Starbucks, 8:36 p.m. – Yuppie tourists are creepy!

My Starbucks decorated for Christmas! November the 9th and the red and silver is out. Wreaths, trees, trim – the works. It’s not Christmas creep – it a Christmas Invasion.

Another thing they’re doing which slightly annoys me is the Christmas carols on the in-store channel on the Starbucks channel on XM Radio. I mean, I really do NOT feel like listening to every jazz chanteuse on the planet re-interpret “Jingle Bells” for the next two months. Please go back to the regular jazz, blues and funk until after Thanksgiving.

Other than me, the SBUX is dead tonight. Deader than the McCain candidacy, deader than the Kucinich candidacy, and surely deader than Obama-as-a-friend-of-the-gays candidacy.

Red goes well with Starbucks – at least this particular Starbucks – which has a lot of the older fixtures – including lighter-colored wood tables and shelves, cream paint and a pale floor tile that looks most closely resembles a well-made mocha.

The barista population outnumbers me three to one. Diamond Studs is here – surely cursing at having to work on a Friday night. I must say – the new red holiday shirts fit him well – although I do believe he purposefully choose shirts a size too small!

Another barista is moving along in a desultory fashion, dumping the trash inside and out, cleaning the condiment station, restocking. She’s always been polite to me, but she makes a terrible cup of coffee. I wonder if she’ll last at the SBUX?

The baristas are brewing new coffee and grinding the beans for tomorrow. I can hear the constant grind * grind * grind and the tamp * tamp * tamp as they fill containers and prepare for the next day’s shift.

BadCoffee is fluffing out trash bags. Whirr * tamp * crackle.

Oh Shiva. Entitled yuppies at two o’clock. They aren’t even interested in buying coffee. They’re here to browse the merchandise.

“Oh, look at the advent calendars? It’s glass! Will the cat break it?”

Now they are “browsing” the pastries. Seriously. It doesn’t take skill to pick a muffin.

I just caught a look at their footwear. He’s wearing a long-sleeve black pullover, black athletic pants and black flip-flops – SO HELP ME GOD. She has on zip-up athletic pants that are unzipped up to her knees, a black tee and a blue-jean jacket and some pert little running shoes. She also has a Celebrity Cruises fanny pack and a purse that looks more like a parachute. Tourists are the bane of my existence.

Really, I though Celebrity was the “exclusive” cruise line. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

Now they’re demanding wrapping paper and a bag to protect their precious Starbucks advent calendar. Really. Wrapping paper. To protect it in the twenty feet back out to your car. I swear to Kali I saw the barista roll her eyes.

The dude just walked right by me with his flip-flops. He seriously, seriously, seriously needs to cut his toenails. Ugh. I am so creeped out right now.

The baristas are re-filling the ice freezer. I love the sound of ice as it hits the freezer. Slish. Slish. Slish.

The smell of the coffee brewing is just intoxicating. It's that Italian Roast. Think all those cartoon images where the scent just tickles your nose and leads you on a chase through the entire house. That’s what it is like right now. Lovely and deep and fresh and delicious.

OH. WOW. Cute boy alert. We’ll be going into overtime for this one. Minute 22 starting right now.

And OT is ovah. He was only cute from the back. From the front, he’s damn near 40. Needs a shave and few hair plugs. Don’t you just hate those?

On that note, I’m out. Peace. Later. Bye.