All over coffee

Contrary to the tone of my last entry, I am not abnormally filled with spleen and misanthropic tendencies (though granted the personal baseline is set high). But it's been a few weeks of nearly constant people-contact, a thing that is exhausting for the average introvert, and with a few more days of it to go I find my temper growing shorter and my energy sinking lower. Also, beloved family members' birthdays and anniversaries aside, February is a total energy suck. This is why tonight IE and I resorted to our favorite bar-type joint, wherein the bartendress has the magic mixing touch with martinis and remembers what we like. What was I saying? Oh right.

So as I haze off to another round of prepping for a few days spent convincing people that perky/helpful/kind/morning person is my natural ground state ("You are to lie. You are to tell a black lie," to quote Stephen Maturin), here's a recommendation: Go check out Paul Madonna's work in "All Over Coffee." Maybe it's just because I was in San Francisco recently, but his nearly unpeopled drawings of the city, complemented by shards of story, seem to strike a perfect balance between unbearable loneliness and affectionate exasperation with the human race. "You were starting to have second thoughts about all those friends who complimented you on being self-deprecating," he writes. So you were. Martini?