I was drinking my coffee Saturday and thinking about how much nicer coffee is from a coffee cup than from a mug, but the coffee cups we have (well, they're Juliana's of course) are not very capacious, they're like for a little coffee after dinner. Juliana said oh they have nice ones in the Williams-Sonoma catalogue, and I went to see if I could find them in the catalogue, and I couldn’t but I did remember that I have a gift certificate to Williams-Sonoma. My co-workers gave it to me when I left my job at CCAC and of course (once a Moron always a Moron) I lost it for several years and then found it again, so I said that's it we're going to Williams-Sonoma today.

First we went out to eat at a cafe in Davis Juliana likes called Delta of Venus--is it just me, or is eating out at the Delta of Venus a little racy for central California?-- then off to Sacramento, but the directions, this wasn't just Mapquest, this was actually on the Williams-Sonoma website, were absurdly, insultingly wrong. They took us to 9th and H, around the Capitol and there aren't any stores there, and very little activity at all Saturday early afternoon. A woman saw us looking confused and gave us somewhat better directions: we wanted to be out by Sac State, H turns into Fair Oaks at Howe Avenue and it's in a shopping center just a little past there. But it doesn't; H deadends at the river, at a very confusing five-way intersection, and it’s J that turns into Fair Oaks. We stopped and asked some people who were selling some sort of antiques out of a parking lot, but we did find Fair Oaks, and the shopping mall, and the Williams-Sonoma itself.

Surprisingly, they didn't have terribly many coffee cups; they had mugs and glass Irish coffee cups and two-handled bowls that were supposed to be for bouillon but look like cafe-au-lait bowls, and only three real coffee cups that were big enough to hold eight ounces of coffee, which is how much I make in the morning: two all-white ones and a white one with a blue rim. I liked the latter best so that's what I got, and we had enough credit left over on the gift certificate to get a box of Turkish delight and a bergamot-scented candle. There's a picture of it up top so you can see how nice it is. It's part of a set in the picture, but of course I only got the cup and saucer.

As soon as I got home I made another pot of coffee and discovered why mugs are shaped the way they are: with a mug you grasp the handle close to the cup, but with a coffee cup your hand is away from the cup, so it's more work for your wrist. Honestly, there's a difference. Pick up a mug and then a coffee cup and you'll see. I don't care. Coffee is still better out of a cup than out of a mug.