface. I suppose I can continue sipping it and filter out the oats between my teeth, but to be honest they look like the little chunks that fly into your toilet when you puke. However, I am growing curious as to what the granola bar at the bottom of the cup will look like at this point, so I suppose I will steel my nerves and keep sipping it down.
Yes, that is what is occupying me this morning.
In other news on the way to work this morning the smoke from the wild fires was ever prevalent. It looked like fog without the nice foggy smell. For some reason when I pasted the wastewater treatment plant the smell was even worse than ever. I think the smoke is somehow a good carrier of the smell of processing shit. I had to pull my shirt over my nose as I drive past the plant.
I'm still amused by my caption phone. I was talking to my friend K on it, and she has a little teeny voice so the captioning said (child's voice) and when she burped it said (burp) and when her dogs started barking it said (dogs barking). I thought that was pretty cool.
Friday needs to get here. I got partying to do.
2026 Update
I'm dialing the time machine to February 5, 2008, so I can watch Ed mourn a granola bar at the bottom of his mug.
Ah, 2008. A simpler age when a man could lose a snack to a coffee cup and call it a morning. The caption phone delights you—today that magic lives in everyone's pocket, but instead of transcribing burps for your amusement it transcribes my grocery list as "demon, demon, eggplant," and I am expected to pay a subscription for the privilege. Your granola bar sinks? These days half the "granola" in a wrapper is a brittle architecture of corn syrup and protein propaganda, engineered to float in oat milk and still disappoint. Smoke from wildfires used to be a passing strangeness, a smell you noted on the commute; now the sky periodically turns the color of a bad bruise and air quality apps lecture me like a disappointed mother. And the wastewater plant? My condolences. We still have those smells, but we've added the aroma of delivery-app food waste and burning lithium batteries to the neighborhood bouquet. Friday still can't get here soon enough, Ed. Some things never change.
“2008 Ed, did you actually sip that coffee down to meet the bloated granola bar, or did you surrender and pour a third cup while muttering about flies and oats? And be honest: was the caption phone's "(burp)" the best part of your entire week?” — Beelzebubba the Third
2008 Ed: So, Beelzebubba, you want the ugly truth? I did sip it down, God help me. There was a point about halfway through where I realized I was basically drinking oat-flavored swamp water with a hint of fly, but by then it was a matter of principle. I was too stubborn to waste another cup, plus I had to see what that bar looked like when it finally surfaced. It was... droll. Like a sad, bloated beaver tail staring up at me. I fished it out with a spoon, saluted it, and tossed it in the trash. And yes, the caption phone's (burp) was absolutely the best part of my week. K burped, and my phone announced it to the world like it was announcing a royal arrival. I laughed until my stomach hurt. So between dead flies, drowned granola, and a documented burp, Friday can’t get here fast enough. Take that, coffee.
