Boodle's Canuck Friend

This picture was only placed in the blog to satisfy my demanding friend Sara. RT took Buddy to the groomer this morning and returned him hungry, stinky, and miffed.

The hungry part meant I could not take a picture until he finished eating and eating and eating. He didn't get to weigh 10 kilos by accident. The stinky part is nothing more than cat shampoo, but the other cats are now under our bed hiding from "the stranger". The miffed part will no doubt last until Buddy forgets the indignity of the multi-coloured ribbon the groomer had the audacity to tie around his neck before sending him home.

He's already somewhat calmer than he was when he first got home. See what I mean:

 

posted by taming at 16:33 | link | comments (6)|
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Feeling Lazy? Lost Your Mind (but not in a good way)?

I understand that roasting your own coffee goes beyond too far for many/most folks. That being said, how deranged do you have to be to pay $2.91 for a 9.5 ounce can of self-heating sorta coffee?

I'd love to see the ingredient list for that puppy. I bet it isn't just water, coffee, milk.

The good guys at Cruftbox took apart the can to have a look at what makes it self-heating. Quicklime, yes quicklime, the same shtuff you use in a biffy to dissolve poop.

Now, I know the quicklime doesn't come in contact with the contents of the can, but, maybe it should.

 

posted by taming at 10:03 | link | comments (2)|
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I Survived Getting Lost in the Middle of the Night

You would think that after almost two years in our house, I would know some basic things about it.

You would be wrong.

I still turn into the bathroom, which is on the right as I walk down the hall, when I am actually going to the laundry room, which is on the left. I've yet to figure out which switches operate the various lights outside of the dining room. When people come into the house to do repairs, and ask me, as the cable guy did last week, which wall in the basement faces the street, I look confuse, perplexed, and foolish.

For some reason, I feel no shame at all when RT tells folks that I got lost on the way to the mall and ended up half way to Calgary before I figured out that something was wrong. Not being able to find the laundry room in my own house seems, well, different.

It's not that I am unable to focus, not good with details, or that I am particularly dense; I just get sorta lost in space—even the space in my own house.

I also get lost in time.

Last night, at about 10:30, after RT fell asleep, I wandered downstairs to check something on the website. I wanted to do an itsy-bitsy tweak on one page. When I next looked at the time, it was 3:30 in the morning. I no longer remember what exactly I came downstairs to do, but I assume I did it, because everything looks fine this morning.

A geek gone a'coding is a bit like a six year old looking for berries in the woods. It could be just fine, but there is always the off chance of being eaten by a bear. In our house, the bear's name is RT.

 

posted by taming at 10:59 | link | comments (1)|
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The Only Bourbon I Ever Drink

I just roasted  a pound of Brazil Cachoeira da Grama Yellow Bourbon in my bread machine, What a lovely even roast. My favourite coffees have generally been African or Indonesian, but the folks on the Sweet Maria's Home Roast list gave this particular coffee such glowing reviews, I bought five pounds of it.

They don't have any in stock right now, but they are expecting more later this month. This is from the description:

The Bourbon is prized for sweet balance in the cup, and rounded body; a great short description for this coffee. A roast note: I based my comments on the lighter test roasts I did, but keep in mind that this coffee has a very wide roast "window" and that an FC+ roast or even light Vienna produces an excellent bittersweet chocolate cup! At C+ the cup has an attractive, savory sweetness, one one hand herbal and sagey/rosemary, on the other a sweet cedar. The rounded, balanced personality of this cup is its most striking aspect, with a really positive woodiness (not a woody flavor due to oldness!). I get cedar and mesquite, but balanced by a rustic honey/toffee sweetness, and pralined nuts. The mouthfeel is silky, and the aftertaste has a hint of tangerine, with lingering clean tobacco and cedar notes. I don't mean to characterize this as a Sumatra- its not a musty, funky coffee; it balances its rustic components with sweetness, and that's why it also makes a great S.O. espresso. This lot is late 06 harvest and export, and is a special 100% sun dried/ screen-dried lot. It outcupped the mechanical dried lot by a hair ... but an important hair, a bit of sweetness, a bit more body. Every hair counts!

The problem with Tom's writing is that he makes me want to try it all. Alas, there really is a limit to what two people and their coffee-worthy friends can reasonably use.

I roasted it to what I would call full city. First crack was over and done with, but second had not begun. Although I haven't roasted this bean before, I would guess that I was about half way between first and second crack.

I'm expecting great things from this roast. My goal when I roast in the bread machine is to reach first crack between eight and nine minutes from when I begin, to have first pretty much over within about two minutes, and to get to this FC point about two minutes after first crack ends. I was on the money this time.

After I cool the roast, I cull the beans, and this one only had two "stinkers", beans that didn't colour up or expand. I ate the stinkers, and they tasted amazingly like peanuts.

Of course the only real place to measure success is in the cup. I have a feeling, we're going to love this one.

 

posted by taming at 12:31 | link | comments (2)|
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Telus Free, How Sweet

RT and I are still rejoicing in our new Telus-free status. Telus is the regional phone provider, which, as they had no real competition, did what monopolistic companies are wont to do, providing truly lousy and truly expensive service. All this changed when our cable provider started offering a digital phone service last month. Oh joy. Oh rapture.

I know that the cable company in Ontario is the big bad, but here in Alberta, we have Shaw Cable, which is huge, but somehow, still friendly.

We've actually had a lot of dealing with Shaw recently, and the service call we had yesterday ran true to form. RT had called Shaw on Sunday because we were having trouble with our digital TV  channels. Yesterday morning, a young man named Nolan showed up at the door to fix it.

He was downright perky.

We talked about how much better Shaw was than Telus, and Nolan explained that it was because Shaw is still owned by the Shaw family. He pointed out that, after all, when Mrs. Shaw went grocery shopping, she would not want the person working the till to have anything to complain about as she rung up her order.

 In Nolan's young life, members of gazillionaire families still go to Safeway. How sweet is that?

He also located the source of the problem, which was in the line that feeds several blocks in our neighbourhood. Nolan and I talked about how frustrating it is for Shaw that customers in Central Alberta don't report these problems when they occur. Nolan said that although this damaged line had to be affecting service to about 60 households, we were the only ones that called in about it.

Apparently Central Albertans are sweet, too.

 

posted by taming at 05:26 | link | comments (3)|
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