The manger of Coffee Chain That Shall Remain Nameless is way too into me. Oh, and I bake a cake.

I realize that his interest may just be gratitude because I'm subsidizing his mortgage on my pumpkin spice latte expenditure, but I think he loves me.

I thought it was a little friendly when he told me his *entire* life story (no, really, I know his last three places of employment) when he started at this store, but I chalked it up to new guy wanting to know his customers. I thought it was slightly weird when he asked me how my day was and what else I had planned for the weekend, but hey, Starbucks Coffee Chain employees are friendly. I thought it was even weirder when he recognized me going into Noodles and said "hello", but whatever. They were right next door.

But stopping to chat when it's ten after seven in the morning and you have lines both inside and outside the store and I clearly was really, really just wanting my latte before a grueling and utterly worthless three discussions at some freakishly early hour of the morning at a campus an hour away and I'm already late thank you very much? That's way, way too friendly.

Maybe the guys at Alterra are more reserved. If I wanted human contact at seven in the morning, I'd be in a relationship thank you very much. *sniff*

Wait. Could he get me free caramel apple cider? Because there are *very* few things I wouldn't do for that.

I actually got to class, not late, and in plenty of time to draw a stupid action potential on the blackboard and commiserate with a friend about how terribly lost we feel about the whole brain chemistry thing (Did you know that Na+ influx and K+ eflux cause, respectively, depolarization and repolarization, and an excess of K+ flooding the cell causes hyperpolarization at the end of the action potential but after the absolute refractory period? Yeah, I didn't either.).

So much fun.

And then I realized that I was wearing loafers, pearls, full makeup at eight a.m., a pea coat, and a headband while carrying a latte and I almost annoyed myself with my preppy capitalism. Eh.

Le anyhoodles, the second part of the title refers to the amazingly good chocolate pumpkin bundt cake that I made today because I was bored and feeling wintery.

Well, I kind of made it. I didn't have a lot of the ingredients, so instead of whole wheat pastry flour, nonfat buttermilk, dark brown sugar, and pumpkin pie spice, I used regular cake flour (I honestly have no idea if this is the same thing, but it looked kind of close), skim milk, light brown sugar, and whatever spices I could find under the counter.

Most of this was laziness, because I really didn't want to go to the store, but I am religiously opposed to using anything labled "specific item" spice. No. No. You figure out what you want it to taste like, select the spices, and then double it. My mom told me this when I was just a wee lass (a whole...ten years ago...okay), and it's worked just fine. My pumpkin pies are renowned around...the dining room table by my drunk family members.

Okay. So maybe pumpkin pie spice wouldn't have been a bad call.

And it turned out okay, and of course I took pictures-

The glaze didn't really work because, again, too lazy to get buttermilk, but still.

I think I shall go eat some now.