Live the cliché. Dare to dream.

So I've genuinely spent a few hours this week writing in a coffee shop.

Yeah, live the cliché, dare to dream. I'll stop if any annoying, self-absorbed middle-aged angst creeps into the thing, honest. And when you've got a nice house full of lovely, sunlit places to perch with the laptop, crawling off to the cave-like local Bridgehead isn't just a bad novel in itself. It's almost perverse.

Thing is, there was a reason. Little guy's turned out to be as light a sleeper as is his daddy, so even running the grinder in the basement kitchenette is running a risk of waking him from his very critical morning snooze. And Daddy needs his espresso in the morning. And he's going to be back at full-time work in about another week, which means he's probably not going to have the opportunity to experience this particular scene again any time soon. So never mind the probably quite valid warnings that nothing worth reading ever gets written in a coffee shop anymore, here we are, let's see what we can get done in an hour or two...

Discovery: quite a bit, actually. Always been one of those guys who can get into his trance just about anywhere, if he really has to. And I'm kinda driven, these days. Got this thing I want done already, a million ideas for doing it, and never quite enough time to make it happen, most days. So I'm in the zone, pounding away, never mind what they're babbling about two or three feet away at the next table; I'm in my own world.

And, as it turns out, kinda rude. Usually, I'm one of those really entirely formal guys, in public—heaven forbid I should ever present anything less than state-to-state level diplomatic protocols even to a wino I'm handing a quarter, normally—but these aren't normal times.

So the surly guy in the corner of the Bridgehead at Bank and Third, who, when you asked if this seat was taken, snapped/grunted something that sounded like 'whatever' and went on typing? That was me.