Rainy Afternoon

It’s a gray day here in the city of 100 spires, the air chilly but not freezing, perhaps 5C or so. I’ll be meeting up with fuego later to watch the Czechs take the ice against the Finns, but in the meantime I find myself outside my usual neighborhood. I let my feet guide me. I passed up on the Zlatý Had (Golden Snake), traveled one more block and now I am sitting now in Kavárna V sebém nebi. It’s a very pleasant place. I’m sitting by the window, watching as the world drifts past outside — pretty girls with colorful umbrellas, workers in coveralls hunched over with cigarettes clamped firmly between stoic lips, baby carriages with elaborate clear plastic rain covers.

There was something else that it took me a while to put my finger on, but now I have it. They make the coffee quietly here. I think we’ve managed to somehow deafen ourselves to it, but the modern coffee house is a very noisy place. The grinders are noisy, and the steam valve makes a racket. Now I’m sitting here as the guy behind the bar is very quietly steaming up a latté (or whatever it is one steams up), and now that I know it’s possible to make coffee without making noise, I am all the more perplexed by people’s tolerance of all those other loud places.

Right now the music is a funky, almost calypso cover of “Smoke on the Water”. The conversation around me is muted as well, since there is little background noise to compete with. When I got here I was the only one (at least on the ground floor), but other customers have arrived in a steady stream. They know each other, that much is obvious, and the mood is brightening even as the day gets darker.

The Curiously Uncomfortable Couch

I’ve mentioned the Curiously Uncomfortable Couch before. I rent a furnished apartment (actually, in Czech tradition, overfurnished) and one article is a large two-piece sofa unit that is not pleasant to sit on. I’ve witnessed (even built) some furniture that fell short in the comfort department, but what makes this particular piece unique in my experience is that there seems to have been no attempt whatsoever to make it comfortable.

The thing converts into a curiously uncomfortable bed, as well. There is a drawer that pulls out and a rather clever mechanism that raises a pad to be level with the couch. The raised pad section is far, more comfortable than the rest of the couch. Obviously the manufacturer knew how to make comfortable things, in this case they just… didn’t.

I don’t sit on the Curiously Uncomfortable Couch very often. Last night was an exception, however. I was reading a book, didn’t want to stop, and the couch looked like a good place to be. I marshaled all the pillows I could find and settled in. Almost instantly the sleepies hit me, and rather than haul all the stuff back to the bed, or even pull out the drawer, I turned off the light and rolled over to sleep.

It was one of the best nights of sleep I’ve had in a long time.

Gambler’s Alert

Tomorrow the San Diego Chargers play in what looks to be a good matchup, and it’s one of the few early games they play this season, which means it’s also on at a good time for me to watch. The oddsmakers are giving the Bolts the thinnest of margins as they travel to Cincinnati, but you may want to think twice about where to put your money this time around. If possible, I will try to alert you ahead of time whether I’m watching the game, the better to document my curse.