Some things I’ve learned in my recent Coffee Shop spree:

1. Time from drinking an entire Venti China Green Tips Tazo Tea to needing to pee, really, really bad: approximately one hour, fifteen minutes.

2. Consequences of making a bathroom trip to relieve tea-full bladder: this being New York (and therefore, simply asking someone to watch my laptop not being a real possibility), having to unplug and pack up laptop, and – worse – having to sacrifice prime outlet-adjacent table space, all for that stupid ninety second trip.

3. Symptoms of therefore trying to tough my way through the increasingly full bladder (in order of chronological occurrence): frequent seat shifting, tapping foot spastically, pressing knees together, autistic-like rocking, cold sweats, burst bladder, unconsciousness, death. (Note: all symptoms after cold sweats projected rather than previously experienced.)

4. Time the hot girl who looks sort of like Pocahontas shows most days to work at the corner table near the front window: between 1:00pm and 2:15pm.

5. Number of times furtive eye contact has been made with Pocahontas over the past two weeks: countless.

6. Likelihood of me stopping being such a fucking pansy and just going over and introducing myself: frankly, not good.

7. Likelihood of me instead walking over to the table of Inconsiderate Cell Phone Guy, picking up his skim latte, and pouring it over his head: better than the Pocahontas odds to begin with, and increasing rapidly.

8. Strategic thought of the day: pouring said latte onto ICPG would be an excellent conversation starter with the lovely Pocahontas.

About six months back, I discovered that I can actually be fairly productive. The thing is, I also discovered that I can only be fairly productive when removed from my desk.

Normally, I’m an inveterate multi-tasker. I can’t do just one thing at a time, and, as a result, often end up doing too little of too many things to actually ever get any of them done.

The discovery, though, was that if I pull myself outside of my usual work environment (by parking in a coffee shop, or coffeeing in a local park), I can suddenly focus in on a single project and blaze away.

Based on that revelation, I became a regular at the Coffee Pot, a cute little independent coffee shop around the corner from my house. Then, after a while, I also started occasionally heading to Starbucks (around the corner in the other direction) – for variety.

But there was a problem. After a few visits, I realized that I actually liked Starbucks better than the Coffee Pot. And I felt oddly terrible about that. I mean, I always root for the underdog, and the long-standing Coffee Pot (by now, a Hell’s Kitchen institution) was certainly the David of this fight, warding off the evil, multinational, McHomogenizing Goliath that is Starbucks, Inc.

I knew that, I really did. But the chairs at Starbucks were more comfortable, and the music was much, much better. The Coffee Pot played crappy local radio, whereas the Starbucks around the corner one afternoon cycled through a set including Lucinda Williams, Death Cab for Cutie, Clem Snide, Guster and Neutral Milk Hotel – none of which would ever, ever pop up on New York radio, despite having regular places in my own playlist rotations.

And then, of course, there was the broadband thing. As a T-Mobile customer, adding unlimited HotSpot service was relatively cheap, meaning I could stop into nearly any Starbucks in the city, pick up their wi-fi, and get to work. At the Coffee Pot, I’d used my cell phone as a wireless modem, and made do with the pokey dial-up speed. But after years of broadband, stepping back to (circa 1995) 24kpbs was more than a bit painful.

So, the chairs, the music, the wi-fi, it all added up. And by now, I’m a Starbucks regular who occasionally hits the Coffee Pot, rather than the other way around. Still, I have discovered that if I ask for a single tea bag, they’ll give me a Venti tea for the price of a Tall. Sure, I feel like a douche-bag every time I say “Venti” to one of the baristas, but it’s entirely worth it; I may still be shopping at Starbucks, but fifty cent discount by fifty cent discount, I’m doing my small part in sticking it to the man.

Having lunch at Iguana, a little Mexican restaurant in our neighborhood, my brother asked if they sold lemonade.

“Not usually,” the waiter replied, “but today I will have the old man make it for you.”

The old man? We contemplated this pronouncement for a few minutes until, lo and behold, a stooped and wizened old man, who looked to be at least ninety years old, ambled out of the kitchen with glasses and a teapot.

“I have made for you de limonada,” he announced. “Choo has never taste limonada as good as dis in you life.”

And he was right.

Given my verbose writing style, it should come as no surprise that – in real life – I’m a talker. And, frankly, I’ve been one for most of my life. My parents’ frequently tell me that, during my first days at preschool, when asked if I wanted some crackers at snack time, I apparently replied: “actually, I think I’d prefer a croissant.”

Still, despite my garrulous nature, I’m also fascinated by people. So I ask questions, and force myself to shut the hell up and listen. Amazingly, when people know you’re really paying attention, realize you actually care about their answers, they’ll spill the beans – even those beans closely held and rarely discussed. On an almost daily basis, I seem to hear, ‘wow, I can’t believe I just told you that; I haven’t talked about that with anyone before.”

Which, while often fascinating and flattering, occasionally leads to rather unexpected results. Last night, on a long cab ride home in the wee hours of the morning, I suddenly remembered an equally long cab ride, almost exactly a year back. That night, for about twenty minutes, the cab driver regaled me with stories about his childhood, about the psychological effects of having a father unable to truly express his emotions. By the end of the ride, I was the one thinking, “I can’t believe he just told me that.” Or at least that’s what I was thinking when I wasn’t focusing all my attention out the window, looking for a soft landing spot should he verge any further into serial killer territory, necessitating my jumping out of the moving vehicle.

With summer weather now more or less upon us (discounting the chance spring shower), most of my New York hipster shoes have gone back into the closet for warm weather hiatus, replaced by the trusty California-boy standard flip flops.

Slipping them on, my gait changes immediately. My steps are easy, deliberate. And so my pace slows – I’ll get there when I get there.

Gradually, the shoe shift makes its way up through the rest of my body. My movements become smooth, relaxed. The constant concerns crowding my brain step aside for thoughts dominated by the words ‘dude’ and ‘rad’.

Work becomes less natural – the constant glow of the monitor no longer draws me, moth-like, to productivity. Instead, I catch myself looking to the window, where the bright sun beckons me outside.

I try and focus on the tasks at hand, but with the flip flops on, my brain is elsewhere, somewhere where I can feel coarse sand between my toes, cool salt-water on slightly burnt skin.

When the building I live in was sold, about six months back, the new management company closed off the entrance to the building’s roof deck, barricading the door with a rather threatening emergency fire alarm.

At first, we weren’t entirely sure that the alarm was even activated, though shortly after it’s installation, one of our building-mates, perhaps similarly uncertain, apparently decided to check, and for the balance of one fall weekend the piercing alarm rang continuously down our stairwell.

At this past weekend’s Mothers’ Day party, however, I met our neighbors two flights up, and mentioned missing roof access as weather the warmed, as I’d previously often headed up, laptop in hand, to bang out work. They, in turn, replied that, with a bit of MacGyver ingenuity, they’d managed to disable the alarm and bust free the roof-bound door.

So, once again, I have a roof patio. Once again, I have sweeping night vistas of Midtown and the Hudson River. Once again, I’m tremendously pleased with where I live.

I’m walking back from the Easter concert, decked out in my nattiest pinstripe suit, gig bag slung over my shoulder. I’m looking down as I walk, smiling to myself about the surprisingly smooth performance. I look up – just in time to catch the eye of Jane Krakowski, heading the other way down 9th. She smiles, demurely looks away. I float the rest of the way home, harboring a new celebrity crush.

Aside from occasional lapses in house-care, my roommates are two excellent guys to live with. Fun, considerate, willing (at least most of the time) to pitch in on collective housework. And, most importantly, amenable to us all living parallel, yet rather separate, lives. Which isn’t to say we don’t hang out regularly. Just that, when we aren’t doing something collectively, we each more or less let the other two do their own thing. The large size of our apartment (large, at least, by New York standards, having both two separate living rooms and a sizable eat-in kitchen) certainly helps, as we rarely end up all piled up in the same tight space.

Increasingly, however, that ‘separate lives’ philosophy seems to be yielding unintentional results. Throughout the last month, for example, a half-eaten slice of cake in a plastic takeout box has been sitting on the top shelf of our refrigerator. And though, to me, a month of refrigerator time would place most pastry well beyond the realm of edibility, I’ve left the thing sitting there out of consideration, assuming that whichever roommate it belonged to was saving it for some specific (elbeit hopefully non-gustatory) reason. Apparently, however, my roommates had been leaving the cake untouched for the same reason, each of us assuming it must belong to one of the other two. In fact, while we still don’t know who the cake belongs to (or how it materialized in our refrigerator), we at least determined that it was safe to finally toss. Still, had one of my roommates not broached the subject in a joke about it while all three of us were in the same room, I’m completely convinced the thing would have sat ensconced on the top shelf for at least another four or five months.

Similarly, despite there being only three of us in the apartment, our shower rack now contains eight separate bottles of face wash. I’m entirely certain that only one is mine, and I’m also fairly sure that, even in their most metrosexual moments, neither of my roommates would purchase two kinds of face wash simultaneously, much less the four or five required to reach our grand count. Where did the extras come from? Can we get rid of them? Occasionally, while showering, I think of asking both roommates. But, really, why bother? We’re happy living our separate lives, and we certainly have plenty of space.