Archive for the ‘Featured’ Category

Posted on March 14, 2010 - by deCadmus

Happy Birthday, Al

“A human being is a part of a whole, called by us universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest… a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty.”

– Albert Einstein

Posted on July 9, 2009 - by deCadmus

There And Back Again

Have I mentioned that I’ve been stupid busy lately?

I was certain I had, but… you know. Memory. Goldfish. Mad Cow. Mooooo. Regardless, I haven’t yet forgotten I’m supposed to be writing something here from time to time.

Let’s see… my last post was written while still at sea, making for Glacier Bay National Park in Alaska. Made it. Got the pictures to prove it, at least some of which you can find on Flickr, and more of which I have still to sort through, as I’m still in the habit of taking several dozen photos for every one that I might want to keep. On this trip I averaged more than 1100 photos a day.

(I was an English major, you do the math.)

Alaska was one stunning vista after another, interspersed with too, too touristy ports of call and some of the most lovely sunny, warm days I’ve experienced this year. After telling folks for weeks that I was leaving for Alaska to escape Vermont’s chilly spring weather, nobody was more surprised than me (and maybe several thousand sun-burned Alaskans) to discover that was true.

All in all, I think the tribe of extended family and friends enjoyed themselves, and Mom & Dad well and truly were moved by our celebration of their 50 years together. And if they try to deny it, we’ve got video to prove it.

Meanwhile…  more recently I’ve:

• Made an offer on the quintessential Vermont homestead, which the seller subsequently withdrew from the market. Our string of real estate misadventures continues unabated.
• Upped the fitness routine to 60-90 minutes, most every day. I’ve lost only 5 pounds, but I can now bend iron bars with my thighs.
• Got a Palm Pre, which makes me feel more cool than I have any right to be. I’m enamored of this gesturing thing and dearly wish I could make the rest of the world respond like my Pre.

None of these is remotely like a viable excuse for not writing, so I guess I’d better get back to it… and perhaps with something substantive, besides.

Watch this space. :)

Posted on June 4, 2009 - by deCadmus

Hello, Vancouver, Goodbye

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.

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.

Posted on May 11, 2009 - by deCadmus

Various & Sundry

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” styled memoir, no… I don’t think so. Besides, somebody already wrote Marley & Me, and How to Live with a Neurotic Dog so what more do you need?

Meanwhile, on with the show.

Mother’s Day has just slipped by, and it appears that Amazon and ProFlowers aren’t keeping promises… the lovely flowers pictured here have *not* arrived. So Mom: here’s what you were *supposed* to have had delivered over the week-end. Sorry ’bout that.

Finished Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book over the weekend. The guy does good stories, through and through. Didn’t read so much like Kipling as I’d been led to believe, but that’s just fine. Not so macabre, either; but emotionally, very honest and true, which, I suspect, is why it won the Newbery Medal. (Note to self: punctuation, much?)

My to-do list is taking an ugly turn. Where normally it would have a bunch of simple tasks to be done and scratched off, now it has entries that read, “Convince you-know-who to do whatsit *this way* and not that way,” and “Arm-twist so-and-so to agree to thus-and-such.” Oh, here’s a simple one: “Create canonical list of origin attributes.” Yeah. And it’s all in need of clearing before I can fly away to vacation-land in June.

On the plus side, it’s warm enough to roast coffee in the garage, again… and I think I will.

Posted on April 29, 2009 - by deCadmus

Good-night, Jessie.

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 point where — despite the medication and treatment — the pain and bother would overcome the joys of a full dinner bowl, of walks in the warming sun, of hugs, and treats, and just hangin’ out with fambly on a lazy Sunday morning. Over the past several months her tail-thumps have gradually lost their vigor, her appetites their keenness. Our overgrown pup — always present, and frequently underfoot — had taken to finding a quiet spot, an out-of-the-way corner.

In retrospect, it’s pretty clear she knew it was time, too.

Most of what I know about being a grown-up — about really being responsible, and accountable, and answerable for what I do and don’t do — I learned from my dog. I learned that you get out of bed in the morning even when you don’t want to, ’cause it’s not just about you. I learned there *are* such things as good habits. And that nobody’s above cleaning up dog poop.

My life has been graced by no small number of fortunate events, and by people with whom I’ve been privileged to share them. For this, I’m grateful. Now there’s a dog-shaped hole in my heart that will never be full again. And for that… for that, I’m grateful, too.

Good-night, Jessie.

Posted on April 24, 2009 - by deCadmus

Still Crazy About Seattle

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 Zoka, Trabant to Victrola, Tully’s to Caffe Vita, and — of course — the omnipresent Starbucks and hundreds of happy, independent retailers, coffee houses, espresso carts and hole-in-the-wall walk-ups, the city teems with caffeinated masses, most of ‘em tanked up on some damn fine coffees served by folks who know their way round the business end of a portafilter. I’m impressed as I can be with places like Stumptown that hold daily cupping events so folks just walkin’ in off the street can sample a flight of coffees from all over the world, and compare and contrast flavors and aromas, body and balance, while elbow to elbow with the pros.

I hope I can stay longer next time… provided the place doesn’t kill me, first.

Posted on April 23, 2009 - by deCadmus

Science Rules

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 imagination.

What’s the big deal, you say… you, who map the way to far-flung coffee shops on your iPhone, while tweeting with your third-graders in the back-seat watching video-on-demand in your minivan.

Try this on for size: Cassini was launched in 1997 (that’s 8 years before Youtube was launched) and is currently operating in various orbits around Saturn and its moons, some 3.5 billion kilometers away. The spacecraft gets by with a mere 885 watts of power for its on-board sensors and camera equipment; it manages its transportation feats by fantastic, gravity-assisted orbital loops… essentially leaching power from the gravity of the heavenly bodies it orbits. And those wondrous crazy photos it takes? Those are the result of two, one-megapixel cameras.

For more of those fantastical photos, see Boston.com’s Big Picture.

Posted on January 20, 2009 - by deCadmus

At Last

So let us mark this day with remembrance, of who we are and how far we have travelled. In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:

“Let it be told to the future world…that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive…that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet [it].”

America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, let us remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations.

– President Barack Obama, January 20, 2009 

I feel as if I’ve been holding my breath since… oh, the first week in November or so. As if I were only dreaming that change — real change, historical change — had *actually* happened. That if I were less than careful, if I misspoke or misstepped or mistyped, then that dream would unravel like so much glittery, gossamer star-stuff. 

Today, finally, it seems solid and real and I feel I can breathe again. And write again. 

Happy New Year. How ya been?

Posted on November 26, 2008 - by deCadmus

Coffee Notes from All Over

It’s getting stupid busy around here, and so to make sure that I keep up with things I’m challenging myself to do more, not less. (That right there… that’s likely the stupid part of stupid busy.) 

As always, there’s more coffee reviews coming… and at least some of them will be covering coffees you wouldn’t want to give to your worst enemy. Yes, once again I will drink bad coffee so you don’t have to. Here’s the new twist: why don’t you tell me what coffees I should taste and review for your warped, twisted and not at all spirit-of-the-season type pleasure? Leave your ideas in the comments, below. And think evil thoughts. I dare you.

Also, while we’re at the height of that gifting season, I have a bunch of new hardware to try… in particular, several single-cup coffee machines. New to the Bloggle coffee labs are the completely revamped Tassimo by Bosch, the extraordinarily odd-looking NESCAFÉ Dolce Gusto by Krups, and the new “Mini” B30 brewer by Keurig, dressed in a sassy new holiday red (which may not help it brew a better cup of coffee, but delivers lots of eye-candy appeal.)

Finally, Bloggle is now iPhone friendly! Which is damned ironic, given that’s its still near impossible to own an iPhone in Vermont. Is it frustrating to test your own web site on an emulator for a device that you can’t own? Why, yes. Yes it is.

(Word on the street is that’s soon to change. I’ll believe it when I have one in my own grubby, little fingers…)

Posted on November 14, 2008 - by deCadmus

PT’s Sidamo Special Prep

At PT’s Coffee, blondes have more fun. No, really.

When’s the last time you had a blonde coffee? What’s that, you say? Never? Well it’s about time that changes…

Okay, so maybe it’s not really a blonde roast… that stuff’s most often halted before first crack (and the ginger-colored grounds brewed with sugar and cardamom; it tastes like chai.) No matter what you call this extraordinary light-roasted, natural process Sidamo — cinnamon roast, New England roast, maybe — it’s spectacular.

Fresh from the grinder this coffee will fill your kitchen with the aromas of fresh strawberries and blueberries. Its flavors are a tremendous expression of fruit — sweet strawberry, blueberry and tart cherry — with an undercurrent of Cavendish tobacco. It’s body is mild (a fair trade-off what with that roast and all) and its finish is long, graciously tart and a teensy bit dry.

All in all it’s one remarkable coffee, and, I think, a testament to the  skills on display at the roaster. A coffee this light could be a disaster! But this one’s a dream.

Highly recommended and a steal at under $17.00 a pound. So go get some while the gettin’s good.

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