I'm in much better spirits now than earlier today partially due to the fact that I realized that it is the first of August and I will not be working as a barista for much longer. In less than a month I will give my two weeks and I won't have to sway to the whims of capricious customers any longer. Part of me will probably miss it though, not the actual work but the structure it brings to my life. Although grad school should have me down to a whole new routine in no time.

My frustration mellowed today at work. Now that I am fairly up to pace people, (co-workers only), are downright nice to me. They crack jokes we talk shit about customers and managers. It's become pleasant at times.

After work I rushed over to my bus stop and waited for nearly an hour. All the other commuters were cranky. A man started cursing angrily and part of me felt somehow threatened by it. As if among the people waiting for the bus he would somehow hand pick me from the lot for a transparent exchange of anger. We watched pair after pair of little white lights appear on the horizon, some in the street for a better view. I had saved a large bag of pastries from the dumpster and was planning to give to the bus driver and gave it to the woman who was sitting next to me. I made use of my primitive Spanish skills. I told her they were cookies and I think she may have been disappointed. When I fi nally caught the bus and transferred my connecting bus had half taken off without me and I chased it down. She stopped which was really atypical from experience. Take the good with the bad I suppose.

The past two days I have been using my French multiple times throughout the day. I feel like I might be getting a lot less timid about using it. Today a woman from Quebec came in and was really excited for me to speak to her. Then a couple from France that were both really stuck up. The woman came in and kept repeating obstinately, "Sandweech wit haam an' sheeze" slowly. I thought it was due to language so I switched over but it made no difference. The man had aviator sunglasses propped up on his head was wearing a green tennis shirt with a white wool sweater tied around his neck. He looked like he belonged in an ad for Newport cigarettes or an 80s Perrier ad.

I have a tendency to place importance on the change of month and other pointless mile markers particularly in the transition from summer to fall. Anxiously waiting for a change of seasons to arrive dramatically. I peruse the daily average high temperature charts. I am always waiting for something that never comes.

For anyone who cares the statistically averaged hottest day of the year in Los Angeles is August 5th, from there it is a gradual decline down about twelve degrees to the high in January.