Starbucks is having a Coffee Break, tomorrow morning from 10 to noon. This is kinda interesting to me since everyone I talk to says that while they like the espresso and frozen drinks, Starbucks coffee is their worst item. Especially when compared to Dunkin Donuts or even McDonalds. I haven’t had a plain coffee from them since they closed down for their re-training session, but I never really cared for it before. It always tasted too strong or burnt from sitting and heating too long. I guess I am a bit of a coffee snob though. I personally love going to Dean & Deluca in Georgetown and looking over their gourmet coffee blends, and it’s a bit of a thrill when the employee asks you what kind of machine you’ll be making the coffee in so they can give you the proper grind. I like to be able to see through my coffee, and it is possible to make strong coffee while still being able to detect that it was water you pressed through the beans.

Still, it might make for a good start to the day to grab a book and walk over there. Maybe swing past the new Target on the way back. I swear I’m not avoiding it, I just haven’t had a need for anything. Though as the cleaning progresses, I am going to need refills on stuff and I think they carry method products.

TGIF is all I can say. Been a heck of a week and I could benefit from a very long nap! I’m not sure that I like us getting rid of the colder weather in exchange for rain, but warmth is warmth I suppose. I’m sneaking out of the office a tiny bit early to catch Chicago 10 over at E Street. I just missed Persepolis, so I’ll have to hunt it down someplace else. Aside from the St. Patricks events taking place this weekend, I’m not sure what else is going on in DC, but I haven’t really thumbed through the papers and blogs.

I’m still in the midst of spring cleaning — love shredding mail — and getting my affairs in order, so there’ll be a lot of scanning in papers and recipes and calling up debtors to make sure they got their payments and calling back numbers that call over and over and refuse to leave messages.

I called one back last night and it was a company offering a privacy guard for my Bank of America credit card. When I asked the woman why their auto-dialer never left a voice mail she said she didn’t know and that her company wasn’t BofA but just worked for them. I told her how ironic it was that someone would claim to call on behalf of my bank that wasn’t my bank offering me protection against fraud and identity theft, but she didn’t seem to get it. She just continued to try selling me on the service. When I worked for a credit card company, I used to hate dealing with callers that got stuck with those “30 days free” offers and then couldn’t get rid of the monthly charge. Or the ones that didn’t understand that cashing that check for $25 or $50 actually enrolled you in a service that you’d never get rid of unless you gnawed your own arm off.

Dealing with the collection companies has been delightful, however. I put on my most syrupy sweet voice and bludgeon them with politeness. I know it sounds weird, and it is well beyond the advice of “don’t get angry” but being extra-nice totally throws them off their game. Yesterday I ended a call with “Thank you, you’ve been so helpful. Now is there anything else you need from me today?” And the collection agent just stammered out “uh… um, goodbye” before hanging up on me. It’s wickedly fun.

Catching up on my design feeds had a lot of fun articles and videos this morning. This was a great find and a nice little Sesame Street reminder about visual thinking that combines mottos from two things I love, Apple’s think different and The Brand New Heavies put the funk back in it. And as an afterthought, these lifestyle videos from Microvision (warning: autoplay) are pretty cute. They try to educate the consumer about various situations where having the company’s Pico Projector in various portable devices would actually improve our lives… or something like that.