March 2005 Archives

the first track is always awesome, and then it's all downhill from there.

bleah.

EDIT : okay, it got better by track 3. but track 4 had better not be teh suxx0rz.

"What aspect of handheld gaming has been "redefined" because of this?"

"Reasonably Priced" for one.

i had some panama estate coffee (dunno which estate, doh) this weekend/monday, and it was... good! it was kind of "boring" compared to a pungent espresso or a funky malabar, but it was refreshing to have a "just coffee" for a change. then, as it cooled, it became complex and fruity and chocolatey and delicious!

color me surprised. brown and surprised.

last night i drilled a hole in smokey's lid to insert a thermometer. this allows me to monitor the roast, and if i want to get really fancy (i do!) i can adjust temperature throughout by turning smokey off or fiddling with the variac (dubbed 'constantine' by a coworker).

that went well with no loss of life, limb, or liberty.

i fired off two roasts and was pleased to discover that things were happening at about the right temperatures -- in other words, my thermometer is more or less accurate.

then i disassembled the poor git to see if i could figure out how to rewire the fan so that it plugs directly into the wall, bypassing the variac. this way i can have constant (read: high) fan speed regardless of the heating element voltage. whelp, i saw a resistor or something and screamed in horror, screwing smokey back together as fast as possible.

my coffee roaster is not what i want to be using to learn about electronics.

as i put him back together, i noticed that the glass roasting chamber was starting to separate from the metal base. ugh. i may be able to repair it, i may need to buy a new one, or maybe i can just ignore it if it doesn't amount to heat loss and fire hazards.

i called the mfr this morning to find out. i think it's just one dude in a warehouse (awesome! i want that job) and he'll (hopefully) call me back.

digging thru my email to find if smokey is still under warranty, i discovered that he's not - i got him waaaay back in july last year and he only has 6 months of warranty on the roasting chamber. nuts.

i'm considering moving to a SC/CO setup, but that requires patio roasting which is... unpleasant. plus, it uses much larger batch sizes. i enjoy being able to switch coffees 2-3 times a week, which i wouldn't get to do with a bigger batch size.

unless i started drinking it at work.

i'd like to do that but it's a hassle to stand around and brew and clean and so forth while cow-orkers pass by and grab their free "lattes" from the crappy superauto.

coming up fast...

linky

nerped from mefi.

i heard the author on npr and went out and bought the book.

what a fascinating book.

excerpt :

"So what's taking us so long to grow up? Well, there is so much more to absorb -- that's just a brute fact, as noted -- but there are also so many different ways to be, so many different lifestyles, so , many different versions of the world. Haunted by the possiblity of buyer's remorse, we dawdle on the brink, trying this, trying that."
-- Thomas De Zengotita, "Mediated"

hfs, jfc. that's me. dawdling on the brink and never making any major decisions, scared to death of "buyer's remorse".

i'm just in the first quarter of the book. it gets better.

maury_cohen : also
ozreiuosn : you have!!!
maury_cohen : i love your scrambled eggs and sausage
maury_cohen : heh
maury_cohen : that's right
maury_cohen : :
maury_cohen : i love your sasuage
maury_cohen : almost as much as i love my own

"When I was a kid I used to pray every night for a new bicycle. Then I realized that the Lord doesn’t work that way, so I stole one and asked him to forgive me." -- Emo Philips

maury_cohen : dude
maury_cohen : that isn't what condoms are for in the military
maury_cohen : shagging your sarge
maury_cohen : no sir
maury_cohen : it's for getting it on with the locals
b........m : and you would knowbecause?
b........m : LOL
b........m : alright
b........m : we can change the subject now
maury_cohen : okay
maury_cohen : gotta leave soon to go see elbo girl
maury_cohen : pick up some dinner, and...
maury_cohen : oh, oops
maury_cohen : still on the same subject
maury_cohen : sorry

church sign generator

My God's breath smells like God-food.
posted by Pretty_Generic at 5:57 AM PST on March 26

willies are neat!

started off pretty nicely, next to W, although it turned out that someone set the alarm clock wrong and we were up an hour early. oh well, we got to have breakfast together - crepes, of course.

then it was off to anthony chabot regional park in OAK, with some help/distraction from The Internet.

so i went down the Brittle Leaf trail, where I'd been before. After a while, I began to suspect I was no longer on an actual trail. I was enjoying the hike, though, so I pressed on. My suspicions grew stronger and I once again phoned The Internet. It was the opinion of The Internet that if I have to crouch down and duck beneath brush to proceed, then I am no longer upon a trail. Not only that, according to a map on the web, I was... no longer upon a trail. Right. Back up the hill I went, then. Fun!

So back to the main drag. Took it all the way to the end, past several cow warnings and gates and such. Saw a ranger or something and turned around. Took a side trail promising to lead to bort meadow. Heh. Bort.

On the way, I saw a weird frowny hill. That was swell.

As promised, I ended up in bort meadow where I spooked a guy playing with his dog. Boo, mofo! Boo! It was a very nice meadow, as a matter of fact. I don't get to see a lot of meadows. I really didn't know what a meadow was before this. Lots of tallish grass and a few trees and stuff. And a spooked guy and his dog. Boo!!!

Walked around bort for a little then found a not-well-advertised trail named something-or-another. Took something-or-another Trail and climbed up some hills. It was there that I acquired my mountain lion stick, just in case I ran into a scary big cat. It's a good thing I got that, too, as will be seen.

Presently, I came upon a bridge and some greenery. And I do mean greenery. I stopped my march and exclaimed "wow!" It was truly a stunning view. Sadly, my photography is lacking; the best I can do is crank up the green in photoshop to poorly imitate the real-life experience of Total Green that was had at that bridge. You don't believe that it was really That Green? Well, my good friend, let me know what you're doing next weekend and we can go have a look see. It's really amazingly saturated-ly green.

Upon crossing the Total Green Bridge I noticed a warning penned upon the inside of the left guard rail, regarding the trail up ahead. Good thing I had my trusty lion stick, eh?

As it happened, I didn't have to use it. Whew!

Oof!

No really, Oof!

And then, the fun bit. I arrived at a stream crossing. That water is aboot 8-9 inches deep. My boots are 8 inches high and not water proof. They have water drainage holes for the case where you were smart and brought extra socks. I had no extra socks and that water didn't look appealing. The banks were so muddy I could not possibly jump, even if I had the ability to jump that far on solid ground. There were no good sticks or branches to bridge the icky pool. I decided to jump it anyhow and get a little wet. I fashionably tucked my jeans into the tops of my boots, flexed my knees, got ready....

...

...

and changed my mind. I didn't want to be covered in that crud. So I went back up the trail a bit and found a place where I could climb through the thick brush and step across the stream. I did that, carefully, though I got some decent scratches and bugs on me and stuff. Then I pushed my way through more brush on the other side, and was considering how I was going to climb over the barb-wire fence when i decided just to trek through more dense brush to the trail and go thru the gate.

That was a load of fun. I was a bushman!

Then it was back to Bort, where that guy was still there with his dog! I really spooked him that time, crouching down under a tree and staring at him. I left before he did but I heard him leave a little later.

Boo!!

Presently, I arrived back at the gate near the river ford. And what did I see right in front of me?

What? you ask?

Yup, a big honkin hill. Well, if you know me, you know what came next.

I walked, though, too tired to run, and that hill is much bigger than it looks. What fun!

It was a great little trip. I did a much much much shorter version a week or 3 ago, but then I was wearing vans and not my boots, so I couldn't do the bushman-river-fording-brush-ducking-offroading thing that I did this time. That makes the difference between "lame" and "kickass". It sorta made up for the abortive beach walk of last weekend, though i had no burger afterward.

After that, I went back to berkeley to say hi to W. Before that, I stopped off at telegraph to update my style.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm fackin tired.

finally picked up some new shades:

got em on telegraph @ berkeley, where else?

they're not quite exactly what i wanted (they're a little low-key for my tastes) but i've been looking for ages and they're close enough for now.

they're certainly better than my old pair.

um. wtf was i thinking with that horrid thing on my chin?

last night W and I played the porn-star-name-game. here's what we came up with:

harry rod
rod cummings
squinchy McTwat
cookie o'hare

not bad for our first effort.

seems like every time i put my mind to doing something, i sooner or later run out of steam and lose my way.

well, i've decided (or maybe "finally maybe really convinced myself") to make a big change. a daunting change. an intimidatingly large and sweeping change. but it's something i've been whining about doing for a long time, and it's best to just do it while i'm still young and resilient.

ironically enough, now that i've finally got what it takes to Just Do It (tm), I find that it's just as difficult as it ever was, but for different reasons.

whereas before I simply worried about losing hard-earned ground, now I worry about losing what really matters. what i can't rebuild.

the bonds of my past were all in my mind, but now that i have broken (some) of them, I find myself bound by other, stronger strings.

the challenge, now, is to keep my momentum and (finally) proceed as i (finally) dare to plan, yet keep close to me what i hold dear.

SM classic italian espresso blend, haven't cracked open my bag o that for a while. aged 2 days.

dialed in way too fine on rocky. drips at 17, no flow until 30-40. thick as tar. sweet, astringent, a tad musty.

delicious.

i worry for my pump. it's probably not healthy to put it under that kind of strain.

i shaved off the beard.

my mom saw the solvang pics of me w/out it and didn't notice its absence.

so, for reference:

no beard

beard

i think it's a step in the right direction.

ozreiuosn : "i suspect many of life's problems could be solved by removing my pants."
maury_cohen : ?
maury_cohen : did i say that?
ozreiuosn : yes you did
maury_cohen : hahaah
maury_cohen : where?
ozreiuosn : http://www.sainttoad.com/blog/archives/2004/08/a_revalation.html
maury_cohen : oooh, that's old!

brewed more of my vienna roasted mysore nuggets, this time in the FP.

much more body. flavor not as good as the weekend, probably due to poor handling (ugh).

now i'm fackin wired.

photoshop is nice.

W lightly edited a picture of me from solvang, but i noticed that her edits made the weird bump on my shin stand out:

so i grabbed the img, loaded it up in photoshop, and touched it up. voila!

finally managed to vienna roast a batch of mysore nuggets, then forgot to seal them for the night. they should be okay as long as i drink them within the next couple of days, but... i brewed some up in the vacpot and apparently i still haven't gotten the technique down. no body, weak, boring. bleah.

i got an excellent cup of drip from these beans at city+ over the weekend. gonna try FP now, i'm much less able to screw that up.

tried to do another one. use "search" for more info on "beach walk", as if i have any readers who don't know what it's about...

it rained. i didn't want W to catch a cold so we turned back. would i have continued had i been alone? tough to say. maybe. maybe not.

the next day we went to solvang and stopped in guadalupe on the way back. guadalupe is kind of a secret, i guess, though it's got a sign now. pretty soon everyone will know about it.

on the day of the failed beach walk, we discovered (and at guadalupe, confirmed) that W is allergic to central coast seawater. it makes no sense, but she breaks out in itchy hives when it touches her. not so with the swill that fills the SF bay.

i was cold and being rained on so i bought a cal poopy sweatshirt. it had a hood and i wore it wherever i went. it made shopkeepers and restauranteers nervous. cool.

photos :

in our "surrey"

moo

moo2

road rage

does my hood make you nervous?

are you sure?

scratchin on my invisible turntable

one of the best views on the central coast, guadalupe beach

hot girl + hot car

on a bike, you can see all of solvang 4 times in one hour, plus pastry stops.

nice hair, nice smile - one outta 2 ain't bad

how to see solvang 4 times in 1 hour

sounds like some kinda tumor.

actually, it's beans. got em from coffeebeancorral for a change. roasted full city. extra yummy. i'm putting more beans in to my drip now, and grinding finer. extra body, extra flavor.

going to roast them darker next time, they were a little too bright this time around, which overpowered some of the caramelly, earthy notes that i desire.

yum.

the outer, unbuttoned button-up shirt feels like a cape.

i'm a fackin superhero.

for the last 2 days i've tried to replicate my delicious 60 second ristretto and failed.

my grind is 2 clicks finer than when i did it the first time, my tamp is aboot the same, temp is the same... dosing might be a little less.

maybe it's the beans?

the 60 second gooey ristretto was a blend of vienna- puro scuro plus some older city+ yemens. this time i've got < 48hr old vienna puro scuro. i'll have to try to recreate the blend someday.

oh!!

i just realized: i can't get much finer on rocky than i'm doing now... if i'm not able to pull a gooey ristretto because i can't get fine enough, i finally have an excuse to spring for the cimbali!

yeah!!!

taking a day off to be super-frosty tomorrow for an early beach walk.

there's few things tougher for me than skipping a workout.

i'm glad i've got that sort of discipline.

i've been able to do morning workouts this week. fabulous. just like the old days. i've much more energy in the mornings.

then throw in some evening exercice bike, some careful eating, and what do i get?

resumed fat loss, that's what. my goal is still one-niner-zero, and it's looking again like that's possible.

some folks are addicted to love.

some are addicted to crack.

some can't stop buying earrings.

i collect espresso cups. i'm just starting out. over the weekend i picked up a super heavy shotglass from Peet's and a pair of Bodum Pavina espresso cups.

the shotglass has become my default ristretto recepticle. it rocks.

the bodum glasses, however... they're unbelievable. looking at the pics i mistakenly thought they were solid glass. they're not. two thin walls of glass separated by air. they weigh no more than a couple of grams. light light light! but they keep the coffee *hot*. unbelievably hot. i've never had coffee so hot, and i always warm my cups.

they look hella cool.

i dig em.

awesome!!!

ok.

so.

i was gonna spend the night reading high-falutin-intellectual stuff. mythology or sociology.

instead, i did some geurilla sociology. i haven't done shit like this since college. it was... fun. and sad. and fun ;)

W posted some pics of herself on her yafro account. Not particulary provocative, especially not by yafro standards. Certainly no boobs or anything. But within seconds, she had four or five pervs asking to IM with her.

how did she know they were pervs?

experience, i guess. so i chatted with one of them. of course, i couldnt use my normal yahoo accounts, so i made a new one...

CAUTION :
contains adult language

as if this wasn't enough, i made another new beginning.

though, whereas the first one was a "you'll see", this one certainly is not.

but it's probably far more significant.

you'll see ;)

the golden rule: 2.0 - 2.5 oz of espresso in 25-30 seconds

you're sposed to get that by proper dosing, grinding, and tamping.

there's been rumors at such places as alt.coffee and coffeegeek.com that this rule is bunk, and that you should go by sight and taste.

i just pulled a 1oz 60 second ristretto. cut it when the stream began to blonde. it was fackin awesome. thick as tar, sweet as... the sweetest possible espresso.

it wasn't even an official blend, it was just leftovers from 2 different blends. still. it rocked.

a new beginning.

you'll see.

called cingular to ask why they haven't been giving me my 13% employee discount.

turns out they have been.

it's just that after the 13% discount is taken, the taxes and misc fees are added on, and it's as if I never had the discount at all.

phone companies. bleh. give me back my can on a string.

i clench my jaw, it seems. this is a relatively new development of the last couple of years. stress or something i guess.

saw a doc about an unrelated issue and she said "you clench your jaw, don't you? shows up on the inside of your cheeks."

that was weird, didn't know it could. since then i've noticed it more and more. plus, i bit myself pretty nicely while chewing some chinese food. furthermore, i've always -- since i was itty bitty -- chewed on the little saliva gland thingys near the mouth corners. if you (you?) have no idea what i'm talking about, maybe they aren't standard equipment. i dunno.

in any case, i'm making a conscious effort to stop clenching the jaws, stop biting the thingies, and while i'm at it, stop biting the skin around my nails.

pretty damn soon, i'm gonna be the ubermensch!

i found a way to wear my headphones so they don't mess up my hair.

unfortunately, after about an hour of wearing them in this position, my ears get sore.

but sore ears don't affect my dead-sexy hairdo, so it's fine by me.

a couple weeks ago i decided to finally disconnect my land line and go entirely wireless.

as everyone knows, though, i'm a sucker for sweet talk. they told me that if i had to call 911 on my cell the po-po wouldn't know my exact location and i'd choke on that chicken bone and certainly die a grisly death. since they didn't want me to go to an early grave, they'd graciously lower my bill to six bucks a month for the next six months.

i figured six bucks was not bad for a little 911 security so i agreed.

well, yesterday i got a letter confirming my switch to the six bucks a month anti-chicken-bone-choking plan, plus a bill for $15 connection fee. my face turned red with fury and i channeled affleck:

fuck sbc. fuck them up their stupid asses!

fifteen bucks to change a computer entry? nickel-and-diming motherfuckers. i'm already dealing with a nickel-and-diming fackin cell phone company, now, which -- incidentally -- has somehow "lost" my employee discount. bah.

next time i'm choking on my ham sangwich, i'll shamble over to my neighbor's apartment and use their phone.

i'll probably get charged a disconnection fee.

this thing is quickly becoming my favored brewing method for non-espresso. it eats up beans and denatured alkie like a mofo, but it makes a nice, heavy body -- as heavy as FP if i put my mind to it -- it looks cool, it's not much messier than FP, and... and it looks cool.

i just dont think i'll ever transport it: too much glass. also, the reusable cloth filter... worries me. mold. ick.

did i say i didn't like my vacpot?

did i say i didn't like yirgacheffe?

i take it back! put the two together and i ended up with an amazing cup! bright, floral, sweet. i think i even messed up the vacpotting a little bit, stuck the beans on too soon, and boiled them a little. still, the vacpot might allow for more wiggle room than i suppose.

oddly enough, i have good customer relation skills.

of course, that would probably change very fast once i got on a payroll.

i was nearly eaten by a mountain lion and then a bear.

fortunately, i escaped.

got a variac, an AC regulator. It didn't do what I thought it does, according to the Russian ex-rocket-scientist at work who used one as a kid to create explosives. But it doesn't matter if I misunderstand what it does, as long as it makes my roasts better (too soon to tell) and as long as I remember how to use a fire extinguisher (also too soon to tell).

What I do know is that I roasted some SM Moka Kadir with the variac set to 95VAC (the needle pointed to 110VAC, which confirms what I thought: my wall voltage is high) and it took about 6:45 to reach second crack, which is just about what it SHOULD take in smokey, not the 4-5 minutes it was taking w/out the variac.

The other cool new toy is my Yama Syphon Pot:

You put water in the bottom pot, grounds in the top but do not attach the pots. Stick an alcohol burner (or a sterno can -- I got some sterno but haven't tried it yet) under the round pot and when it boils, put the beanpot on top. The water pressure forces the water up into the upper pot, then you extinguish the flame. The system cools and the water is syphoned back down into the bottom, through the grounds, producing... coffee!

it's fun to make and even more fun to watch. A pain to clean. Tastes just dandy. But....

I still prefer french press, which is quicker, cleaner, cheaper, easier, and has better mouthfeel. But FP is not as cool to watch :)

it's frobuary the 1st, YOMHC Aught Six.

it's hella short this time.

hella hella hella short.

and not in the $50 haircut meaning of short (from YOMHC Aught Two), but a $14 haircut kinda short. Not bad, just... short. The kind of short where between the time i step out of the shower and put my boxers on, i need to re-wet my hair for the gel. That short.

I kinda like it that way for now. Hats will fit better should i decide to obtain one.

only no wrist injury, yet

bamf!

listening to "gerard"'s "meridian".

progressive rock to the bone.

progrock is funny. it's often very cool, but it's a guilty cool - like GnR or Styx or Boston. You know you like that shit, but you know that liking it makes you LAME.

LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME.

Rush fans know they're lame, right?

LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAME.

Still, Rush has a couple good tracks. Don't tell anyone I said so, okay?

i wanted an espresso.

i had about enough harar left for either a small FP cup or a single shot of espresso. i've never successfully made a single shot. still irked by last night's wasted harrar espresso attempt, i decided to mix in a single's worth of my fresh fresh fresh yirg. the result: a perfect (by volume) ristretto. the flavor?

the yrg was roasted barely to full city, who puts full city into their espresso machine? no-one, that's who! and who drinks harrar/yrg espresso? no-one, that's who! not sposed to do that!

i doubt anyone but me would like it... but i liked it!

it had the strong, musty earthiness that i love in monsooned malabar, a suepr-sharp spice in the back of the throat, sweet stuff, dark stuff, roasty, chocolatey, bittersweet...

holy shit, i'm actually getting good at discerning flavors!

incredible body, thick, smooth, creamy... i was thinking when i got up that i really should concentrate more on cupping and less on espresso... this changed my mind. a shot like that is why i love coffee.

please don't tell on me if I make more of this, okay?

roasted city+, stopped before second crack. french pressed.

more body than i expected at that roast level (woot, hope i didn't just reveal my ignorance there of where body comes from). very bright and acidy. my poor tongue doesn't really like acidy too much, meaning the yirg isn't going to be my favorite cuppa.... but! it's still damn good. dark and caramelly and yummy, again, things i didn't expect at so light a roast.

i ordered a variac a week ago, haven't got a tracking # for it but I think i might be getting it today... i think poor smokey is roasing WAY too fast, I think my wall voltage is mighty high, and i noticed last night that the base of his roast chamber is kinda pitted and melted and is probably not long for this world.

i blame society.

specifically, the electric company, i think.

in any case, roasting to full city in 5 minutes will definitely affect the cup flavor, most likely in a negative way. with the variac i can slow things down (and i've been considering heat gun/dog bowl to REALLY slow things down, but I like the small batches from smokey and HG/DB => bigger batch...).

anyhow, bottom line: Yrg: not bad, not a favorite, but not a hated bean.

i have to buy stamps this weekend and it takes me about 9 months to use $5 of stamps. i think i will send them a check for $0.00.

hope that fucks up their computer.

my roasting?

my brewing?

my tasting ability?

had some dripped harrar horse this morning and it was "meh". french pressed the same coffee this evening and i could detect... stuff. berry flavors, spicy flavors, a musty hint. usually it's just either "i like" or "i don't like". in fact, i've never really had an "i don't like". but it's nice to have a "that's different".

the FP definitely made a big diff, i think. drip isn't my favorite method, i guess. i dig the extra body in the cup. still tastes watery after i'm used to silvia.

speaking of which, i put two precious scoops of the same harrar into siliva's pf and choked her. sigh.

a long time ago, i feared that we didn't have anything in common.

no, that's incorrect. i feared that we didn't have any hobbies in common, and i thought that that mattered quite a bit. i worried that we never had anything to talk about over dinner.

so we had a talk.

i didn't approach it as a talk, though: i tried to break up, for reasons that I only recently began to understand.

i came out of that experience with three new things in my mind :

1 - the realization that W is wise beyond her years. cooooool.
2 - the realization that i need to communicate more
3 - a new attitude

I told her then that it didn't matter much that we had only small intersections in our hobby universes, we would have new experiences with each other, and our shared experiences would be far more important than shared interests. we would become our own shared interests.

she liked that.

i liked that.

of course, it turned out that i didn't really understand #2 -- months later, i still wasn't communicating. even now, after i've struggled with and demolished so many of my barriers, it's still not perfect. i'm still gaurded. i'm still seeing false limitations. but i'm not stuck anymore. i'm moving again and growing. huzzah.

that's not why i started writing this, though. here's the cool thing:

that new attitude thing is paying off. i still don't play trombone and she still doesn't drink coffee. but we don't have silent dinners anymore. we have stuff to talk about: shared experience. wonderful, nostalgic conversations about things we've done, places we've gone, moments we've shared. we can look back at when we first met and laugh at how silly we were (what? i was stiff on our first date?? i thought i was loose as could be!! okay, as far as i know, it wasn't "we" that were silly, just "me".) and reflect on what we were thinking. it's amazing to look back -- now that we know each other so well -- on things that we did when we didn't know each other well.

we've got a shared past, now. a history. a vocabulary. lore. inside jokes. dinnertime conversation.

that's way cool.

and the more i blab, the more i remember.

this morning in the shower i remembered and blabbed about the other silvia in my life, the silvia i knew in middle school computer class. a middle school slut back then was one who only *pretended* to have sex, but gigiddy giggidy goo: not only was she a girl who talked to a dork like me (back then, that is. now i'm so far from dorky it's not even funny. i'm a total bad-ass, so you'd better chiggity check yoself befo you wreck yoself) she was also the hottest, boobsliest girl in the whole school.

was it a coincidence that in computer class she chose me -- the computeriest guy in the class, if not in the school -- as lab buddy? yeah, she just liked me for my drooling sense of humor.

silvia had red hair and green eyes. lo pan would have dug her.

how did i remember all this?

it was all because yesterday i was listening to metallica (DIE... BY MY HAND... I CREEP ACROSS THE LAND... KILLING FIRST BORN MAN) and some lyrics from their BLACK album got stuck in my head. reciting them this morning i recalled that in that middle school computer class, aside from lusting after silvia, i also would leave anti-christian metallica lyrics scattered amidst the saved-on-disk assignments of the devoutly catholic spanish speaker who used the same computer station as I but during a different period. he'd write me back. we were pals.

Example:

(me)
I see faith in your eyes
never your hear the discouraging lies
I hear faith in your cries
broken is the promise, betrayal
the healing hand held back by the deepened nail
follow the god that failed

(my friend)
YUO ARE GOING TO HELL
YOU NEED TO ACCEPT JESUS INTO YOUR HART BEFORE IT IS TOO LATE
SATAN WILL DESTROY YOU DO NOT BE DECIEVED BY HIS LIES
SATAN IS EVIL

(me)
before you judge me take a look at you
can't you find somethig better to do
point the finger, slow to understand
arrogance and ignorance go hand in hand

(him)
OOOO YOU WASCALLY WABBIT!

okay, he didn't say that, but it was something like that. he was getting really upset. if we'd ever met, he probably woulda kicked my ass for jesus.

good times.

foiled again by my old nemesis: the runs.

damn yous, the runs! damn yous straight to hell!

The Phrygian cap is familiar to some as the headgear of the Smurfs.

i'm trapped in wikipedia and I can't get out!!

how did i get from here to here??

W made me coffee today.

zass-ground, french-pressed, monsooned malabar aa. there weren't enough beans and i didn't tell her to use less water, so it was a bit weak.

but it was delivered with a smile, which i'll take any day over strong coffee.

ow

linky

My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die.

My name is Darth Vader. I *am* your father. Prepare to die!

My name is Oedipus! *I* killed my father, fucked my mother, and I need a hug :_(

like this:

yeah, kinda gassy, but very very happy.

for another haircut.

unlike the first four, i forgot to blog about the last one, my fifth.

here's what i recall:

- it was cheap
- asian lady did it and commented on how uneven the previous cut (obtained at the same store) had been. i think what she meant was that she has no idea about how to cut hair and that when my hair grows in a little after *her* cut, it will be uneven.
- yup, that's what she meant.

i decided to begin measuring time in terms of my haircuts.

welcome to YOMHC 5. new year coming soon.

am i obsessive compulsive?

martha sez:

it's a good thing!

(incidentally, i have never watched her show, as far as i know, ho ho ho. but i understand she often uses the phrase "it's a good thing")

it's genetic, okay?

one of the fun things about being a snob on any topic (in my case, coffee, duh) is that the snob can derive great amusement from the rantings of a lesser snob or -- even more hilarious -- a pretentious, lesser-informed snob.

case in point

the guy spent 200 clams on a grinder from -- of all places -- williams sonoma. now, people are people and most of them are good, but we all know that most of the stuff sold at WS is sold because:

1) it's shiney
2) it's on display at WS

(true, i bought my all-clad pans from bad breath and beyond (at a good discount!), but they meet conditions 1 and 2 above)

any self-respecting coffee snob knows that you don't buy a grinder because it "looks tough" or it's "shiney" or "on display at williams sonoma". rather, you look for one with a reputation for a consistent, low-static grind, THEN you worry about durability (which seems to be the OP's firts concern) and finally, if it matters at all: looks. if you're concerned about looks, you can go with something italian. in fact, if you're concerned about grinding coffee at all, italian is a good way to go. ideally, you would want to rent an italian to sit in your kitchen and grind your beans with his teeth. failing that, for 200 bucks, i'd buy a zass and spend the remaining $130 on beans.

the guy is happy with his purchase, though, which is a pleasure denied any true snob. my rancilio rocky grinder is considered by most as a 9 out of 10 -- which means i must struggle not to purchase a 10/10 la cimbali.

in summary, the funny thing about this is that he bought the thing at all. for 200 bucks, i'd expect someone to do some research and come to the same conclusion as everyone else (especially at coffeegeek.com!). someone willing to drop 200 quid on a grinder sounds like someone who is really into coffee (and thus, again, would buy either a zass or something italian) or has way too much money to spend on "kitchen appliances" (which, imho, something like a mazzer is *not*). since he bought the dingus at WS, i'm guessing it's the latter.

(also, non-espresso coffee should be brewed at 195F, not -- as the OP said -- 200F. neener.)

i have backups for everything.

i have 17 different coffee grinders and 10 different ways to brew my beans.

i have 30 different espresso cups.

i have notepads littered all over my daily routes in case the muse alights upon my crown.

i have 5 copies of the bible and i'm a freakin agnostic.

i have clif's builder bars scattered near and far across the bay area in case i get hungry.

i have 6 weeks' worth of underpants, three pairs of vans (hey, that's a lot for a guy), 3 pairs of birks, 3 pairs of boots, a pair of "backup" shoes in my car trunk, and specialized socks for each of the above (er, except the underpants).

but i have only one belt, and it's getting kinda ratty. it used to be black but now W says it's brown.

good lord, what will i do if it breaks? how will my pants stay up???

until then, i have to rely on sense-memory.

sigh.

and this time:

we'll see ;)

this is why i will never be content with espresso only

it's so damned easy to make a supremely satisfying cup of french pressed monsooned malabar.

and i've barely scratched the surface of the specialty coffee universe. i've got several ethiopians to try, and a yemen, and a mysore and south-american-something on the way this week. yesterday I OD-ed on caffeine so i gotta take things easy. how will i find the time?

bungholio.

some random thoughts on rotj :

- as much as i hate the ewoks, rotj really is nostalgic for me. of the three star wars films, it may be the only one i saw in theaters as a kid (star wars came out the same year i was born!). then again, maybe i never saw it in theaters. but this i know: the words "rebel" (you rebel scum!), "scum" (you rebel scum!), and "operational" (that thing's operational!) entered my youthful vocabulary as a direct result of ROTJ. neat.

- as much of a pompous, self-aggrandizing ass as GL may be -- what with his re-re-re-editing of his classic films and his cheezy cheezification of the new ones -- i find it hard to hate the guy now that i've heard the commentary tracks. i share much of his enthusiasm for mythology and hero-questing-joe-campbellism.

- i hate the fuckin ewoks

- i prefer the rotj-style fight scenes to the new hong kong-style kung fu lightsaber fights

- in the scene where leia clandestinely brandishes a blaster and han says "i love you" (to which leia sardonically replies "i know"), i realize bemusedly that i have used an identical intonation when speaking the same words to W. i am a space pirate.

That's the paradox of the great trans fat purge that leaves nutritionists and public-health advocates frustrated at the "zero grams trans fat"-hype now sweeping a grocery aisle near you. Sure, trans fat should go. Who doesn't think that?

"PepsiCo had full-page ads in major national newspapers saying that Doritos and Fritos are now trans fat free -- 0 grams trans fat," says Marion Nestle, professor and chair of the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies at New York University. "So they took the trans fat out. Now they're a health food? Give me a break. It's a calorie distractor."

Boy George: "I have a problem with Madonna's devotion to Kabbalah, because I watched a documentary that said that Kabbalah believes that gay people are diseased and can be cured."

ooooooookay. he watched "a documentary" and now he's a fucking kabbalah expert, not to mention qualified to pass judgement over other people.

the only thing more lame than this is madonna's "enthusiasm" for qbl.

oh well. the hollywood airheads gotta spend their money on something i guess.

problem: neglected to make my bed this morning
solution: spend night at W's

[21:21] <SpU> they reject her due to ITAR reasons
(21:21) <bigboote> itar?
[21:21] <SpU> since she's not a US born citizen
[21:21] <SpU> that international trade and regulations crap
(21:21) <bigboote> oh
(21:21) <bigboote> itarc
[21:22] <SpU> what's the C
(21:22) <bigboote> crap, evidently

(21:03) <bigboote> aigh!
(21:03) <bigboote> lobster people!
(21:03) <bigboote> admiral ackbar!
(21:03) <bigboote> bothans!
(21:03) <bigboote> what the hell is a bothan?
(21:03) <bigboote> many of them died to bring us this information!!!

moderation is your friend!

ugh.

.

W would tell me when i've got food stuck in my mustache.

I wish W had been with me during or after lunch and before I went to the coffee shop and grocery store.

heh.

after some research into the safety of aluminium, i picked up a bialetti dama mokapot:

a mokapot is a "stovetop espresso machine". evidently, you'll find one in every italian household. calling the coffee it produces "espresso" is quite a stretch, it's really more like strong coffee.

i've got 2 espresso-suitable roasted coffees on hand (barefoot's element 114, and a local shop's (Mocha on Hillsdale) "dark italian blend"), and i don't love either one of them even via silvia, so i won't pass negative judgement on the dama until i've had some more practice and used some more likable beans.

still, it's a serviceable cup, not bitter or icky. nowhere near the body of real, crema-laden espresso, but much more body than drip or french press.

my current collection of brewing apparati:
- miss silvia
- 3 french presses of various sizes plus one broken french press (oops)
- swissgold pourover cone
- paper filtercones
- mokapot as of today
- 2 ibriks of different sizes for the turkish coffee

i've got a vacpot on the way, too. that should be fun.

i've never dared to make cowboy coffee, but I reckon i could if i was trapped in the wilderness without matches and mokapot.

other than silvia, i'm not big on electrical brewing appliances. i enjoy the process of manual coffee extraction. well, not manual in the sense that i'm pulling the oils outta the beans with my fingers, but you get the idea. having said that, i've now doomed myself to purchase a technivorm. huzzah!

linky

me paw told me that it's the bread that makes a philly. dunno if i agree, but:

1) amato's had the best bread i've ever had on a philly
2) they also had the overall best philly i've ever had
3) their cheese fries are fantastic and oh-so-bad-for-me

i think i'll be taking more weekend lunch-trips to the south bay. to make it worth the gas money, i can always stop by barefoot on the way back.

W and I have reached a point in our relationship where we now say the sort of things that make single people, long-married people, or even year-ago-me gag. I'm probably mostly to blame. Examples:

she : i love you
me : i love you more
she : no, i love you more
me : nuh-uh
she : wanna fight about it?

she : you're the best
me : no, i'm only second best
she : no, you're the best
me : no, you are!

etc.

barf bags will be provided.

another thing :

i realized something that i thought was pretty amusing. W will be the first to tell you that she's not really a nice person to her customers (the rude, stupid, non-regulars, that is). and at times, I am also not highly regarded for my customer service. and yet, when we're together, we are both the most loving, considerate, kind, gentle, overall wonderful people i can imagine.

this sheds light on the "how can they stand each other?" question that plagues me whenever i see certain people together (i.e. Tom and Nicole, Britney and Anybody, some of my married cow-orkers, Roseanne and Anybody, and so forth). Quite simply, we can both be pretty harsh to people, but we've never let that harshness shine through in our relationship. we're better people around each other.

that amazes me, and flatters me.

deedly deedly deedly!

sorry, silvia, you'll have to wait until the afternoon.

i had a better offer for the morning.

you can put a smile on my face, my stainless sweetie, but not like this:

the coffee fast has been broken. the addiction is aboot to be re-established.

french press SM moka kadir, it's still too young for espresso.

good gaw, yaw, that's delicious.

tomorrow i'll squirt it through silvia and have a cup or three of monsooned malabar, then head on down to barefoot with a paly of mine. then, if i can swing it, i'll see W in the eve.

a day of coffee and sweet, sweet loving - what more could i ax for?

W left a copy of Glamour in my john.

I like it there.

It's got so many perfume samples inside that I don't even have to turn on the fart fan anymore.

#5
#1
#1
there too!

it's been just about a week, absent a couple hours, since i... what? i'm not sure how to complete this sentence.

a) nearly made a big mistake?
b) turned what was almost a big mistake into something wonderful?
c) broke and then helped mend a pair of hearts? (mooshy!)

Let's stick to the facts, then. Since only three or so people read this crap, it's no news to you that a week ago today it was my intention to break up with W. The idea had been eating away at me for a couple weeks, and causing me much tsurris. As far as I could tell, W had no idea that this was on my mind. She took it as would someone who loved me. She took it rather badly.

I realized something the next evening, something that was very important to me. Something that helped explain my behavior. I told this to W:

I don't have much experience with personal relationships of any kind.

I'll say it again, even though this will be the fourth time she's heard it:

I don't have much experience with personal relationships of any kind.

I had reasons that I wanted to break up. They might even be valid. They certainly seemed important then. I didn't tell them to W until the next day. I only hinted at them on Thursday, because I thought they'd hurt her feelings.

Let me remind you, dear reader:

I don't have much experience with personal relationships of any kind.

Because of this, and because of Me, and because of a number of things, I spose, it seemed that the only choice I had left was to break up. There were problems in our personalities and the way we interacted that just weren't going to work out, I thought. I may be wrong. I may be right. That wasn't the point last Thursday. Walking in to W's room to do what I thought was right, I still didn't know the point.

W told me the point, as she so often does.

The point: if I think there are problems, I should talk about them, not run away.

Everyone keeps telling me "communication is key" and I keep thinking "yeah, we've got great communication". Last Thursday, I realized just how lousy I was at communicating.

I'd rather break up with her than hurt her feelings by telling her what I think makes her not-right for me? It makes no sense, here, written down, with my perspective now. But somehow, it made sense then.

It made sense because I simply, inconceivably, saw no other alternative. TALKING about it just didn't enter my mind.

Sometimes W has brilliant ideas and speaks them. Sometimes W says something that reveals a brilliant idea in my own mind - I'm not always sure if she has the same idea. Last Thursday, W said something that caused these words to coalesce in my mind:

Instead of breaking up, why not talk things over? If things still don't work out, fine. But give Us a chance.

Simple, huh?

But before that Thursday, those things weren't in my mind. W put them there. Or maybe they were there, hidden away, and W revealed them.

I told my Mom a couple days later that I often don't know exactly why I do things when I do them. Afterwards, my motivations often become clear. She didn't like the sound of this, but I think it's true not only for me, but for everyone. That's why I write. That's why I blog. I write to uncover possibilities and intentions. To find out what can happen if I do X, Y, or Z, or to find out if my reasons for doing X (or doing W, har har har har har har har har har har) were really what I thought they were.

I think I went to W's last Thursday in order to open clear lines of communication: to relieve the pressure of all the crap I'd kept bottled up, all the irrational fear that if I told her things I didn't like about her, she'd be upset or something.

As I later told W, I've rarely maintained a friendship -- much less a love life -- and that, poorly. I've no experience dealing with someone that I care so deeply about, that I've known for so short a time. That's no whiney excuse, that's a shameful fact. My mind was full of conflicting messages, and the only way out that I saw was what I tried to do.

But it wasn't what I wanted.

I know that because through it all, I loved her just as much as I ever did. As I sat there last Thursday trying to explain my feelings (a beginner mistake ;) I just wanted to shut up and hug her. I didn't want to see her in pain, and I knew that the only one that could put a smile back on her face was me. But I was sitting there doing just the opposite, and that hurt me quite a lot. She said a lot of things, that night, as did I. What's important is that she said the thing that I went there to hear, the thing that I didn't know I was going there to hear:

Talk.

I analyzed things emotionally. That was easy. I said to myself:

Do I love her?
a) yes
b) yes

There was no "no" option.

I analyzed things rationally. That was not as easy. For a change, I was acting irrationally. It took me a couple of days to sort out the rational side of things:

Worst case scenario: I spend some more time and energy being loved by W, gaining valuable relationship, communication, time-management, romance, and a million other skills, having fun, having Fun, having chow fun, being Goof, enjoying a part of life I've never enjoyed before.

In the very worst case, I could continue to bottle things up out of irrational fear and re-cease my emotional growth, or she could leave unaddressed the things that I found lacking in our relationship. After a while, we'd end up back where we were.

Best case: same as always: Happily Ever After.

So what did I have to lose? Some time. I stand to waste some time. So what? I'm good at that. I just got finished wasting 9 years. I can "waste" a couple more months, no problem.

Some folks think I "caved" or that I "gave in" or "failed" or "lost my nerve" or some such. I admit, I was one of those folks. I had big doubts on the tandem drive home Thursday night (Friday morning, technically). But once I thought about it -- once I realized that the REAL big mistake would be to destroy something beautiful without giving it a chance to heal itself -- I realized why I really went over there a week ago tonight.

The next day we talked. And we've talked some more. And now I have nothing bottled up inside, and it feels wonderful. And I can see that W is making a real effort to take care of the things that made me so nervous. I didn't ask for a little. I asked for quite a lot. But I think she's serious about doing quite a lot. She asked for my help. I'll give it, gladly, as much as I can.

I think she meant what she said on the bed (dressed in red, underfed, not-quite-dead). And that makes me feel wonderful, too.

Once again, W has made me feel Wonderful.

As awful as the experience was for both of us, I'm glad it happened. I think W is too.

Got to run. Someone's waiting for me.

this track always gets me "pumped up"

reminds me of playing "descent" in college

man, that game ruled. i sucked, but it was still hella fun. 3-d tunnel hovercraft combat, on a pentium 133, hyper-speed. adrenaline!

i was gonna run tonight, damn yous!

instead, i hit the kettlebells WHILE cooking myself a grape and spinach risotto (that i made up on the spot) and some turkey breast filets in an olive-lemon sauce.

kinda hard to cook 2 dishes and do KB drills. i think my KB drills suffered, but the food dinna.

yum.

hope it helps.