starbucks dangers

I'm at my Menlo Park office -- the Sandhill Road Starbucks -- working before a few VC meetings and then popping over to Y Combinator's demo day. This Starbucks makes a particularly good dopio espresso, so it's been a happy morning. It almost wasn't, however.

My laptop was sitting on a low table next to my chair while I finished Bill Buford's excellent book, Heat and made some phone calls. I had just gotten on the phone when a rather elderly gentleman tottered my way with a very full cup of coffee, a muffin, an unlit cigar in his mouth, before dropping heavily into a chair and setting his coffee down right next to my closed laptop, despite their being room on the table to keep some liquid-MacBook distance.

I knew what was going to happen next. I reached over and picked up my laptop, moving it back onto my lap. I had just finished when my new neighbor dropped his nearly whole muffin straight down into his cup of coffee, creating a spectacular coffee eruption that covered the table in coffee, drenched the space my laptop had occupied, and narrowly missed drenching my legs.

That would have made for a sucktastic day of meetings.