This post brought to you by Too Much Coffee Man.

I've had an espresso renaissance this month.

I've had this La Pavoni Europiccola for about 3 years, and just this year I took a real interest in it, after 3 years of putting out some pretty mediocre shots, each time wishing for something as good as the local espresso shop, each time wondering just how much trouble it might be to install one of THOSE machines in the basement somewhere.

The seals were leaky. I looked on the internets and found whom to buy them from. It turns out it was the importer of my particular machine waay back in '96. I'd had no idea of the provenance of my machine other than it was owned by that guy I bought it from, off craigslist.

Then I got a fancy tamper from Stumptown here locally- they had to order the wee little 49mm, and it was worth the wait. I read that some people tap a few bulges into the walls of the filter basket so it does not flop out of the filter handle at the slightest provocation, so I did that and it worked.

I buy my beans from a local roaster, Ristretto, or Stumptown, or sometimes Whole Foods downtown, typically within 5 days of the actual roast date. I store them in light proof, vacuum sealed leftover wine bottles, even though no one seems to be able to prove that it improves the taste or life of the beans.

I thought that the Weiss Distribution Technique might be for me, and so I cut the top off of a Crystal Geyser bottle and made a funnel for that, and bought a titanium tent stake to stir and level.

I read on the internets how to modify my rebranded Starbucks grinder for a finer grind, and now I know where to dial it optimally for the three most common beans I use. I flush my group head before and after each shot, and clean it before I put it away.

I cannot believe the quality of shot I'm pulling these days. The incremental improvements along the way have been nothing compared to the quantum leap of improvement now that I've put it all together. I crave my own espresso, over places I used to worship, like here or here. I can't share the taste or the fun with you, even with Web 2.0, but I can enthusiastically tell you that it's a journey well worth the effort.

I knew that my ancient, finger-burning, chrome plated anachronism still could work wonders. No electronics needed, just good old fashioned trial-and-error, some elbow grease, and a stout caffeine tolerance.

more random thoughts

My triumph tonight: fixing our beloved 3ccd Panasonic GS250, which went belly-up on our trip to Italy sometime. It simply stopped working without any external indication of what might be wrong. After finding out that the Panasonic flat fee for fixing the thing was nearly $300, I figured, "What could be the harm in taking it apart?"

Let me tell you, there are a LOT of little screws and connector ribbons inside this thing. There was also a leettle tiny circuit board floating floating around in there, suspiciously loose, and a loosened ribbon to the LCD flip-out. These just pressed right back into place. I managed not to 1. break anything 2. shock myself on residual flash voltage or 3. lose any parts. Also I got it back together and it works like a dream again. Score: Panasonic [-]$300, Me [+]10,000 awesomeness points.

Now we can try and capture the joy that is toddlerhood. Getting DV out of the thing into my computer is a damn pain in the ass, so no samples for you tonight.

Maybe I need one that records to SD media....

Status quo for us, and lucky at that.

Not a lot of activity around here these days. I've been using the internet passively lately.

Through my Dooce reading, I found Sweet Juniper. Through Dutch's posts there I found Sweet | Salty, which has turned out to be one of the most thoughtfully written (mommy)blogs I've seen. When I started reading, Kate was pregnant with twins and I've been hooked ever since. The way she described the alien beings inside her, taking over was wonderful to read. It felt like tuning in to a favorite TV show every day.

It turns out that twins are not a simple thing to pull off (doctor speak: "high risk pregnancy") and well, very nearly the worst thing imaginable has happened. After an urgent c-section with twin-twin transfusion, we watched Ben and Liam's progress in the NICU with rapt attention. Friday when I got home from work, I pulled up all my blogs to read in tabs... no one had posted anything of significance except Kate, who had the courage to tell the whole world about the death of her 6 week old baby boy Liam. I am in awe that she could somehow be eloquent and sorrowful and so well-adjusted after it. If you choose to read it, you should be warned that it is not easy to read. It is the first time I have personally mourned the loss of anyone I've never met on the internet. She's written so beautifully about him, it's hard for me to imagine that level of composure after your six week old child had been intubated repeatedly, had several brain hemorrhages, and had neurosurgery. And then didn't make it. I would be literally out of my mind with sadness and the farthest thing from my mind would be blogging. Being able to do it well would be unattainable.

I'd had what I thought was a "bad day" on Friday. I went to work over-tired, had some scheduling goof-ups and was generally out of sorts far out of proportion to anything that actually happened to me. Simply reading a blog gave me instant perspective on just how fortunate I am, how fortunate T and I are to have this rambunctious running screaming kicking throwing hooting nutball kick-ass toddler that we do. Effortlessly, we are all alive and well, and for that, I am immensely grateful.

You Betta Belize It.

I am off work. Three weeks of glorious rest, preceded by a tense 3 months at my former work with absolutely no slowing of the pace as I prepared to take my exit. The job has been a pressure cooker of time and production constraints, coupled with a disastrously cumbersome software roll-out in the months prior. I was frazzled, stressed, overdone, burnt out and in a generally foul humor. We'd not been on a vacation since before the baby was born. Certainly we'd visited the fam, and there was a long weekend to Manhattan in there, but no actual time off that wasn't CME or family obligation. We needed a vacation, and badly. So badly in fact that we took our twenty-two month old toddler to Central America.

Belize, or at least Ambergris Caye where we spent the entirety our our stay, was wonderful. We've been home for 5 days now and as the itch from the noseeum bites fade, I'm becoming even more wistful for a beautiful tropical locale. Having never been farther south than Tubac, AZ, this was a completely new experience for me.

We, with baby in tow, went with The Gus Dad, and his family, for a fun filled week of frolic. I was between jobs, so there was literally nothing piling up for me Stateside except Porter's poo. Let me tell you that having no desk to return to after a vacation is one of the most relaxing things I've ever experienced.

C traveled better than I expected, though to be honest I was expecting to be ejected from a plane and stranded in East Bumfuck Maine. They split us up for some asinine reason on the way from PDX to HOU, and well, lets just say that it's too bad for Mr. Smokey that T sat next to, because the boy was not wanting to sit with me during a grueling day of travel. And he wasn't particularly happy to be constrained in his mother's lap, either. Mr. Smokey, sadly, will have a little story to tell during the remainder of his short, wheezy life. Here's a hint: if you turn blue in a plane at 34,000 feet and cough the remainder of your lungs up when the cabin repressurizes below 10,000 feet-- it is time to quit smoking.

Annnyway, we hopped in a teensy tiny Cessna after sweltering through customs in BZE and the boy was rapt with the thrill of flying. We took off at dusk and I was dumbstruck enough to forget my camera until the light was nearly gone. The sea is a beautiful blue-marbled with green color that I will never forget. Here in OR, the sea is usually some slate gray or maybe a little green, and it's baffling to imagine that it's the same substance. From San Pedro, we took a "taxi" through town to the docks where we hopped on a skiff for our final leg. This was well after sunset and luckily well-lit by a nearly full moon. We were flying through the Caribbean on a tiny fiberglass shoe with no safety gear anywhere to be seen and it was wonderful after 12 hours in the mind-numbingly diluted experience that is modern air travel. Going full tilt through the minimal swells inside the reef, the air rushing past was still warm but amazingly refreshing. Watching the lights of various beachside resorts fly by on the left as the moon raced along the sea on our right was an experience out of a movie, or a book, or someone else's life.

Once on the island, we did a whole lot of nothing. This was by design; the babies were definitely not up to the rigorous time lines of travel to the mainland: in the air by 6:30am, back sometime in the afternoon, so we pretty much just winged it. Wandered to the closest places for lunch, local cuisine for dinner, and breakfast burritos for breakfast in the kitchen. Oh, and we had pizza delivered twice.

No phones in the rooms but we did have WiFi, which took me 2 or 3 days to figure out- I had WAY too many proprietary settings for my home network manually set. From there we were connected to the absurdity of the outside world, and were able to at least follow the travails of Britney and her stupid shaved head. Something that we did not know was that there was almost a strike in Belize Telecom. That would have been disastrous, as our internet, phone, fax, and most importantly, credit cards would have all ceased to function. Fortunately this did not occur.

The remainder of our time there was spent wandering around, lazing by the pool and drinking a variety of alcoholic beverages, often inappropriately early in the day. TheGusDad and I went on a photo safari and took a large number of photos, some of which can be seen on my flickr stream.

It took me the better part of 4 days to physically and mentally relax. By the end of our short stay there, we could already tell which tourists were fresh off the plane. The people of San Pedro and Ambergris Caye were almost eerily friendly- not terribly surprising in a place kept afloat by several feet of shifty coral sand and tourism. TGD said that is was capitalism gone wild, or something like that. Everyone wanted your business, or a piece of the next guy's business. Even the guy selling citrus by the side of road had a flashy cell phone.

I went snorkeling in Hol Chan Marine Reserve while T graciously watched the boy. I'd never been snorkeling and after getting over my fears of 1. Death by vigorous drowning, 2. Death by terribly painful shark-gobbling, and 3. Numbers one and two simultaneously, it was a blast. The nurse sharks bugged out as soon as the humans hit the water, but there was at least one very friendly stingray who nosed me looking for a kippersnack. It's a large sea creature to come casually gliding up to you, and not something I expected. For the record, they are firm, and slimy, but with a rough texture underneath the slime. The waterproof sunscreen saved me from the much dreaded sunburnt calves. Returning from the snorkeling trip was on yet another dinky boat, the Tuff Enuff, the change in attitude of the ten of us on the boat was dramatic. Before, we were a nervous group of strangers on the way out, on the way in we were quiet, relaxed, contented travelers lost in the reverie of floating weightless above a beautiful living reef with scarcely a word said. An eagle ray breached the water as we were nearly home --I happened to be looking at the right place-- and it was a perfect end to the experience.

The rest of the experience can be described by anyone who's spent time by a pool with tropical drink in hand. You know those postcards with the swaying palms and crystalline blue seas, and lovely sand? Ambergris Caye is where they take those pictures. I've never been anywhere that was more beautiful than the brochure. We all got a little tan, we had some great conch fritter, T struck up conversation with any Guatemalan woman who had a child or was pregnant (that describes pretty much all of them), and somewhere scattered in the sand are fragments of my tension, angst, and evil humours. They're probably next to a rotted shoe or something.

The trip home was mostly uneventful. The clusterfuck that has become US airport security was woefully evident on return to HOU. Let's just say that if standing in long pointless lines is a powerful antiterror weapon, then we are all safe as houses, forever.

On the trip, C learned to say "Me!" and cultivated a deep love for the golf cart, the only motorized means of conveyance on the island other than mopeds. We were not shot to death by roving bands of bandits, and the only people that scammed us were the "porters" at the airport coming out of customs, who charged us $2/bag to carry our luggage around a corner, some 43 feet. It was a blast, and I'd do it again in a heartbeat, if only these damned bug bites would stop itching.

Musings

I was lying in bed the other night idly thinking how parenthood has fundamentally changed me. My response to people in general and children specifically has improved dramatically. Walking from a seminar last weekend I heard the peal of of child's laugh. Instantly my mood was improved, and in a competing emotion I also instantly missed my boy, who was only a 10 minute ride away.

I watch parents struggle to simultaneously teach their children and participate in the world. Ordering and consuming a simple cup of coffee in public with your toddler can be fun, or it can be a nail-biting endurance challenge. Now I have an enormous amount of respect and empathy for people who, just a few years ago, I would have regarded as "Those A-hole breeders who can't contain their brats."

Those of you that know me will probably think that anything that gets me to be more accepting and kind is a good thing.

I was thinking these thoughts around 10:30pm, as I assumed the baby was winding down from a particularly late bedtime. He'd been putting himself to bed around 9pm all week, which was great. Then... things went sideways, he ramped up, and was far far far away from sleepiness. I wondered at some point if he'd learned how to make a pot of coffee. By midnight, we'd given up on trying any of the previously acceptable methods of quieting the baby and threw him in the car. He usually falls right asleep, but last night, at 12:30 in the damn morning, he stayed alert and interested in the drive until we hit 122nd Av. He managed to stay asleep the rest of the way home, and through the transfer to bed. He woke up again at 3am, screaming bloody murder. At that point, I recalled my bucolic parenthood thoughts and it all seemed like a fiction invented by an ailing, sleep-deprived mind.

I have some photos of him in a somewhat better humor:

This is the laugh I'll wait all day for.



Spaghetti is serious business.



I had to clean this all up

I'm going to bed.