strawberry encounters of the ripe kind

That was the banner at Larry's Market today. Like a big strawberry coming down from outer space.

Also at Larry's Market today, at the Peet's coffee counter, was the girl who works there that Elizabeth and I secretly love. We each began to secretly love her independently, and then it came out that we both love her. We're both friends with her already, although she doesn't know this. I began to love her one day when I was trying to weasel some pennies out of the plastic change pocket in my wallet, and I was saying something in the voice of the pennies like "wait for us" or "we can help" or something like that. And she replied very kindly, "Pennies are so sensible."

My love grew when I went in there another day wearing this pink plastic shell necklace I got in Australia, and she said she liked it, and asked if they were real shells. I said no, that I thought it was just plastic. And she said, "The things they can do with plastic these days," in this really nice old lady kind of way.

I don't know when Elizabeth began to love her, but I do know that Elizabeth feels a little like, why don't they ever make her the customer of the week? She lives right by that Peet's, and is in there all the time. At the Peet's near where Dave and I live, the customer of the week thing is all about answering a trivia question. We're never going to be the customers of the week. But up at Elizabeth's Peet's, it's all about showing the Peet's spirit. Whatever that may be. But Elizabeth's got all kinds of spirit. The only thing that might be in her way is that she's always in a hurry when she goes in there. If they're going to see her spirit, they're going to have to do it fast.

Remind me at some point to tell you about how I felt in high school when we'd do the "we've got spirit, yes we do" thing. You see, I felt a certain way.

Today we took my little cousin Irena out shopping for her flower girl dress. Then we went to Baskin Robbins and got an ice cream cake! I'm proud to report that I didn't ask for anything to be written on it. I said to the lady behind the counter, "We're going to have a generic celebration." I have grown.