Apparently You can Have Too Much Coffee

I'm drinking very fine coffee this morning: Colombia Huila San Augustin Micro-lot from Sweet Marias, where I buy all of my green beans.  I drank very fine coffee yesterday as well, but then it was Ethiopia Harar Horse DP -Lot 17406.

I only bought five pounds of the Colombian, and now it's no longer available. No matter how much I love this coffee, I will have to wait another year and hope that next year's crop is as good as this one, good enough for Sweet Maria's to decide to carry it again.  In the meantime, there will be other coffees, from other places, that I will love.

I bought 20 pounds of the Harar, knowing that a good Harar always brings me joy, and Tom (the big man at SM), said this was a very good one indeed. As much as I love this coffee, buying 20 pounds of it was probably a mistake because I will have to forgo other great coffees while I work my way through the Harar and the 30 pounds of other coffees that currently form my stash.

There is a lesson in there somewhere.

While I ponder the downside of my greedy ways, I have to figure out creative ways to do stash reduction. I roast about 2.5 pounds of coffee a week. If I roast another pound a week and give it to friends, I can probably start buying coffee again in about two months. A local caterer would like me to roast for him, and that would solve my "problem" quickly, but I am not at all sure I want to commit to having to roast big time during the winter, not in my unheated garage at least.

Hummm, I could buy a roaster I can use inside of the house. Let's see, how much coffee would I have to sell before this would make any sense at all?

Maybe I should just leave coffee beans on my neighbours doorsteps. After all, later in the summer, they will be leaving unloved zucchini and tomatoes on mine.

 

posted by taming at 05:28 | link | comments (3)|
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Out, Out Yellow Spots

I'm trying to have a vacation—really I am. I'm just not very good at turning the working me off and going into relaxation mode.

Part of the problem is that I returned from Saskatoon exhausted but with all sorts of enthusiasm for my new job and a tremendous desire to talk about what I had learned. The other part is that Idon't really have much in the way of plans for this week, other than to recover from my old job and maybe do a little gardening.

I hate gardening.

I want to love it; more than that, I know I should love it. Who doesn't love flowers and the smell of fresh turned earth? Apparently me.

It doesn't help that I have neighbours who are determined to make their own yard into a showcase and who seem to spend hours staring at my dandelions.  Those dandelions were supposed to be gone by the time I returned from the conference. I bought Ron all sorts of chemical poisons before I left and gave him clear instructions regarding my expectations in this area, but he hates gardening too.

I am in the process of talking myself into taking a pro-dandelion/anti-chemical position. After spending four days talking to people with high ideals who are working hard on environmental issues as they relate to community building and economic development, I should be able to accomplish this.

I'm working on it. I just don't find it relaxing.

 

posted by taming at 04:23 | link | comments (4)|
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Just a Travellin' Gal

Because I have been unable to go downstairs to my own office for or the last couple of weeks, I have camped upstairs in whatever office was free for the day. I felt a bit like Goldilocks.

I probably need to add a disclaimer here. I am just a tad nerdish and I am just a tad fussy when it comes to computer equipment.  Hark, I hear a snort emanating from my sleeping husband, who, even in dreamland, knows that these are understatements.

In any case, because I am a bit, urmmm, particular, I have brought my own keyboard and my own trackball pointing device to work. They are the same as my home set-up. I also have duplicated my Firefox extensions/add-ons, downloaded little programs I simply can't do without, and adjusted my chair so it is just perfect for my 4'11" body.

Office etiquette demands that one does not alter another person's computing environment. I was good about this during my first two or three camping experiences. However, when I figured out that I would have two weeks of moving from machine to machine, I decided to get a bit more proactive.

My strategy was to surreptitiously check out my co-workers systems a few days before I would be using them, and then approach the owner ahead of time. The conversations went something like this:

"Hey, would you like a really good spell checker that works with the HOMES database?" (Who could say no to that?)

"Did you know that there is a thing called a Quick Launch toolbar that lets you open programs without using the start menu? Wouldn't you like one of those? (Sure, Taming, why not!)

One desk at a time, I tweaked my way through the office setting tab behaviours, downloading programs, introducing people to FireFox and the joys of on-line dictionaries that use the letter "u" in the Canadian way.

I am on holiday for the next two weeks (well, I have a few days in Saskatoon at a conference in there someplace). It's nice to know that as my co-workers toil on, they will have daily reminders of my recent visits.

After all, it's not as if they really want post cards from Saskatoon. And I am taking my office coffee maker and grinder with me.

 

posted by taming at 05:54 | link | comments (1)|
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We Like it Hot (Not)

Luck, it appears, is relative, as in, "We are lucky that our furnace died in May instead of in January." Even in Central Alberta, it is unlikely that one will die of exposure if the furnace craps out in May.

I'm guessing that heating and cooling emporia have business models that don't take May furnace sales into account. Sure, they know how to sell you a furnace if you call them in a state of panic because it is -40 and your furnace has died. They know that you will not be comparison shopping and that you are willing to sell your first born, if necessary. Call them on May 8 and ask that someone come by to give you an estimate, and these same companies are entirely perplexed.

It shouldn't be this hard to find someone to write a check to for something you really don't want to buy at all—especially when it is for $6700.

We finally were able to get three companies to come out, look at our house, and grudgingly write up estimates. Looking at the weather forecast, it appears that we will be having the furnace installed and putting the window air conditioner in our bedroom on the same day.

Aren't we lucky!

 

posted by taming at 07:34 | link | comments (3)|
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Nicole and the Donut Hole

I'm probably not Canadian enough to blog about Tim Horton's. No doubt one has to be born and bred to understand the role this iconic purveyor of bad coffee and fried dough has on the Canadian psyche. But it's Monday, and I'll give it a try, anyway.

Some background...

I tried a cup of Tim Horton's coffee in 2001, shortly after I immigrated. I found it to be insipid and never went back. I didn't make a big fuss about it because I understood that Timmies is a Canadian Institution (in the big "C" big "I" sorta way). I worried that I would appear ungrateful, or worse, too American, if I said anything. And then, after all, when the US has offered up Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts to the world, there really wasn't much I could say.

I simply had my coffee elsewhere (urmmm, that would be at home) until last year when I went back to work doing case management and found that my clients considered a trip with them to Tim's, periodically, to be part of the job. I'd order a small black coffee and pretend to drink it whilst my client had a huge double double and the requisite piece of fried dough. At meetings, people would bring in TimBits (aka donut holes), and if I needed a little sugar shock to get through the event, I'd indulge.

I never really did get why millions of Canadians would stand in line daily (sometimes numerous times each day) to order something inedible and then wash it down with something impotable, but culture is like that.

Despite all of this, I really did understand the national outrage when three thugs posing as Tim Horton junior managers fired a worker because she gave a free TimBit to a child. The story was movingly told in every newspaper in the country. I could picture the young child, snot coursing down her cheek, as she accompanied her mother in search of her third Timmie fix of the day. I could imagine the smiles of those in line as the worker held out the bit of dough. Heck, I could even see the pimples on the faces of the managers who whisked her in the back and insisted she sign an admission of guilt before they fired her from her $9.05 an hour job.

Her reinstatement was also foreseeable, as was the public apology—behold the power of the press.

The part that surprised me was how ungrateful, how unCanadian, this single mother of four would be now that she had her job back. Imagine that. Nicole says her career with Tim Horton's is over and that she will have to look for another job because "no one will like me."

Rumour has it that a smoothie shop has already offered her a new job. 

 

posted by taming at 05:52 | link | comments (1)|
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