i love my job

My new job has been a bit of a challenge in that there are a ton of things to learn and a lot of details to pack into my aging brain. But after ten days, I can say I am going to love it. These are some of the reasons:

• I love coming down the street and seeing the little neon coffee cup in the window of that old brick building. I love the sandwich board with the fish flag.
• I walk into River Rock in the morning and the lights are low, the wood floors make a soft sound, the baristas are happy to see me, and it smells like coffee and cinnamon and scones.
• I love riding my bike down the street at 7 o'clock on a summer morning.
• I walk to the bank, the post office, the hardware store, and any other places downtown to do errands. 
• I see familiar faces everywhere I go. Rose and Denny at Ace, Gus at the PO, Peter at the bank. The other day I walked by "the other coffee shop" and stopped to visit for a minute with three people from my past life.
• I love the kitchen. They are always cooking up something new and interesting. Yesterday, it was Vegetarian Summer Minestrone. It's served with some chopped arugula in the bottom of the bowl and a little shredded parmesan on top. We meet in the kitchen before the lunch rush to see it, to hear about it, and to sample it. I take pictures and put them on Facebook.
• I love the big, red hissing espresso machine. The baristas are artists, really, and they love to talk about their work. Have you seen the coffee art they can do in a latte or a cappuccino?
• This week, I worked with several artists whose work we are bringing in to display or sell. Michele makes beautiful jewelry, Steve from St. Paul makes great cards and magnets with photographs of his wood carvings, and Marie Louise makes vegetable cards with poems on the backs. I also ordered little journals made from coffee leaves. Shopping! My favorite!
• There is always nice music on in the background. Ashley likes blues so on Thursday, there is always blues, but sometimes jazz or some other interesting thing. Yesterday, three guys in the back room were playing guitars. Not anything organized, they just ended up there and played and talked together.
• People are always happy. I was working in my office yesterday and about every twenty minutes, I heard Ashley burst into laughter. How nice is that?
• I love putting on an apron and helping in the front. I get to visit with people and help them through the ordering process. I met a lovely couple from Mitchell, South Dakota who were staying at a B&B in Mankato. I met an older woman who said she liked the squeaky floors because nobody can sneak up on you. A couple of regulars tell me that their job is to keep an eye on the door and keep the riff-raff out.
• I love telling people about the food...the herbs that came out of the garden that very morning, the eggs that come from East Henderson Farm, the bacon from Prairie Pride, and the new potatoes in the eggbake being delivered by Adam and Lupita yesterday.
• I love the way they talk about flavors...the hint of fennel, the green flavor in the background of the soup, the lemon thyme in the bundt cake. Sweet and savory. Good food and good flavors are sacraments.
• I love that Tamika and I do math the same way. She is a genius with analysis and obviously has a very good head for business but the other day, we were trying to figure out how many feet in 100 yards. She gets online to use a converter and I get out the calculator. At the same time, we both went, "Duh!" and got the right answer. We like to draw pictures of math things so we can figure it out visually.
• This week, I got four little notes of appreciation and thanks from my colleagues at River Rock. Ah, life is good when that happens.