Kiva Han Countdown: 27 days

I crossed two items off my Kiva Han bucket list today! (See this post for what I mean.) A friend of mine gchatted me during the day and said "nice blogging" and met me here in the afternoon. When I got here, he said he was just talking with the barista and mentioned this here blog series, so I guess folks will know about it somehow. Cool.

I didn't quite feel like settling down and working, so I looked through the shelf of board games while waiting for my coffee. The stack was falling over after I plucked one out from the middle, and I had to do some careful rearranging to keep the whole pile from toppling onto the ground and making a big mess and din. I settled on the game Outfox. It looked like an easy-to-learn game, was playable by three people, and the time component said 10-30 minutes. Perfect. I went back to our table, unpacked the box. In the process, two balls of paper (one a ripped-up brown napkin and one a pink receipt) fell onto the floor and I said, "Oh well". I also discovered that there were two rules sheets, one entirely in French and one entirely in Spanish. Between me (French) and my other friend (Spanish), we pieced together the rules and started to play amongst the three of us. I realized that those balls of paper were in the box to replace some missing pieces, so we made do with some spare change I had in my pocket. (A penny makes for a great "brown circle".)

We didn't play long enough to develop fully intricate strategies, but enough to realize that the game is not easy, and amounts to being careful about setting up your opponent for an easy win. Perhaps the two player version is different/better/more strategically rich because, as it was, we could really only play with one future move in mind, and that was hard enough. Still, a fun game, and I'd recommend checking it out. So yeah, that was one check on my KH bucket list: play a board game. I'll likely do that again in the coming weeks. There were several other games I'd never played before, and Balderdash is a great multi-player game that I've played many times.

Later, I went upstairs to the bathroom and checked another one off my list.

Kiva Han Countdown: 30 days (yesterday's post)

I stopped by for breakfast yesterday (Friday) but never had time later on to write this post. (I went off to downtown for a Planned Parenthood rally, had a delicious veggie hot dog at Franktuary, hit the gym, and then went out for a friend's birthday all night.) That granola works (yogurt, fruit, granola) really hit the spot. I was in a bit of a rush so I didn't stay long, but was there long enough to enjoy my food, sip an uber hot americano and take the rest to go, and people-watch. It was relatively quiet for 11:00 on a Friday morning, and I could hear some employees laughing back in the kitchen. A few folks came in and out, including one older gentleman who I see there all the time. He joked with the cashier about Kiva Han opening a new location in Hawaii called "Huna Kahuna". Actually, that might have happened on Thursday, but I'm confusing it together because I'm writing this on Saturday. Oh well. It was funny. It was also really really really hot by the window. The sun was streaming in (as you can probably tell in the photo) and you could have melted cheese on the leather seat of my chair.

One thing I did realize while sitting there yesterday is that I have never been at Kiva Han around opening time. One or two times I have been at that corner very early in the morning to catch a 28X to the airport, but once it was before anything was open (like 4:30 am) and another time only the Starbucks was open (around 5:30) so I sucked it up and bought a coffee and bagel to make it through my travels. Other than that, I don't think I've been there before 10 am. (I've been there for closing time more often than I can count, though!) That's partly a consequence of my lifestyle (if I'm out and about that early, it's for class or something, and otherwise I'd rather just make coffee and food at home) but I also realized it should probably be something I experience. Then that got me thinking about other silly things I'll never be able to do there again. So here's a short list of things I've never done at Kiva Han that I'd like to hopefully accomplish in the next month:

• Show up at opening time
• Draw/write graffiti in the men's room. It's all over the place, why shouldn't I partake?
• Play one of the board games on their shelf. My friends and I are board game enthusiasts, so I'm surprised this has never happened. It should.
• Read one of the books on their shelf. Why the hell not?
• Take a nap on one of the comfy seats upstairs. I've hardly ever sat upstairs, let alone do this.

I'm sure I'll think of other things. And do them. Does anyone reading this have any ideas? Is anybody reading this?