Herself and I had a too abbreviated experience in Vancouver, owing to a increasingly typical SNAFU on the part of United Airlines — %&#$!%, United! — which left us in Chicago for, oh, some 24 hours longer than we’d planned. (Chicago, you know I love you, but you’re not Vancouver, B.C. and the airport hotel where we lay our weary heads was a damn long ways from being the 5-star Sutton Place Hotel which we’d already paid for in Vancouver.) In our brief whistle-stop visit I didn’t get much opportunity to dig in to the Vancouver coffee scene save for a stop at Cafe Artigiano, which — despite the fact that the Piccolo family are no longer its stewards — is cranking out some fine coffee. Their cappuccino makes my top 10.
Meanwhile…
At the moment, I’m saddled up in the Explorations coffee lounge aboard the Ms Volendam, steaming north to Alaska’s Glacier Bay National Park by way of Juneau while an extremely versatile string quartet plays Somewhere Over the Rainbow. Yes, Toto, we’re not in Kansas, anymore.
Alaskan Inside Passage Cruise
We made way from Vancouver at a pretty good clip last night to catch the tide; the narrows around Vancouver apparently can’t be sailed in a big ship if the tide’s too low, and so our captain put the screws to it. Er, literally, I guess.
This is my first cruise so I don’t have much reference on what’s a good ship and what’s not… aside from the essentials like, a good ship is one that doesn’t sink. (By that token, we’re ship-shape thus far.) There’s lots of wood, and lots of glass, and water, water everywhere.
Tomorrow, there will be glaciers.
Firstly, to all who’ve kindly expressed their well-wishes about Jessie, online and offline and in real space, thank-you. And while, yes, I *did* consider (for about 0.002 seconds) writing an, “All I Need to Know About Life I Learned From My Dog”…
Yesterday our time with Jessie — our lovable, neurotic and blind golden retriever — came to its inevitable end.
For some while my wife and I have known it was nearly Jessie’s time… that the discomfort of living with glaucoma was reaching the…
It’s sunny and seventy-eight degrees. The sky is powdery blue, and a warm breeze carries the scent of fresh earth and early blooms.
This can’t possibly end well.
‘Cause face it — this is Vermont. You get sunny days and seventies in the month…
Despite the rain, and the blustery breezes. Despite the strep throat, and bronchitis. Despite the fact it would appear the city of my birth might see me catch my death, I love Seattle, still.
Seattle remains a guiding star for coffee. From Vivace to…
Just in case there was any doubt in your mind, science rules.
Case in point, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. After completing its original four-year mission, Cassini is now a year into a secondary, extended mission, and still sending back mind-bending images that stretch the…
This last is a tip from Lifehacker, and it’s a winner. Herself did this last year, and we both found it useful.
Bloggle is the online playground of Doug Cadmus, a usability guy, writer, photographer and sometime dramatist who moved to Vermont for the coffee. When not writing, reading or walking his old, blind golden retriever, he roasts coffee in his garage and is the Web Guy for Green Mountain Coffee in Waterbury, VT.
