Second Cup Cafe, Wheeling WV

I talk about Second Cup Cafe on here a lot, and Amanda (one of the owners) just told me that if you do a search for Second Cup Cafe, you'll find my blog on there. I wanted to take advantage of that opportunity by telling everyone who stumbles upon this blog looking for information about Second Cup Cafe what a wonderful place this is. I'm frequently found lounging about in Second Cup because it is a very comfortable place with great fair trade organic coffee and the two ladies who own the store are just absolutely wonderful people. (That's a really big run-on sentence and I'm just making it worse by telling you this... sorry.) I pretty much dig the Cafe.

I'm actually in second cup right now with my friends Amanda and KTT. Katie is working, so she can just forget about participating in this little blog ad for 2Cup. Fortunately for you, the Mac comes with a camera... here's a shot of 2 cup today.

This is KTT. She plays Battleship with herself on that really fancy battleship box a lot.

Look at them' comfy couches... that's what I'm sitting on right now.

Here's Jess Amanda at the counter hiding behind the "To-Go" cups.

Here's Jess Amanda... ain't she grand?

JOSHUA: "Amanda, do you want to say anything about 2 Cup?"

AMANDA: "Maybe somehow that there's a corelation between us and [the sit-com] Friends?"

JOSHUA: "Katie, do you want to say anything on here about 2 Cup?"

KATIE: "Uh... [Long pause] it's my office. [Long pause, rifles through papers on table.] I don't know... I haven't thought about it. What should I say about Second Cup?"

JOSHUA: "I don't know whatever you want."

KATIE: [Shuffles papers.] "Can I borrow your pen?"

JOSHUA: "Okay Amanda, we need more than that... anything else?"

AMANDA: "More than what?"

JOSHUA: "More than what Katie said."

AMANDA: "So make her say something?"

JOSHUA: "No you say something"

AMANDA: "Me say something?" [Pause, sniffles] "You could talk about the inspiration of ideas that come up in a coffee shop and then update it every day with information, like today we learned about the sweet potato queen of Jacksonville mississippi." [Giggles] "Oh the creative energy that oozes out of... sorry." [Goes back to reading book.]

KATIE: [Looks up from computer] Did I go somewhere last October?

All that to say, we like Second Cup and if you are anywhere near Market and 8th Street in Wheeling, West Virginia, you should stop by.

Update on things

I'm home alone. It's Friday morning and Rachel left yesterday at 3:00. So I haven't bathed yet, and I'm pretty sure there is an open bag of Doritos in the other room.

Rach has class Thursday night and Friday morning in Pittsburgh, so she goes to class, spends the night at our friend Allie's house, and then usually comes home sometime on Friday. Today, she is going to baby-sit our neice Cora and then she's going to dinner with some high school friends before she comes home, so I'm a bachelor until 10:00 or so tonight.

I realized last night that being a bachelor again means I do pretty much the same thing I do with Rachel around. I read through some of my Greek book, (did I tell you I'm studying Biblical Greek this year?) I hung out with some friends watching The Office, ate some Doritos, helped a kid stitch up his hand after he broke a window with it, talked to another kid about his sister who recently started doing heroine, and fell asleep with my Greek book around 11:00. Not all that exciting really.

I did go through my photos last night when I got sick of parsing nouns, and saw that there were a handful of pictures that I didn't post on here. So, with no further ado, here's a few shots of the weekend when Mom and Dad Elek came to visit: We went to Oglebay park and took a walk through the Arboretum. Later that weekend Rachel and I went to my friend Damian's house and played apples to apples and dove off stools in the kitchen. (You think I'm kidding.)

Mom, Dad, Rachel, Molly, Gizmo and I all went for a walk. Molly scanned the pond for gators because she was sure she would be able to rip one right out of the water, drag it up the hill and tear it limb from limb. You get 'em Molly!

Mom and Dad sat on a bench and, big surprise, dad was being a little goofy. (Gizmo looked at Rachel and I as if to say "Get me out of here!" And Molly watched for gators.)

Then as we walked through the park, I was suddenly attacked by some strangler vines and was nearly choked to death. Were it not for my brute tensil strength, I surely would have died. Where the heck was Molly?

Then Rachel and I sat down at this pond that marks the equator for the whole Universe and Dad took a picture. Eat your heart out Copernicus... we're the center of the whole friggin Universe.

Then we saw Bambi chillin' out. Drinkin' a beer.

Then Bambi's and two of his buddies got up and staggered away trying to walk real graceful like so no one would know how hammered they were.

Then one of them got totally freaked by that tree in front of him and the other two tried to drink the grass.

Then I stalked a cat.

Rachel wanted to know what she would look like if her forehead was as high as mine.

And I took a swan dive off of a stool in my friend Damian's kitchen.

And I realized that my phone holster makes me look like a geek.

I Accidentally Busted my Phone

Icon

Holy cow, I'm sorry it's been so long. Busy busy busy...

Anyway, I'm going through a book on Spiritual Disciplines compiled by a guy named Richard Foster who is responsible for having started the Renovare spiritual development movement. The book is set up to give you a weekly reading. You read that every day during the week, and then do one of the exercises that he gives you. Each month has four readings in one particular discipline, and right now I'm in the "Meditation" discipline. The spiritual discipline exercise I am doing this week goes like this: Find a picture and look at it for a long time.

So I did. I know, it doesn't sound like much of a discipline, but remember, the discipline is not "looking pictures" it is "meditation." So I chose this Icon of Christ to "meditate" on:



I looked at it for a long time, and after about five minutes of being distracted and trying to move the title bars around and stuff, I finally just put it up on the screen with a black background and nothing else, and looked at it for a long time. That's when I started staring into Jesus' eyes and realized just how human he looks.

It really caught me off guard and I found myself staring at this picture for a very long time thinking, "Geez, he's just so human!" The more I looked at the picture, the more I fell in love, and for the first time in my life, I understood the purpose of an Icon. I actually felt myself feeling love for Jesus as I looked at the Icon. It was incredibly moving.

So, there you go. I'm reading through this book, and would TOTALLY recommend it to anyone who wants to work on being more disciplined. The only trick to the book is that you have to actually do the stuff it's asking you to do. (This is the third time I've dug into the book, and the first time I actually did one of the exercises.)

Oh, the book is called Spiritual Classics by Richard Foster. I gotta run. Hope to post again soon!