Celebrating Addiction in Alberta

It's a holiday here in Alberta; Family Day. I always thought it was celebrated just sorta because a day off in February is a good thing. I was wrong.

According to Wikipedia, the story is far more interesting:

The holiday was proclaimed by Alberta Premier Don Getty, in response to a drug scandal involving his son, Dale Getty, who had been arrested for possession of cocaine and was revealed to have cocaine addiction. Premier Getty was obviously embarrassed by the revelation and admitted publicly that he had neglected his family, saying that it was important for all Albertans to take more care with their families also.

Given that this ultimately was accepted, I'm surprised that we don't also have an Idiots Day. After all, we had all those years of Ralph Klein making an idiot out of himself, and, well, if you can declare a holiday because your son is a drug addict, you could surely declare one when you, yourself, are an idiot.

Of course, Ralph is now being idiotic all on his own, so we will have to wait to see what is worth celebrating about his successor. So far, I'm thinking we have a Boring Day coming up.

 

posted by taming at 07:32 | link | comments (4)|
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Coffee Obsession: Keeping the Eye on the Prize

I got a really nice Email this morning from a woman I don't know who is, like me,  a member of the Sweet Maria's home coffee roasting mailing list. She commiserated with me about the broken Rocky grinder (henceforth known as Pebbles) and went on to discuss her own experience as she visited the dark side, aka the world of espresso.

This fit in nicely with an experience I had yesterday with a new friend who has yet to home roast, uses pretty basic brewing equipment, and still manages to absolutely love all things coffee.

I'm pretty much coffee obsessed, and I can (and do) talk endlessly about it. Sometimes I see RT's eyes glaze over as I go on and on and on over the minutia of coffee roasting, coffee brewing, and all things coffee. It doesn't shut me up, but I do notice.

In my defence, I put up with an awful lot of car talk and accounting talk.

It's easy to lose sight of the end point when in the grips of the obsession. No matter how much time, effort, or money someone spends on coffee, the goal really doesn't change. The important thing is that folks find a coffee routine/method/involvement that they enjoy. Both women I wrote about earlier really love their coffee, and are proud of their ability to make some mighty fine brew. I don't think their enjoyment is even a little bit less than my own--in fact, hooray for them for getting what they want without the huge investment in time, effort, and equipment I have made.

It's so easy to lose sight of that which propelled us into the higher tech coffee world--we love coffee and want to be able to consistently make great coffee in our own homes. How we do it, whether it is espresso, drip, yadda yadda is immaterial.

 

posted by taming at 16:40 | link | comments |
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Parsing My Decline Into Decadence For All To See

We're embarking on yet another trip to The Big City today, this one to CaffeTech to see if they can fix my broken coffee grinder. Yes, broken, as in brand new and broken into pieces parts before it's first use. It's too painful to talk about.

We'll probably return around dinner time, and I'm unlikely to be in a cooking kinda mood. I thought that tonight might be a perfect time to use part of that $100 restaurant gift certificate we received as a Christmas gift. Note the words, "part of".

It was against this background, that I read Wielding Power, Bottle by Bottle in the Fashion and Style section of the New York Times earlier today.

From the article:

Mark Birnbaum, an owner of Tenjune, said the club’s 28 tables are usually booked for Thursday, Friday and Saturday by 4 p.m. that day, despite the fact that the average bill for a table is around $3,500, and almost nightly at least one will climb as high as $8,000 or even $12,000. A bottle of Cristal Rosé Champagne alone costs $1,600 there.

Now, I'm actually pretty good at recognizing, appreciating, and honouring cultural differences. I think we can learn amazing things that have value in our own lives when we make the effort to really look at how people very different from ourselves approach things.

I also know that comparing live in Tamingville with life in NYC is pretty silly.

That being said, I am totally nonplussed. I keep trying to imagine having a life which includes a night out that costs as much as the purchase price of a reasonably decent used car or a bottle of wine that costs more than a minimum wage earner here makes in a month.

I should be able to do that; after all, I'm quite the snob myself.

That grinder I am bringing in for repair set us back $300 US, and plenty of folks have to work a week to earn that much. And although I tell myself that the grinder, once repaired, will last me a lifetime, as opposed to the $1600 bottle of champagne that will end up being flushed down a toilet, it may be pretty much the same thing.

I don't really understand the interplay between how much money we have and our values. I know that, like most folks, money is a big factor in the choices RT and I make in our day to day life.

What I don't know is where decadence begins. Does it begin when one plunks down $300 for a coffee grinder? Does the fact that I roast coffee in a ten year old bread machine using green beans that cost $5 a pound mitigate against that?  When does what may be considered taste or individual preference become something else? When do we have some sort of obligation to do something that benefits someone else, rather than spend more money on ourselves begin?

Is it OK to indulge myself a bit if I write a cheque to some worthy cause before I do it, or will just feeling the occasional twinge of guilt be enough?

 

posted by taming at 08:14 | link | comments (1)|
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The Can That Goes Pop in the Night

Sometimes, it's just one frustration after another. As I wrote in the comments on my last entry, it turns out that the job I saw listed, and was going in to interview for, really doesn't exist. It almost exists, but at the moment, it is simply a work at home option for existing employees.

As we had made the drive, I took the qualifying techie test anyway and had an interview with a very nice fellow who would be delighted to have me on his team, if I were willing to relocate. RT, being RT, also took the tech exam, and, as might be expected, did waaay better than I did. Since he has no desire to do tech support, at about 25% of his current salary, we didn't entertain the possibility of throwing over our lives here in Tamingville and making the move to The Big City to become tech support worker bees.

It was just disappointing enough to keep me up overnight. And because I was up, I was lucky enough to be looking at my weblog when the server I use for the images hiccoughed and all of the images for the template went away. They appear to be back, but only because I did some rewriting of my template and moved the images. I also wrote up a support ticket and now the back and forth with their tech support will begin.

The only thing I can think of that would make me feel better about this involves trudging through the snow to the garage and roasting a batch of my brand new Ethiopia Organic Idido Misty Valley DP beans. I'm an odd duck, but I'm not sure I'm odd enough to roast coffee in the dark when it is -20 out.

I could just make an espresso. Oh, right, the grinder hasn't come yet. Neither has the instruction manual.

I guess writing a blog entry whilst sipping from an almost cold can of Diet Rite is as good as it's going to get tonight.

 

posted by taming at 04:33 | link | comments (4)|
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It's Off (but not far) To Work I Go (hopefully)

Aclean desk is a thing of beauty. It's also a rarity, around here, especially since it is tax season, and RT has folders all over his half of the gargantuan desk we put together for our home office.

Building the desk out of various IKEA modules was a huge project. We measure such things by the number of Alan wrenches IKEA provides, and, if I remember correctly it was a 27 Alan wrench project. When we first set it all up, it seemed like we had acres of room, but now, with three desktop computers, two printers, and all the misc equipment we have, it looks a bit different. Still, there is enough room so that when I am fixing other people's computers, it still works for us. We look like geek central, but that's not a bad thing.

This is what the work stations looked like initially:

And this is my little corner of the world today:

I'm interviewing today for a customer support job for a big tech company. They are looking for someone to provide hardware and software support from home. I have all the qualifications, and I'd love to work for them. I've worked from home before, and I really enjoy it. I like the camaraderie one has in an office, but I can do without the driving and getting dressed up part of that whole scene. Besides, I get to spend the day with my cats and most excellent coffee if I work at home. 

Customer service jobs are always challenging. Good companies, like this one, provide their employees with all the training, resources, and backup needed to either help people fix the problem, or to efficiently assess the situation and appropriately pass it up the chain to someone else. The challenge comes in the form of having to be pleasant and warmly supportive to people who may, at least initially, be angry and frustrated.

I've been on both sides in that situation, so I know how terrific it feels when the support person really listens and makes a big time effort to meet my needs and I also know how satisfying it feels when the customer responds well to my effort to do a good job for them.

This job sounds darn near perfect for me, so I'm going to put on my game face, and hope that I come away with a job offer. Wish me luck!

 

posted by taming at 09:50 | link | comments (6)|
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