Friday Coffee Shop Musings
Fancy coffee shop. Seven dollar drinks and five dollar pastries.
A mom plays on her phone with her kid.
A lot of people work remotely from here. I often see their screens and eavesdrop on their calls and wonder what in the world they really do for a living. At the moment, one guy is talking on his phone to someone far away and I catch, “We need more voices for the program about the daily lives of billionaires.” I’m not making that up. I hear it while I am writing about the homeless and seeing a homeless man outside the coffee shop doing something inexplicable in a hedge.
I’ve lost seven pounds since adopting Elmer, the crazy husky. My metabolism is changing.
I recently read in the Oregonian, an editorial from a Beaverton elected official asking the Oregon Legislature to allocate $15 million during the current special session to fund part of $115 million ballpark for the Hillsboro Hops single A baseball team. He quoted the usual bogus statistics about how that allocation would be a boon to taxpayers, yeah even the ones in Burns and Brookings. No. No. No. A thousand economic studies have disproved the myth of economic befits to the public for taxpayer support of professional sports teams. If Hillsboro wants a ballpark, tax the people of Washington County and better yet, let them vote on it.
Oregon State University also wants the Oregon Legislature to bail them out for construction costs to the absurd and lavish remodeling of Reser’s Stadium. Their expected television revenue from a PAC 12 media deal vanished with the collapse of the PAC 12 and now the athletic department can’t service the debt. Hell no. Fuck no. Cut the athletic budget’s bloated budget by 90 percent and pay it off yourself.
A homeless man rides by on bicycle. He looks deranged.
I sure miss my construction job sometimes. It changed my life. It made me look at buildings differently, especially ones under constriction, like the ones I saw on my way over to the coffee shop.
I’m taking Elmer to the beach soon. I’ve got to see my husky run beside the ocean.