Tag Archives: coffee

What Jeff Likes this Week

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Bread may be the staff of life, but a good cup of coffee is the foodstuff that makes life worth living. Coffee and I have had an ongoing, hot, steamy affair since I was 13. At one point or another I’ve taken it black, American style with cream and sugar, dripped, pressed, perked, or frothed, from Ethiopia, the Blue Mountains of Jamaica, Kona, or South America. I love it in all it’s many forms – except iced – that stuff is pretty off-putting. It’s the beverage that starts and ends my day. It picks me up and puts me to bed. Day in, day out, week on week, and year after year it’s perhaps the most reliable feature in a universe that is otherwise hell-bent on change. Some will argue the point, but as for me, I count the cultivation of the coffee plant as one of the great high water marks of civilization itself.

“But,” you say, “It’s just a caffeine delivery system and you’re nothing but a damned addict, Jeff.” Sure. Maybe so. But it’s one of the last legal vices any of us are allowed to have… and it’s about as close to touching the face of God that we’re likely to find in this life.

Note: This is the 4th entry in a six-part series appearing on jeffreytharp.com by request.

So apparently it’s not a stroke…

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Not long after lunch this afternoon my left eye twitched once and then felt like someone was jamming an ice pick into the socket. My first thought, after the initial WTF, was “Wow, this is how it’s going to end for me… Stroking out at my desk after being utterly overwhelmed by stupid.”

Thirty seconds pass and the pain lets up enough to be mostly a roaring headache situated just behind my left eye… annoying but not debilitating. Since there was no face drooping and no obvious slurring, I went on about my business.

It wasn’t until around 2:00, when I reached for a long empty mug of coffee that reality dawned. I wasn’t about to stroke out at all. I was unintentionally coming down from a years long caffeine high and my brain was rebelling against it. I couldn’t tell you the last time I got so busy that I didn’t reach for a refill until almost the end of the day. It could easily be half a decade or more. After all but mainlining three cups, the pain in the ol’ brain box settled out from a dull roar to nothing at all by the end of tour.

Consider it lesson learned. Now that I know the unfortunate results of under caffeinating, I’ll never, ever let it happen again.

5AM…

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Because I’m Mr. Glass Half Full, I can see the positive about my internal alarm being so well set that it likes to wake me up at 5AM even on Saturdays. Aside from the chance to see the sun come up – or in this morning’s case to see the sky go from dark gray to light gray – it’s given me the chance to catch up on some blog reading and commenting that I never seem to have time for. That’s basically how I spent the first 90 minutes of the day; reading blogs, dispensing comments, and swilling down coffee at the rate of about 8 cups and hour.

What all this “extra” time this morning didn’t do, of course, is lead me down to the basement to reacquaint me with the exercise equipment I’ve been ignoring since I jacked up my back this winter. Now that it’s feeling better, I’m assured that I can safely get back to that routine… but keeping up with other people’s writing is way, way more fun. I know at some point I’m going to have to get back to that. 5AM (4:30 on weekdays) feels like it’s probably going to be the only available time to make that happen. Sleep is basically the only thing I’m currently doing that I’m willing to cut out of my schedule in order to add something new. If I get up at 4:30, I’ll still manage to get five hours of sleep every day. How much of that do we really need anyway?

I’m sure this all seems like a better idea while I’m sitting here well caffeinated than it will when I’m struggling to understand the concept of an alarm clock at 4:30 on Monday morning. This plan probably won’t survive first contact with the enemy, but at least it looks good on paper… or at least it looks good on paper if you don’t have any expectation of every getting eight hours of sleep. I haven’t had that expectation in a very, very long time.

Good intentions…

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no_motivation1I came home from work last night with good intentions (and a list) of things I wanted to get done before calling a full stop for the day. Exactly none of those things happened, as I sat down after dinner and promptly fell asleep. That was not part of Friday night’s grand plan. Of course instead of jumping on those items this morning, I’m trying to ease into Saturday while nursing an unearned headache. I don’t mind an early morning headache when I’ve done something like spend Friday night drinking cheep booze, but when I spent it mostly sleeping and sending periodic texts, I don’t feel like I’ve done anything to earn the morning unpleasantness.

Now sure, I could sit here with the lights off and continue pouring coffee down my throat, but I still have good intentions towards the grand plan of getting through the things that need to be done this weekend. Now unfortunately I have a day and a half worth of “stuff” jammed into Saturday… and at the moment, instead of doing any of them, I’m sitting here taping on the keyboard and waiting on a fresh pot of coffee to finish dripping. I have a feeling that good intentions may not be enough to get me over the hump today… so this post basically services as documentation that despite my best efforts even I succumb to my inner slacker, but at least I have the decency to feel bad about it.

A religious experience…

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I don’t consider myself a Sunday service kind of guy. I’m willing enough to accept that there are powers in the universe at work well beyond the conception of the mind of man, but I have a hard time with the idea of a supreme being who’s interested enough in the proceedings of the men and women on this little rock of a planet to spend his entire day in judgement of our rights and wrongs. If there is more powerful force in the universe, I hope he has something better to do with his time time than watch our collective tomfoolery.

Assuming for a moment that there is someone with their hand at the helm, I suspect he’s a little too busy to worry about whether or not we all show up in a special building on Sunday mornings. I’m spending this one drinking what to my mind is some of the finest coffee ever roasted and listening to one of the greatest jazzmen of the 20th century. I’m celebrating nature’s magnificent bounty and the genius of the human mind. If that’s not a religious experience, I don’t know what is.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. 2:30 PM. Everyone gripes and complains about early mornings. Those have always been pretty easy for me, even before long commutes and unholy start times turned me into a de facto morning person. The mid-afternoon is the part of the day I dread. It’s the time that turns me into a near catatonic meat sack. By the 2:30 mark on the typical weekday, I can’t pour coffee down my throat fast enough to do much more than keep up the basic appearance of not being asleep at my desk. Forget about being able to actually concentrate on something, I’m using all available power to keep myself from going face first into the keyboard. Fortunately, most days by about quarter of four, things start looking up a bit, happily just in time for the drive home. Although that’s convenient and all, it would be awfully nice not to feel like a zombie for a good third of every shift. Sadly, thus far, “more coffee” has not been the solution.

2. Price drops. I’ve noticed on the last few things I’ve ordered online, that a few days after I fork over my credit card number, the same item is available on the same site for slightly less than I paid for it. Of course most of these business are reputable establishments and would probably give me the discount if I spent 45 minutes finding my receipt, calling customer service, and complaining to two or three levels of CSR. Usually, though, the general hassle involved isn’t worth it to save the couple of dollars I’d end up getting back for the effort. Sometimes knowing time value and opportunity cost is a real pain in the ass.

3. iPhoto. I think it’s obvious that I’m deeply committed to the Apple family of products. My iPhone talks to my iPad which talks to my MacBook Pro which talks to my Mac Mini which talks to my AppleTV. Everything digital is basically available through any device all the time. It happens without much behind the scenes interface from me. And that makes me happy. But then we come to iPhoto, Apple’s dedicated photo management software. I’ll confess: I hate it. Like a good fanboy, I tried hard to like it, but I really do despise this little piece of software for not giving me control of the underlying file structure and letting me organize my pictures the way I had them filed on my PC in 2002. In this one little thing, Apple has made my life infinitely more difficult. I don’t need smart albums, or tags, events, or social media integration. I just need my photos stored in a logical file structure with folders, sub-folders, and sub-sub-folders that make sense to my OCD addled brain.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Color commentary. I hate people who feel the need to share at every opportunity… and nothing fills me with more homicidal rage than listening to a nonstop stream of running commentary about how the day is going from a few desks away. This didn’t work. That didn’t work. I just had to reboot for the 100th time. AnnoyingYes, look, we all know the network is in a bit of a snit. Most people are experiencing the same issues… and rest assured, those few who aren’t experiencing your issues are having issues of their own. In times of crisis, my best advice is to sit down, STFU, and try not to aggravate the ever-loving hell out of those around you. John Madden’s commentary may have been obnoxious, but at least that meathead came with a mute button.

2. Spam (the electronic kind, not the gelatinous potted meat or the song). If you’re a business and you have my email address – my real address and not a junk account I set up to catch wayward marketers – you already have products or services that I like and use on a regular basis. The best way in all the world to convince me to never purchase anything from your business ever again is to flood my inbox with “helpful” email. I’m already a customer. I don’t need to be reminded. When I need a refill, a reorder, or a new product, I know where to find you… and even if I forget, there’s a better than average chance Google will be able to track you down.

3. Sleep. Every now and then I convince myself that I’ll get along perfectly fine on four hours of sleep. Usually those occasions revolve not being in a good place to stop reading or wanting to “catch the end” of some 50 year old move I’ve seen dozens of times already. Very rarely they’re the result of just plain old not being able to fall asleep on schedule. Regardless of the cause, the result is always the same – by 2:30 the next afternoon, I’m poring coffee down my throat in Big Gulp sized quantities and still barely manage to keep my head from slamming into the keyboard. I’ve grudgingly accepted that sleep is an inconvenient necessity. I think in fairness sleep should concede to me at least one day a week where I can get less than five hours of it and still feel mostly like a human being.

No Filter, or The Vortex of Asshattery…

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One of my first acts upon moving back here to the People’s Democratic Republic of Maryland was make a stop into one of the local wholesale warehouse clubs and lay in essential supplies in bulk. 100 rolls of toilet paper and 20 rolls of paper towels, 10 gallons of dish soap and a 50-pound tub of laundry detergent – you know, the basics of setting up a new household. A few hundred bucks later, I also walked out with a 900-count pack of coffee filters.

I only mention it because I used the last of that 900-pack this morning, which got me thinking not so much about coffee as it did the fact that I’ve been back from Tennessee for a little over two years now. It feels like I got back about a week and a half ago. Apparently time flies regardless of whether you’re having fun or not, although I have to admit the last 784 days have been a hell of a lot more fun than the 784 days that preceded them, so it’s definitely a net win overall. I’m furloughed, making 80% of my advertised salary, have two houses I don’t live in, and I’m still having a better time of things than when I was busy dealing with what I’ve affectionately come to think of as the Vortex of Asshattery.

In case you’re trying to do the math, that’s an average of 1.15 twelve-cup pots of coffee brewed every day of the year – or more likely a pot and a half every day once you account for vacations, trips to Western Maryland, and sundry other reasons why I wasn’t home brewing coffee on any given day. Whoever said you can have too much of a good thing clearly didn’t have the proper appreciation for regular infusions of hot caffeine.

Time of day…

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I love this time of day – The few hours before the rest of the world wakes up, finds the caffeine, and starts moving again. The hours when it’s quiet, when the dogs, still groggy, are happy to nap at my feet, and George is satisfied with basking on his rock under his own miniature sun. It’s a few brief moments of time that seem to work well before the day has a chance to jerk things around too much. Anyway, my only point is that I really do enjoy these weekend mornings. Of course I enjoy the weekday mornings too, but since they’re so quickly interrupted by pulling into the parking lot and putting on my “professional” face, they don’t really get to count.

It’s President’s Day weekend. That doesn’t mean much unless you work for Uncle Sam or a bank, but for me, it means the last scheduled three day weekend between now and the end of May. As tragic as that is, for the first time in a long time, I think I’m making every minute of it count. Starting it off with plenty of coffee, a little bit of writing, and a big dopey grin seems to be like a good place to start. Yeah. I love this time of day.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The phrase “Assault Weapon.” The variants of the AR-15 and AK-47 that are commonly available on the civilian market are not “assault” rifles, regardless of what people call them. Real assault rifles (read the type of rifle generally used by the military), are capable of fully automatic fire, meaning that when the trigger is held down, the gun fires until the magazine is empty or the receiver jams. A semi-automatic in the AR- style (or any other style for that matter) requires a trigger squeeze for each round to fire. An alarming number of people seem to be under the misguided impression that just because a gun is based on a military design, it’s a military gun. I’d almost have more respect for the ban supporters if they’d come right out and say that they want to ban military-looking semi-auto rifles“ because even though they don’t know a carbine from a catamaran, those AR’s are just scary looking… As if the gun knows the difference between a walnut stock and a “scary” looking black carbon body. Oh, and one more thing. Please, for the love of God, please stop calling them “machine guns”. It’s embarrassing for everyone.

2. Anyone who has ever argued a variant of “the Second Amendment only covers muskets.” Assuming for a moment that the Constitution and Bill of Rights only apply to items in existence at the time of adoption in 1789, by extension we’d also have to argue that the First Amendment only protects speech in the form of newspapers and standing in the town square spouting off about whatever is on your mind – forget about the internet, television, radio, and telephone. And forget about a right to privacy, the Framers didn’t even bother mentioning that in the text at all. You either have to accept that the Constitution is a living document and means what the courts say it means, or that the Constitution means what it says in plain text applicable only to the world as it was in 1789. You can’t have it both ways based on whatever select bit or piece fits your particular world view.

3. Grounds. Taking a big gulp of coffee only to end up with a mouth full of grounds ranks right up there with root canal on my list of bad things. Since it’s happened on two separate days this week, it might be time to break down and reevaluate my dependence on my long serving Mr. Coffee brewing station. Clearly this is a situation that can’t be endured much longer.