Kiva Han Countdown: 11, 10, 9, 8 days!

We're fast approaching the last week of Kiva Han! :-(

I've been stopping by mostly early evenings lately, grabbing a cappuccino and maybe a pastry and sitting and reading library books for an hour or two, enjoying the house music they decide to play here (a few days ago it was Blink 182 followed immediately by Daydream Nation, that was interesting) and people watching.

A few days ago, I walked in and found a friend of mine already sitting at a table with a half-eaten bowl of mac & cheese. It turns out she had never (!?) had mac & cheese before in her life, and got it here on my recommendation, only to discover she does not, in fact, like mac & cheese. For shame! Oh well, her loss.

I also finally crossed off another item from my KH bucket list this morning. I showed up right around 8:05 and was the 2nd customer of the day. I would have like to have been here right when the doors were unlocked and been the first coffee consumer of the day, but I'll take what I can get. I already had to do this on a weekend day so that it was 8:00 instead of 6:30 am, so, whatever. I've been parked here for several hours now, running on multiple cappuccinos and a yummy pumpkin muffin, banging out random writing projects, and people-watching, as usual. It's a different crowd in the morning. Folks pop in and out for a cup for the road. A family with two teenage children and a baby in one of those hand-held baskets (with scant protection from this extremely wintry cold, I might add!) came in and all got drinks to go. Other couples have come in to sit for a bit and then take off. For a while, there were no more then four or five people in the whole place, but now, close to noon, everything feels pretty bustly, a constant flow of people in and out, most tables occupied in some fashion. It's interesting to watch the dynamic play out over the course of the day. I wonder if the employees get caught up in it, feeling bored when the business is slow and getting excited when there's a crowd. Or maybe it's the other way around, and the line of customers just makes them tired. Who knows. I just know that I would wayyyyy over-caffeinate myself if I ever worked at a coffee place. I'd just be sipping espresso constantly.

Kiva Han Countdown: 13, 12 days

I've been stopping by for Hangover Cures the last couple of days. They just hit the fucking spot like no other food item can. They're kinda preventing me from branching out on the menu, but who cares. I did notice one thing today that, surprisingly, never jumped out to my eyes before. The menu says that the Hangover Cure is an "egg, hash browns, slas & chesse" burrito. That's right, CHESSE. I usually notice typos. Obsessively. But this one has escaped me until now. Maybe I noticed once and forgot. Maybe they just changed the sign to mess with me. Maybe "chesse" is some new type of cheese. Who knows?

Kiva Han Countdown: 15, 14 days

Over the past few weeks, I've overheard several conversations about what's happening to Kiva Han's location and what their plans are. None of this comes from direct questioning of a primary source, so don't get all up in arms at me if some of this turns out to be false, but I've heard the same details often enough that I "know" it isn't hearsay or rumormongering.

Kiva Han will be replaced by a Bagel Factory location. The interior will be gutted and made to look more like a diner. The owner will be starting a food truck specializing in soup and will call it "Get Ladled".

That is all for today. That, and their mac & cheese is fucking delicious and you owe it to yourself to eat it before they close and I will not be your friend unless you do this (or you're lactose-intolerant or something).

Kiva Han Countdown: 16 days (yesterday's post)

Something unfortunate dawned on me yesterday while I was sitting at KH and gulping down a cappuccino. I realized I'm not actually going to be in town for the last few days of KH's existence! This brings my "go there every day for a month" crashing down, of course. You see, I'm going to Chicago to visit a friend that weekend, and it will be hard to eat a hangover cure from Illinois. I will most likely be back on that Sunday, the last day of KH, so … there's that, but still. I completely didn't realize this when I set out on this adventure. Who cares, right? It's been fun, and it will continue to be fun. I'll just do something crazy on that last day to make up for the prior two or three days I'll miss.

Something weird also happened to me yesterday there. I walked upstairs to pee, bouncing off the walls from my triple shot beverage, and not more than 5 seconds after getting into the bathroom, someone was knocking on the door. Now, this person must have seen me close the door and known I had just got there, but they continued to knock, ever more insistently and frustratingly, eventually making audible (through the door, mind you) deep sighs, "Sheeesh", as if I was somehow taking forever, all despite my calls of, "Just a minute!" and "Hold on!". Who does this? I wasn't being slow, and I even rushed through the hand-drying process just to get the hell out of there, but this person still gave me a head-shake and glare when I walked out, as if to say "Jeez buddy, thanks for ruining my day with your slow-ass peepee time." I thought of many rude things to say on my way by and back downstairs, but opted for the silent route at the time. Why bother?

Kiva Han Countdown: 21, 20, 19, 18, 17 days (catching up)

I've let my writing routine slack lately. Bah. But here's the scoop. There's barely more than two weeks left in KH's existence. Here's what I've been up to the last few days.

On Sunday, I came in after improv practice on campus for a late lunch/early dinner. I stopped at the public library on my way over, and then bumped into my friend on the way in here. It was so crowded there weren't even any tables to sit at! I totally forgot it was Sunday and missed brunch earlier that day, despite my vow last week to go to brunch more often, and it was absolutely packed around 5:30ish. I ended up sitting in one of the comfy, red-cushioned chairs upstairs by the fan. It was the only truly open seat around. My friend got a coffee to go. I sat there and had a cappuccino and muffin, and was forced to overhear a conversation between two older gentlemen who I presume were professors or teachers of some kind. One of them was lamenting to the other about an algebra student of his who "just couldn't get it". Adding 5x to 2 doesn't give you "7 something", as he pointed out. He said it was like "water pouring through a bucket with a hole in it". Ugh. I can't stand hearing stories like this. If someone "doesn't get it", that just means they're not seeing it the way you are explaining it, and you need another approach. Demonstrate it visually. I've got 5 baskets of apples, and 2 leftover. How many total apples? Well, it depends on how many are in each basket. There is always a way to teach someone, if you're patient and inventive enough. To give up and say that you're just pouring water through a hole … that's a shitty attitude, man.

I was frantically working on slides for an upcoming presentation on Monday, so I came by for dinner and sat there for a couple hours working, head down in my laptop. I suppose I'm usually like that here, but this time I was actually focused on something so intently that I hardly looked up from it. It's nice to know that one can do that here. It's easy to get distracted—people watching, the music playing, etc.—but if you have to, you can tune everything out and work.

I was here a long time on Tuesday, still working on that presentation. I got here in the late afternoon, ate some food, and worked worked worked. Some friends showed up later, and then I went off to campus for an IM squash match. I got my ass handed to me (I'm blaming it on my timing and strategy, which are still tuned to racquetball and haven't adjusted) and came back to find my friends still here. I got an iced coffee and stuck around right until closing time.

Yesterday, I was only inside KH briefly on my way to campus. I stayed at home all day alternately working/sleeping, and got an iced coffee on my way to give that presentation I'd been working on. It has been unseasonably warm the last few days, amiright? Spring seems to be coming a little early, which I'm generally fine with, but it doesn't seem like we got a true winter this year. It was never quite in full effect, occasionally throwing a t-shirt day in amongst some snow.

After that presentation yesterday, I went down to the Pitt campus and did a segment on WPTS radio for Draw Us Lines. It was pretty fun, although it'll take some getting used to the on-air logistics, remembering things you can't say (apparently "free" is the "other F word"), and getting comfortable hearing my own voice in headphones. On the way back from there, I was walking on Forbes and had to pass right by/through a march by "Occupy Oakland". They were walking right by KH corner as I was, and when the walk signal at the intersection came on, I diagonalized and was nearly run over by them. Not really, but I wasn't about to stand there and let 100 people walk by and miss my chance to cross the street, ya know? I honestly couldn't tell what they were chanting, or what their message was, but they seemed to be having a lot of fun. Rather than being angry at the source of their protest, they were just kinda smiling and enjoying being out in the middle of the road, yelling and walking. Kinda odd, right? And yeah, they just kept marching down the road, into traffic on Forbes, as I ducked into PHI bar and a couple of cops looked on from both sides of the street. Weird.

Kiva Han Countdown: 24 days (yesterday's post)

Just a quick stopoff for a cappuccino last night on my way from campus to my apartment. It had been alternately pouring/drizzling all day, and I thought I could wait out the rain before walking home, but … no dice. Luckily, I had an umbrella with me.

Funny story about that umbrella. I used to own a small, black, popup umbrella. It was even in my possession as of a week or so ago. Then, I carried it with me to Kiva Han some afternoon while it rained, sat there for a couple hours, and completely forgot to take it with me when I left because it was no longer raining. It's as if my brain said, "Don't need this anymore!" I'm not really accustomed to carrying an umbrella around anyway; I'm surprised I thought of bringing one at all, since I usually just forget I own one and say, "Well, guess I'm gonna get wet today."

I went back a couple days later to see if someone had found it there because, well, I kept forgetting about it because it hadn't rained in a few days. I asked the barista (I really should learn names, right? I just feel weird asking …) if they had a lost and found and if they had a small black umbrella. She looked around and said, "Nope, but you can take one of these spares," and showed me a pile of three unclaimed umbrellas. So, unbeknownst to me, Kiva Han apparently operates some kind of umbrella exchange operation. It's like "leave a penny, take a penny", but with rain protection instead of tiny pieces of legal tender.

I found myself walking into KH last night with that medium-sized, white umbrella in hand. When asked how it was working out, I replied honestly: "It's a lot better than no umbrella." So, do you need an umbrella? I can leave one there for you …

Kiva Han Countdown: 25 days (yesterday's post)

I keep managing to not write these short blurbs until the day after. Oh well. This post corresponds to the unique day where the number of days left in Kiva Han's existence is also the day of the month. My mathematical mind felt that was important to note.

I stopped by yesterday evening around 8 pm for a cup of tea. This time, I went with the liquorice peppermint herbal. It was surprisingly delicious, considering I usually don't like liquorice. I played a couple of games of Outfox with my friend and then did some work. Not much to say, but it was fun and productive, a good combination.

At one point I heard strains of Bob Dylan's voice wafting over my ears, and I strained them to finaly identify the song as "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue". Then I heard faint music coming from the speakers out in the other room. At that point, I realized the guy at the table behind me had his earbuds playing music so loudly I could hear them and identify the song. Turn it down, dude. You're ruining your ears.

The sign was gone from the counter! I had momentary hope that maybe Kiva Han isn't closing after all. That was dashed, of course, later on when I overheard this exchange:

Customer: Are you guys closing?
Barista: Yeah, on February 19th.
Customer: Oh. I meant, like, tonight.
Barista: Oh right. At 10.

By the by, isn't liquorice a weird looking weird? LIQUOR ICE. Weird.