It’s suffocatingly hot here in Maryland – hot and unbearably humid. The air is thick and damp and hard to breath. They’ve opened cooling centers around Annapolis, and sent out long emails with tips to stay cool and hydrated. It’s one of those days I’m grateful to work inside, grateful for air conditioning.

I ate my lunch inside yesterday for the first time since the constant spring rain stopped in June, sitting at a bare table in our grim, grungy lunchroom while the minutes ticked by and I lost myself in Ann Patchett’s “Truth and Beauty.” Last night, heat lightening flickered on and off most of the evening, and I feel asleep to the rain hitting my window – but this morning dawned just as hot and with even more humidity in the air.

I guess Ann Patchett and I will eat lunch in that sad little lunch room again today.

It’s a strange time of year and a strange time of life. The last few weeks of summer are passing in hot stillness before the frenzy of a new school year. Many neighbors, officials, businessmen and women are on vacation, and our depleted newsroom is quiet. Even the police scanners are quieter than usual, interrupted by occasional calls for heart attacks or dogs locked in cars. I spent nearly an hour searching for a story for tomorrow’s paper, but found nothing and now I’m waiting for some random e-mail or phone call that will propel me into interviews and half-frantic typing and the last-minute questions that always come on the morning deadline.

It seems that waiting is something I’ve become proficient in. Waiting for the next lay-off that is more of a question of when than if; waiting for the call that will be my husband’s new job and, hopefully, a chance for me to leave this place and take up truly writing again – no more of these calendar listings and half-formulated announcements that take up too much of my day here.

Some days I feel like those potted flowers waiting on a nursery shelf. They have the nutrients, the water and the sunlight they need to survive, but their roots have wrapped around and around themselves and filled every bit of space in their tight containers, and now they are languishing, waiting for a piece of ground where they can stretch their roots in all directions, a place to make their own. In a way that’s how we are. The job hunt has continued since November, with many false hopes and disappointments and a slow redefining of our goals and priorities. And so we keep working, living, and waiting here… ready to belong somewhere and yet not quite sure where that place is.

And in a way it’s exciting; we’ve reached the end of this chapter and another is ready to begin, and I have no idea what it will be like. Now we’re just waiting for that page to turn, while Maryland waits for the summer heat wave to give way into fall.

Coffee is like wine: you can taste and enjoy and even compare the different beans and different roasts, and you’re pretty sure that if it costs more, it’s better. But then there comes the time when you bow your head and acknowledge that when it comes down to it, you’re a poser, and you really know nothing at all of the subtle yet exotic world you’ve blindly stumbled into. But you can never go back; for better or worse, you’ll never drink a cup of Starbucks “coffee” again.

There were six of us sitting around two wooden tables, pushed together in the front corner of Café Pronto at the Festival at Riva in Annapolis: a British man who claimed Café Pronto makes the best cappuccino from New York to Washington, D.C.; a hippy college-student with blue eye-shadow, eager to share her love of coffee with anyone who came within ear shot; a shy, quiet friend of the hippy who seemed a little over-awed by it all; a Café Pronto employee, growing her own knowledge; and JJ and I, eager for our first coffee-cupping experience.

Coffee-cupping, when done properly, involves smelling whole beans; feeling and tasting and smelling the grounds; deeply inhaling the aromas of the brewed coffee itself; then, finally, sipping the coffee quickly in, to the back of the tongue, to analyze the many flavors of caramels or nuts or cedar or the floral aromas of orange blossoms.

Or so I’ve been told.

Technically speaking, this wasn’t a true coffee-cupping. We didn’t finger any grounds and most of us weren’t advanced enough to notice any aromas of anything. Instead, we were comparing brewing methods: the three, thick glasses on the mat in front of each of us represented the high-tech, expensive Clover machine – now bought out by Starbucks; a French-press; and a pour-over method. And all three represented the best, most heavenly coffee I have ever tasted and probably ever will.

Guatemalan El Socorro Y Anexos beans sell for over $30 for a 12-ounce bag, and are described as having a “candy-like fragrance with Hints of Lemon, and complex citrus and berry flavors that bloom as the cup cools.”

I couldn’t be so descriptive. But I CAN tell you that even a non-coffee drinker could have enjoyed this particular cup of coffee, so light and sweet it was almost like tea. Even as the coffee cooled, it stayed sweet, a little tart, and refreshing. I came closer than ever before to tasting those elusive aromas and fragrances. And if I never have another chance to enjoy a cup of El Socorro Y Anexos coffee, I’ll never forget it.

If you ever find yourself in Annapolis around 2 o'clock on a Friday or Saturday afternoon, drop by Cafe Pronto's store-front shop at the Festival at Riva. You never know just what you'll blindly stumble into.