Today was a red letter day at the Domain of the Antichrist. I, loyal slavering minion that I am, learned how to ring stuff up on the register! And as if that wasn't enough excitement to last a lifetime, I also learned how to make hot drinks.

In the mood for a decaf mocha? Come see me. You want a latte? I'm your girl. Even if you want a double half-caf vanilla cappuccino with extra foam and a twist of lemon, it's all under control. Yes, I can make shots of espresso, and write things on cups, and best of all, I can steam the milk and make that little whirr sound. (I love that little whirr sound.)

The register is the funnest part of the whole thing (buttons! pretty buttons!) except for the guilt factor. It wasn't until I stood on the other side of the counter that I realized how exorbitant those prices really are. Someone orders a drink and something to eat, and hands me a ten dollar bill, and I hand them back... well, basically nothing. A handful of change. And it makes me feel guilty.

Don't tell The Man I said this, but really, don't go there too much. The drinks are good, especially the gingerbread latte, and the pumpkin bread is basically to die for, but it's all so freaking overpriced. They should call it Starsucks, as in, sucks the money out of your wallet. (It makes me wish I worked in San Francisco itself, where all the dot commers are. You'd have to be crazy to feel guilty about taking money from them.)

The only exception to the rule is if you're in Berkeley and want to see me. For your $7, you'll not only get a drink and something to eat, but you'll also get to see me burn myself with the steam wand, or spill foam all of the counter, or some other charming maneuver. For that kind of entertainment, $7 is a steal.

Actually, things have been going well. I mean, sure, I have burned myself with the steam wand and all that stuff, but my boss has been extremely complimentary. He keeps telling me how proud and impressed he is, and what a quick learner I am, and how well I'm doing. He didn't even care that I was an hour late this morning, or that I was $20 short when I cashed out. He loves me.

This week is going to be busy, since I'm working three days and training the other day. But I should be settling soon into a nice part time schedule, allowing me time to do my homework and pack for my vacation. (Mental note: tell boss I need a month off.) My vacation is, by the way, hurtling towards me at the speed of light. The semester is over in three weeks, and in three weeks and one day, I fly to Holland. Didn't I just go on vacation? Damn!

In the meantime, I am trying to decide if I want to make a jaunt to Paris (answer: hell yes) and if so, what the details of that are going to be. Are Abby and Lucy both coming with me? Do I want to book the train ticket in advance? Do I want to look into a "Paris Illumination" tour, which Katie is going on? Do I have time to go to the Picasso Museum?

You know, if this is my biggest problem, I really do have a great life right now. I guess the universe is making up for the fact that my life went all to shit in August. Thanks, universe! Thanks for the kick ass life! Much appreciated!

The coolest thing happened to me in class on Tuesday.

You see, the final project in my Experiments in Poetic Form class is a sonnet sequence. A sonnet is a fourteen line poem, and we have to write between seven and ten sonnets, all linked by some formal device. For instance, the last line of one sonnet could be the first line of the next.

At any rate, I'd been having some problems with this. I'd actually been working on it for a few days, toying with various concepts. I tried using some of my other sonnet experiments as jumping off points; I tried breaking up one of my epic poems into sonnets, etc. etc. But nothing was working.

Finally, in class, I had a breakthrough. And I mean a serious breakthrough, one that happens, if I'm lucky, once every year or so. I wrote fourteen sonnets, I shit you not, in half an hour. Fourteen sonnets that are mostly good. I did minimal editing, threw out the three weakest ones, and voila! An eleven sonnet series.

It's a series of poems about love, basically. The woman is loosely based on me, and the man is loosely based on Tim. Tim's emotional reticence makes him a great, compelling character, but I didn't consciously make the poem about him. I just started writing... I wrote and wrote like hell, until my hand started cramping up, and the poems just flowed out. They happened to end up being about him, probably for two reasons. One, I was still missing him a little. And two, he's my male archetype.

Isn't it funny? I still haven't written a single poem about Matt since we broke up, but I don't think I've ever stopped writing poems about Tim. I honestly think he's my muse. My soulmate and my muse. Man, that's a huge responsibility! And thank god we never got together. All that permanently unresolved sexual tension totally feeds my art.

The sonnets are linked by recurring imagery, including: birds, avocado, soap, white roses, fog, a bridge, a chalk circle, a chalk spiral, wine, wings, and Florence, Italy. Every time I got a little stuck (and by stuck, I mean a hesitation of more than a half a second) I called up one of these images and just threw it in again, and the words just flowed. I can't explain it. If you're a writer yourself, you understand.

Joey and Laurie were totally stunned in class when I told them I had just written fourteen sonnets. (Joey had spent that time writing half of one sonnet.) One of my classmates overheard part of our conversation, turned to me and said in this impressed voice, "You've written fourteen of your sonnets already?" I laughed and said, "I wrote fourteen sonnets just now." She just stared at me in disbelief.

Laurie and Joey read the sonnets the next day (after I typed and printed them out, and deleted the three I liked the least). They both had some constructive suggestions for me, but they said the sequence is quite good as it is, and they can't believe how fast I wrote them.

Man, inspiration like that doesn't strike often, but when it does, you're coasting for days. Whirr, baby. Whirr.

"I had a vivid dream this weekend in which I was Joey Potter and I was making out with Dawson."