am i back?

i'm back on the coffee. i quit for a month or two, as i tend to do. but now i'm back. and i think my blogging is closely tied to my coffee intake, so i reckon that means more junk here. lucky you!

sadly, the coffee i made today is pretty weak sauce. it's a camaroon, which is my new favorite bean, but for months before my coffee hiatus i brewed only espresso, and i attempted french press today and suspect i bungled it badly. so now the coffee insanity re-begins where every day i tweak the whole system 1mm that way then tweak it 2mm the other way the next day. and the cycle continues.

last night at midnight, i made an insightful observation about the denizens of heidi's pies: at 12pm, everyone there is 20 years older than me. at 12am, everyone there is 20 years younger.

a reasonably sized slice of heidi's pie is a great nightcap to top off the beer gut after another enjoyable Beer Friday at Devil's Canyon. We missed the previous Beer Friday but Jason, one of the brewers (not the "head brewer", oops!) still recognized us and spent some quality time with us.

there were a lot of mohawks and a lot of faux-hawks, but mine was the only one with a rockin curl. i dreamed last night that i was running in sf, and i ran past a group of teenage girls carrying some protest signs about how curly hair was awesome, and i slowed down and showed them the curlyhawk and they applauded. that's right, i'm awesome even in my dreams. plus, dream sf has some amazing views of the dream pacific along that dream running path. no, it doesn't look anything like the ocean beach running path.

speaking of running, that's something that needs to become a part of my life again. 2 weeks ago, while listening to some music, i happened to come across 2 of my running songs. biking is fun and all, and so is climbing, lifting, and kettlebells, and whatever other physical crap i've tried, but so far, nothing beats the home stretch of a 10 mile run. actually, nothing beats the break-through at the 7.5mi wall. if i recall correctly, the last 2.5 miles were cake. so that's my new goal, i reckon, to do another 10 mile run. i've only done it once. it was a hot day. hot days are coming back soon.

finally, last but not least, what inspired me to blog this morning: ozric tentacles. a band, successor somewhat to pink floyd, inheritor of tribal drums and psychedelic guitars and so forth. not only do they artfully make incredibly good music, but even on their early albums, when they perhaps had little money, they had awesome sound engineers/masters. i still haven't sorted out whether it's the engineer or the master who is responsible for royally screwing up most recorded music (e.g. any album by The Offspring, Therion, or anything produced after 2003). Whoever it is, they didn't hire that guy to work on OT albums.

The sound is crisp, warm, airy, and wide: just the sort of nonsense an audiophile desires. think "audiophilia" is silly? i'm confident that even on a mediocre system a "non-audiophile" could tell the difference between quality recording (OT) and rubbish (The Offspring).

I'm off to order more beans and read a refresher on french press brewing. Cheers.