I LOVE CHATTING over coffee. It’s not the caffeine I crave as much as the conversation. So I was really excited to match wits, last week, with fellow news junkie Joe Tuman. Joe lives in Oakland and is an expert on campaign rhetoric, often appearing on network news shows. I couldn’t wait for his take on Obama and Hillary.

“Barring another eruption, (i.e. a major gaff) I’ve done the math,” he says, and “Clinton can’t make up the delegate count.” Even a fight on the convention floor won’t be enough to save Hillary, he feels. That leaves Obama and McCain for the presidency and Tuman likes Obama’s chances. “I look at McCain and think Bob Dole,” he says, adding age will be McCain’s unspoken Achilles’ heel.

But what about the rhetoric? What kind of guy makes a living studying that? Tuman says it goes back to childhood, when he saw John F. Kennedy give a campaign speech in his hometown of Turlock.

“I saw how rhetoric gets crafted for a particular audience,” he says, remembering how Kennedy used turkey references to warm up the crowd of Nixon supporters in a town where the primary industry was poultry.

But enough about politics. Tuman can talk about other things. He’s an avid runner and a coach for a group that runs, just for fun, every Thursday morning. The fact that they meet at 6 a.m. shouldn’t deter you. If you want to join his group, just show up at the Piedmont High track. Oh — and if you want more rhetoric, get his new book “Political Communication in American Campaigns” from Sage Press — available in bookstores everywhere.SHOWING GRATUTUDE: It’s refreshing to uncover acts of patriotism and kindness in this day and age. That’s why I’m giving Julie Orman at Piedmont Network Chiropractic a plug. A Montclair resident, Dr. Orman is offering free chiropractic care to Iraq War veterans who come home with post traumatic stress.

“There is no popping,” she explains, “but rather a spreading of ease throughout the body as the way of healing.”

It sounds good to me and should be a welcome relief for the anxious young vets returning from war.

AROUND TOWN: Talk about a rebirth! Just months after J&J Hardware disappeared into the night, literally — the empty Montclair space has been transformed into a cool, new nail salon.

“We do nails differently,” owner Uyen Nguyen laughs, drawing a parallel between hardware nails and the kind with which she works. I had a “mani-pedi” the other day and fell in love with the new salon that Nguyen named after her daughter, Isabella. She gutted the space and redesigned it in a breezy blue nautical theme that reminds her of going to the beach in her native Vietnam. More important, this place is immaculate. Tools are sterilized in an autoclave, buffs and pads are disposable and the footbaths use the latest anti-fungal technology. The salon has a fun side, too. You can sit at the bar and have tea, watch TV or even have a glass of champagne (BYOB and over 21, of course) while you get your fingernails done. If you ask me, Isabella is a great addition to the neighborhood.

CLUTTER BUSTER: Springtime is garage sale time and Joaquin Miller Elementary School has one of the biggest with its annual yard sale on May 3. But who has the time to go through all their closets and storage for donations? Instead of a chore, Nina Johnson suggests you look at this as an opportunity to lighten your load. Her business, Simply Organized, is working with Joaquin Miller supporters to clean out their clutter in kitchens, garages and other areas. The school gets cool treasures and homeowners get more space. It’s a match made in heaven.

MAYDAY! MAYDAY! It’s known internationally as the call for help. In our house, it’s also a deadline. May 1 is the date that our college-bound daughter must decide on a school. Her whole future depends on it, of course, and perhaps the future of the entire planet.

At least that’s how it seems. Paralyzed with indecision, the e-mails and letters keep coming — from not one, but 10 different universities. They all want to welcome my daughter to her new home.

“I may have applied to too many schools,” she revealed recently. “I have too many choices.” It may have been my fault, too, for encouraging her to apply to some of my own personal favorites.

Take Montana State University, for instance. My old alma mater has generously offered a package of cowboys, skiing and scholarships. But the one thing they can’t promise is a buffer between my daughter and her mother’s “weird college friends.” Bozeman is, after all, a small town.

Then there’s Fordham. My daughter can’t remember why she applied here, but it’s New York so it’s in the running.

The University of Pittsburgh wasn’t her idea either, but she does have a favorite uncle there. However this must be weighed with the fact that her feet would freeze in flip-flops.

The University of Hawaii has the promise of paradise with sunshine and surfers, but can she come home when she wants to? There’s also the prospect of finding geckos on her dorm room walls. In other words, the eeewwww factor.

UC Santa Barbara, on the other hand, may be too close to home. Still, there’s sunshine and the beach and, as Bob Barker used to say, “the price is right”.

That leaves, in no particular order, my daughter’s current “fav five”: USC, Tulane, University of Texas, University of Georgia and Arizona State. If all things were equal, (i.e. cost, class size, career opportunities) Georgia would probably win the competition for my brilliant child. She’s dreamed about Georgia since she took a Girl Scout visit there years ago.

But the University of Texas has Austin and its renowned music scene. It’s also been rated the safest campus in the country.

It’s tough, too, to turn down Tulane. It’s a super school that exudes southern charm and is generous with its scholarships. Ditto for Arizona State, which mapped out its financial aid package months ago, making it seem almost painless to pay for college.

Finally, there’s USC — my dream school. I emphasize my because this was the university I wanted to attend back in high school. In those days, parents had parameters and mine was in miles. I had to stay within 1,000 miles of my home in Minnesota. Montana State turned out to be great, but I always wondered what life would have been like as a Trojan. Would my connections have catapulted me to someday be president of NBC? Would I have married a movie mogul or, even better, been one myself? That’s not to say that I’m unhappy today. My life is rich, if not my bank account.

In the end, it’s not about me anyway — as my daughter reminds me. This is her college experience. Thank goodness. If I had to decide, I’d be a wreck. Or maybe I’d send out a “Mayday” and hope someone would come to my aid.

I’ve lived in Oakland since 1988 but never really knew downtown until last fall. Taking a job at 19th and Franklin opened my eyes to the city’s renaissance — and I’m excited.

My husband and I went to the hip new Levende East in Old Oakland the other night. Montclair restaurateur Ben Doran opened this place a few months ago at 827 Washington St. and it oozes cool, with an eclectic crowd of hipsters and after-work professionals chatting it up as they sip specialty cocktails.

Doran calls his food world fusion and the menu reflects this vision. We thoroughly enjoyed dunking our bread in the Peruvian dipping sauce; tasting each offering on the exquisite Italian cheese plate and sharing a savory side of mac n’ cheese with smoked apple wood bacon.

I kept thinking to myself “this place is so hip.” Even the bar looks like a piece of art with each bottle of liquor bathed in soft light. It turns out Doran’s partner, another Oaklander, did the design. Kiri Eschelle spent months studying the space and did a great job of making it seem open and airy and at the same time, welcoming.

Of course, the location is just one of the reasons Levende East is so popular. Chef Arren Caccamo is another. His food (he also cooks for the partner’s other restaurant, Levende in San Francisco) is masterfully prepared and really, you can’t go wrong with anything on the menu. Doran does a great job, too, of picking the wine, with more than 20 selections by the glass. And the cocktails, I’m told, are “to die for,” with names like Pear Bliss (pear infused vodka, pear liquor, amaretto and a cinnamon sugar rim) and Pink Amour (brandied cherries, Plymouth gin and St. Germain Elderflower liqueur).

Levende East is one of the catalysts for change in downtown Oakland. It’s revitalizing the city’s nightlife and helping to brighten the image of our town. I, for one, plan on dining there — a lot.

WORKING TOGETHER: Neighbors in North Oakland call it their “field of dreams.” It’s the new baseball field they built with hard work and almost $300,000 in donations from the community.

“It’s still a diamond in the rough,” says Oakland Tech varsity baseball coach Eric Clayton, using a clever metaphor. “But it’s a jewel compared to what we’re used to,” and his team looks forward to playing it home games on the field at 45th and Telegraph.

As a sidebar, Oakland’s urban neighborhoods have produced some of history’s greatest ballplayers, including Joe Morgan, Frank Robinson, Dave Stewart and Rickey Henderson.

E-MAIL BAG: Readers are talkin’ turkey again. An e-mail from Piedmont’s Anne Nunno says a brazen bird all but challenged her cat the other day, strutting toward kitty on Sunnyhills Road.

“My cat puffed up to three times her size with bottlebrush tail,” writes Nunno, who thought the turkey actually looked quite elegant. Minutes later it flew up to the roof of a neighbor’s house to take in the view, leaving pussy below to regain her composure.

On another topic “… reader Adelaide Rule has a suggestion for making Oakland a more energy-efficient city. She suggests tweaking the traffic lights to move cars more smoothly through intersections.

“I live off Mandana, and going down towards Lakeshore, and then on Lakeshore, Lake Park and onto the freeway, one cannot make a single light,” she vents.

Rule says rather than spend the money for an unwanted stop light in Montclair, it should be used to hire a decent traffic engineer to “band” the city’s existing traffic lights.

LOCAL CELEBRITY: Actor Clyde Bruff (“The Commander”) has just finished filming “Milk,” the story of the assassination of San Francisco Supervisor Harvey Milk. He says working on the movie was “a real trip.”

“Lead Sean Penn as Harvey Milk is phenomenal throughout,” he writes, but the highlight was getting to exchange barbs with director Oliver Stone. Bruff, who lives in Montclair, is a member of the Screen Actor’s Guild with a resume as long as my arm. He’s played everything from a boxer to a bowler and does dozens of character voices. But I’m sure he’d tell you his real claim to fame was having his photo next to mine at the old Montclair Malt Shop.