I like coffee and old things.

There’s a confectionery here that serves coffee for $1.00 in these lovely small ceramic cups with tiny glasses of ice water. I like going in there with a book and reading for an hour before meandering on. Everybody is there with their families and kids, and the white noise that their banter creates helps spirit me away into the words I’m reading (lately it’s been a biography of Cleopatra I’m going over a second time).

Then there’s a store here that I could spend hours in. I have. There’s a fat, snuggly cat that dozes on the furniture. I wander around and pick up Depression era glass and wonder what stories are attached to them. Fur stoles lay in odd sections. I feel the need to investigate- I read where things were made, and places like Bismarck and San Francisco and Butte come up. Not special places. I look at tin types and marvel at people’s lives even though I don’t know who they are.

I haven’t yet found a place in Bozeman that does that- I think in Bozeman for me it’s the outdoors. I know this town too well, and so I find myself going over familiarities, whereas Bozeman feels new in many more ways.