Free Muffins, and the Number 2 Pencil 2003-10-22

Okay, here we go. Let's see if I can remember this right.

Me and my buddy Austin meet up for a coffee each week. One week I'll drive up to his place, the next he comes down to mine. We've been doing this arrangement for quite sometime. We've talked through a lot of shit together on these meetings.

The meeting I'm gonna tell you about, that's the time I got free muffins.

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So at some point, we'd lost track of who's turn it was to drive where, so we decided to just meet in the fucking middle. We get to the Starbucks (I know, it's fucking trendy and all, but they got great Chai) at around 10:45, and they're closed. Been closed since 10:00, the bastards. What type of coffee place, you know, the place where they serve drinks to keep people up all night, closes at 10:00? It totally defeats the purpose. Luckily there's more Starbucks than stars in Orange County. (I'm talking about twinkling stars in the sky, by the way, and not movie stars. It was a joke about our bad air quality and... oh, nevermind)
We call up the two nearest ones, find out that one of em closes in five minutes, and the other's open til midnight. Sweeeeet.

So, we get our coffees, and all is well. And we're talking. Talking and smoking. Well, I'm smoking. Austin gave it up for his future wife. Ahem. Anyway...

The Starbuck's restock van shows up, backs up right next to where we're sitting, and out of the cab pops this wiry Latino named Cisco. And he's zipping around, unloading the truck like there was a bee stinging his ass. After a bit, he starts talking with us as we work.
Turns out he has the cure for a lack of motivation.

"Yeah, man, so I'm like, halfway done with my run already!"
"Cool," I reply. The lack of enthusiasm in my voice was directly related to me having no clue as to how long his run usually takes.
He says, "Yeah, I work nights, and my wife, she works days, so we never see each other. But before I left for work, she says to me, Hey Cisco, if you can finish before 5:00 am and get home before I have to leave, it's on!"
"Cool!" I say, with more enthusiasm, now that I knew how long a run normally took. This guy was flying.
There aint nothing that drives a man quicker towards finishing a job than the "promise of ass" (as Cisco puts it) waiting at the end.

At one point, Cisco sticks his head out of the truck and tosses something at me. He says, "If anyone asks, tell em it fell off the back." He'd tossed me a five pack of Starbucks blueberry muffins.

And then he says, "You know the Number 2 pencil? The most famous pencil in the world? Why isn't it number 1?" And then he laughs, and finishes his run.
I definitely enjoyed coffee that evening. And enjoyed my share of the muffins (since I split em with Austin) for the rest of the week.