The pond is not now crystal clear—but it’s doing pretty well. It was gruesomely hot, about 94, down to 90 at 7pm. Rain is supposed to sock in for the next number of days, and moderate the temperature a bit.
Shu has stopped spitting at Sei. The vet-smell seems to be going away.
I’m trying to concentrate. When the weather gets hot, my brain goes away. But I’m making progress of an outlining sort.
Not too much news, except the coffee pot seems to be giving up the ghost. I priced out the Keurig system, but the k-cups are pricey and environmentally not-so-good, and the fill-your-own k-cups are being redesigned because of problems, and cost 11 dollars a shot. Now, this would be one thing if it made a whole pot of coffee, but I drink over 10 cups a day. The kind of coffee I favor (Starbuck’s House Blend) is 22.00 for a box of 24. That’s 24 cups of coffee for 22.00. Ouch. And filling 10 of these a day would be a pain. I hate having a coffee pot. Really hate it. I’ve used the Hamilton Beach Brewmaster, a pot-less tank-type for years, but they break or clog. I see that Cuisinart has put out its own tank-style brewer, and that is looking better and better. Cuisinart engineering is usually pretty darned good. Hopefully it won’t have the clogging problem that HB does. I mean, I cleaned that pot 5 days ago, as in using cleaner, which should have gotten any deposits, and it’s clogged again.
You do not want to deal with me when I am short of coffee. So this has to get fixed soon.
You drink an average of 10 cups of coffee a day? No wonder you launched IBM Selectric type balls into low earth orbit! I can go through about a quart of tea in two days. When the weather’s cold, I drink it hot, but when the weathers hot, I put ice in it, ya know?
Ah, coffee all day. I don’t drink as much as you do, but Bill and I do go through at least 2 thermos a day, sometimes more. We use a Mellita pot with filters, heat the water in a tea kettle and brew the coffee. Then it is put in a good thermos bottle from which we can pour mugs as needed. When the thermos is empty we brew another. It requires a little brewing activity, and it does seem that one of us will get to the last bit just before the other is looking for a quick dose, but we both get enough coffee before noon. In the afternoon we sometimes switch to tea, brewed as individual cups. Enough caffeine is important for mental processes. I hope you fine something satisfactory and not too expensive – in coffee brewing convenience and decent flavor seem to be incompatible.
I usually have 2 cups before breakfast, 1 at breakfast. That gets the day launched. The rest is spread out. I’ve been known to do 2-pot days. That’s well over 10 cups. Such are usually not great days. I started drinking coffee at 10; became a regular coffee drinker at age 13 while snowbound for a week with only wood for heat. At that point we weren’t critical—anything hot; and we had to hike 3 miles over ice for food, then carry it back; more heat. The habit stuck.
A psychologist I knew would grab a cup between consultations, then discovered she was addicted to caffiene. (It is an alkaloid after all.) It took a determined effort for her to kick the habit.
Just so as you know if some circumstance leaves you bereft and you begin to observe strange feelings.
I wonder if the cold brewed system would work for you- the Tody or Toddy system, not sure of the spelling. It involves letting ground coffee sit overnight in cold water, then strain through a filter into a glass flask which is refrigerated. It is highly concentrated. You put about a half cup into the mug and fill with boiling water. It is less bitter than hot brewed coffee, and because it is so concentrated you can brew it maybe once a week. It saves a lot of time.My sister in law has used this for years and years. I will search for link for you.
There Is a good description in wikipedia of cold brew coffee. The system I am familiar with is called the Toddy system.
Try French Press, which is labor intensive but nice. I use a Starbuck’s Barista Aroma Grande. I had the first one 6 years before it gave up the ghost, now working on the second. Never had any problems.
Are you sure you’re using the correct grind for the type of pot you have? If it’s too finely ground it can cause clogs and overflows. I found this out the hard way 🙁 Just a thought.
A brand that you might not think to associate with coffee: http://www.blackanddeckerappliances.com/c-123-coffeemakers.aspx
I have a cup-at-a-time personal brewer (different than one shown) that has lasted me a decade or so, and a friend has a 12-cup pot like the ones listed. So, yes, I’m proud to say I use B&D every day 😉
Just don’t get a hand mixer from Black and Decker. I think the drill guys designed it. Speeds range from super fast to warp speed. Confectioner’s sugar everywhere…. 🙂
Wow! 10 cups a day??? I’m not sure that much is good for you, although considering the length of time you’ve been doing it, I guess any problems woulda shown up by now, eh?? *lol*
I do my latte in the morning with two shots, and maybe, maybe a coke somewhere else in the day, and that’s all my body can take. I found thru many years of being a barista both for Starbucks (back in the day when you really had to know what you were doing versus now where you just push a button or two) and having my own espresso stand and coffee shop, that if I do too much caffeine, it makes my tendinitis flare up.
I hated to make that discovery since I LOVE coffee, and I resisted admitting it until it became SO obvious I couldn’t deny it any longer. Nowadays, when I go past the equivalent of 3 shots, sure ’nuff, the elbows and ankles start to ache. But the upside is, I don’t drink enough to be addicted and have caffeine withdrawal headaches and such if I don’t do caffeine for the day. Yay. Dang it. *pout*
Oh… and I always used the Bunn coffee maker that has a tank that keeps one pot’s worth of water always hot, so the brew time is less than four minutes. It isn’t bad on electricity either. Mine lasted for 10 or so years, until I decided to get a espresso machine. I imagine it still works just fine; I just haven’t used it in a long time.
The best home espresso machine I’ve found, btw, is what was called the Rio/Estros Vapori, until Starbucks bought them out. Now it’s called (or was called since I haven’t bought one in 10 years) the Starbucks Barista—it has a pressure sensitive porta-filter that you don’t have to worry about how fine or course the coffee is ground.
I wouldn’t believe it myself, considering how important the grind is when using any other machine, but it’s true. The Barista can pull decent shots even with the coffee ground for perk, the coarsest grind. The shots are weak, but still quite drinkable. I can pull better shots on a professional grade machine, but when at home, I’m not about to fire up a professional espresso bar just for two beverages a day! At the rate, you drink it though, CJ, it would be worth it! *lol*
I actually still have my coffee shop stuff in storage, but using it here at the house would be quite a hassle, because then I’d need my professional grade coffee grinder, and frankly, even without the hassle, I’d have nowhere to put these full sized monsters. And yah, I’m still thinking of opening another coffee shop—but this time, the location is going to have to be stellar!
I use it to calm down. Probably that DOES indicate longtime dependency. I get irritable at a situation and have a cup of coffee to calm down. I drink coffee until an hour before bedtime. My eyes are still blue, contrary to what I was told at 10.
It might be interesting to note that people with ADHD are calmed down by caffeine… I’m obviously not ADHD though. I drink a cup after 5 in the afternoon (bedtime at 1:00am) and nope, no sleep until after 4 or 5am. Again, done it often enough to prove it to myself! 🙂
Well, I’m probably not ADHD, though some of my earliest teachers might disagree. I spent part of the 2nd grade in the principal’s office and several weeks of the third grade in the hall…but I actually enjoyed the thinking-time a lot more than I did the endless repetition of lesson elements. I could just do my notebooks and turn in my assignments unbothered except by passing traffic. And I heard ALL the office gossip and knew who’d been sent in for discipline. 😉
Either that or you learned how to manage your way of being in the world. I don’t think ADD or ADHD are ‘illnesses’; more just differences in brain chemistry, which is why caffeine calms versus energizes.
I actually think it actually more of a next step in human evolution. It is the human body’s way of adapting and dealing with the increasing speed we are having to process information these days, and should be rewarded and guided, versus punished and drugged for the ease of parents and teachers alike who don’t want to make that extra effort.
Not impossible. THere’s no hard and fast dividing line between ways of perceiving the universe: I think of it more as a continuum. I see math differently and I see story structure as a set of 3-d geometric solids. I’m helpless with arithmetic, but concepts like position in space just do not bother me, and I find manipulating those to be fun. Unfortunately negative space in the bank account just cannot be reconciled by symmetry quite as readily…or at least, the numbers there have a very stubborn physical reality and a terrible case of inertia only on the negative side of the balance. I find that totally irrational and keep trying to fudge a fix. I am sure there is a Great Attractor on the negative side of that balance that I can’t account for.
But I know I am quite awful at accounting.
Excuse me miss Cherryh for the off-topic post, but a person from Bangladesh “published” on Amazon.com a Kindle ebook the 13th July called Trespasser.
Synopsis : The civil war among the alien atevi has ended. Tabini-aiji, powerful ruler of the Western Association, along with Cajeiri his son and heir, and his human paidhi, Bren Cameron, have returned to the Bujavid, their seat of power.
But factions that remain loyal to the opposition are still present, and the danger these rebels pose is far from over.
copy of the link towards Amazon.com :
http://www.amazon.com/The-Trespasser-ebook/dp/B008LAFCEA/ref=sr_1_8?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1342301535&sr=1-8
I hope Amazon will soon react but I wished to inform you as soon I seen that.
You are in good company, others titles by the same author are : A Stranger in a Strange Land, The Reversed World, The End Of Childhood and RENDEZVOUZ WITH ZAMA.
THank you, Adhunfai.
Do me a favor, guys—go up to Amazon and deliver scathing reviews—Amazon won’t react until it finds itself afire…
I wrote reviews on a few I recognized, but wow, Amazon better get its act together!
It won’t take one from me. It rejected the review.
Amazon review just posted. Unbelievable.
Back to coffee – I heard something on NPR recently that a study or studies actually linked coffee drinking with longevity, which made me very happy since I’ve been starting my day with a cup of coffee since literally before I can remember (Mom put a lot of milk in it). These days I usually share a 10 cup pot with my husband, but I’m thinking about increasing my intake back to what it was when I drank coffee all day every day! The study said the more coffee the participants drank, the greater the benefit. Maybe anti-oxidants or something??
Tea contains liberal polyphenolic antioxidants. It’s good for longevity as well. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_effects_of_tea)
Just an FYI, I checked out the ‘look inside’ and other than a few small changes (changing Daw Books to Fabs Books, changing the street address for the publisher by a couple doors, bla bla bla) its IDENTICAL to Intruder. Even to the same dedication! So for the reviewers saying ‘its probably not any good’ ummmmmmm its probably every BIT as good as Intruder, except for the STOLEN part 🙂
Bersterds
Ah-HAH, found a spot where you can go beat on Amazon directly about a copyright infringement!
http://www.amazon.com/gp/help/customer/display.html/ref=footer_cou?nodeId=508088#copyright
Not a coffee-drinker myself – although I go through three to five mugs of tea in a day – but I make it at work when there’s an empty pot. We have a three-burner commercial coffee machine, and it takes about a minute to start a fresh pot. (The coffee lives in two dispensers that hold 5 pounds each, and one ‘dispense’ will make one pot.)