notes on today

Some things make me unreasonably happy. Cases in point:

1. My humanitarian law professor replacing my international law professor for today's class. I just like my IHL professor. I think he's great. And interesting.

2. My new black pants (trousers, international people). I like the way they swish around my ankles. I like them a lot. I look down and they make me happy.

3. The thought of going to Liberia on my own as an adult. I like being an adult. I like being independent and capable.

4. Talking on the street corner to two friends for far longer than I should have, considering all that was waiting to be done. But it was so nice.

Before the talking to the friends on the street corner, where the caterers for the law school kept coming through with carts of herbed chicken and other catering sorts of things which we had to move out of the way for, I ate breakfast at the coffee shop that also makes me unreasonably happy because it is so very normal. It's not a prissy coffee shop with $12 cappucino, it's a hole in the wall where a bagel and iced hazelnut coffee cost me $2.75 and the son double-stamps my frequent buyer card and tried to stamp my forehead. I had to go there because I forgot to buy milk yesterday for my cereal, but I was happy to be there. It was like a minibreak in my day, before my day even started.

Oh, but the story is: I leaned down to smell my coffee to make sure that it was hazelnut (sometimes the father forgets to make it hazelnut or doesn't hear me when I ask for it, although the son never does) and it was but in the process a piece of my hair landed in the cup and now smells of hazelnut coffee, strongly hazelnut coffee which has ruined all other hazelnut coffee for me because they don't actually taste like hazelnut. So the coffee is gone but the lovely smell of the hazelnut coffee drifts along with me.