It's September in the first year of my life (that I feel comfortable admitting to), and I feel great—the mounting success or arguably-not-yet-failure of my professional, intellectual, and—other goals is complemented splendidly by a muted but nonetheless genuine appreciation of the subset of nature's cyclic harmonies that I'm capable of perceiving: the air is getting slightly less warm, the sun is setting slightly earlier, and the hacks by which the retailers separate us from our money have changed completely.

In particular, the American coffee hegemon has started offering its "pumpkin spice" medicinals again, and my esteemed colleague Alexander Corwin has been blogging about drinking them despite/because hating them, so as a loyal client of the hegemon (measured by spending habits; the market gods only accept sacrifices of time and money, and don't care what you say or believe), of course I have to accompany him to the hegemon's outpost on fourth street that I go to frequently (typically bringing the personal cup I got at BABSCon, and the barista H. insists on giving me a brohoof every time), but the day before was no good, because Alexander apparently needed his sweetener/caffeine medicinal while I was busy pairing with our CEO on our new lead pipeline and bought his traditional Diet Coke instead.

So this morning, shortly after I arrive in the office, plans are quickly formed for me and Alexander and our esteemed colleague Tim to go to the outpost.

Sep 10 09:18:04 <acorwin>     zackmdavis: PSL?
Sep 10 09:18:39 <zackmdavis>  acorwin, I don't know what that is an initialism for
Sep 10 09:18:43 <zackmdavis>  oh
Sep 10 09:18:46 <acorwin>     zackmdavis: pump--
Sep 10 09:18:49 <zackmdavis>  Pumpkin Spice!

We stroll down Brannan street, chatting about the sorts of things San Francisco software engineers talk about when they're not talking about their work, like the code we've been writing not-for-work. Alexander has been making a dice game for the iPhone but has run into trouble that he doesn't know how to debug; I suggest going to an iOS meetup group and enthusiastically mention that I went to an exciting Clojure meetup the previous night (where Zach Tellman, who has more GitHub stars than me by like two and a half orders of magnitude, gave me some tips on how to improve my 3D 2048 clone).

H. is manning the left register today. When I get to the front of the line, we perform the obligatory fist-bump and I order a grande (the BABScon cup holds sixteen ounces) iced-coffee with pumpkin spice syrup, and a birthday cake pop. H. makes a faux-teasing remark about my wanting the pink one. (I think this, and the matter of my cup and the bumping of fists, is part of an interesting psycho-sociological phenomenon that I've been meaning to blog about sometime.) Alexander orders a Pumpkin Spice Frappuccino and something to eat at the right register, and I think Tim gets a pumpkin spice latte.

We wait and continue to chat. Alexander receives what I think is a blueberry scone but later learn was actually a blueberry yogurt muffin with honey. His Frappuccino arrives (with whipped cream, despite/because of how he doesn't like whipped cream); he tries it and I think says something about it being mercifully less terrible than the standard pumpkin spice drinks on account of being cold. I express regret that I neglected to bring writing materials to record what he said verbatim to quote on my blog. Tim's latte arrives. I'm surprised that my own medicinal is taking so long, and I'm just about to ask when we see it being poured.

During our walk back to the office for another glorious day of building the future of cloud storage (perhaps not as glamorous as cloud computing, but the glory isn't about the glamor), I confess that I had considered offering to pay for my esteemed colleagues' drinks with my ridiculous golden loyalty/payment anti-credit card (you loan money to the American coffee hegemon at zero interest in exchange for a free medicinal every twelfth visit starting with the thirtieth) but didn't do so because it would be socially awkward, and Alexander points out that now it's awkward of me to have mentioned it and he had to pay for his pumpkin spice monstrosity. Next time, I say. Tim points out that gingerbread season isn't far away.

And on this tenth day of the first September of my life (I will cough loudly and unconvincingly if you insist otherwise), I think things are going to be okay (for a while (for me)).