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Mr. Cappuccino
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Conversations
- Hits: 1648
It's 2:00, time for my nap but the Cappuccino machine has been acting up and Mr. Cappuccino has come round to fix the valves.
I used to blog about my dreams, but I dream so seldom now that I've chosen instead to blog about the interruptions to my intended naps.
Mr. Cappuccino, he's surprisingly quick, figures the problem's a worn and leaky valve, replaces it, the Cappuccino machine is working perfect.
But he has to test it, and so makes me an espresso and has me taste it.
"The grind of the coffee is all wrong" he tells me, it's too coarse, it should be finer. The perfect espresso should take 18-23 seconds to pour.
And so he empties the coffee grinder, resets it, grinds another espresso, makes it and has me taste it. Thoughts of my nap are slowly evaporating like the steam from the espresso.
"Still too coarse..." he tells me "Should be finer. The grind of the coffee has to be set every day. You should adjust it depending on the weather outside. If it's wet or moist, grind it coarser. If it's dry grind it finer. Never grind more than you're going to use right away, the beans will oxidize once ground... think of it like a fine wine..."
He's passionate about his coffee. He empties the grinder again, resets it, grinds some more, makes me yet another espresso. "Perfect" he says, and has me taste it. He's proud of his coffee. "I make better coffee than the Italians".
He gives me some more tips regarding the maintenance of the machine, the service men always do, I make notes so I can share them with the staff; then he leaves.
3 espresso's and I'm ready for my nap.
Something to look forward to...
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2049
I need something to look forward to.
There's the vacation, 12 weeks away, 3 weeks off the beginning of August, but after that, then what? If I don't get a move on it'll be back into the same pile of ...
I don't want to do another Christmas.
There's the weekend, well, Saturday garage sales and Sunday I can look forward to seeing the kids, but the expectations are so high, time is short, nothing gets done.
Lottery tickets, but they only raise one's hopes for 2 or three days before dashing them.
I've taken to online shopping, ordering crap from ebay and other online vendors, I don't need anything, but there's the anticipation of a present, a parcel, coming for me in the post...
Resumes, I should be putting them out, but there's the whole - "What to do if I get a job when I need my benefits and I want to go away in August...."
It's complicated.
Life in the present, it doesn't bear considering, it's all "work work work", and so I make time to set trivial goals, win the lottery, come up with my prime number theorum, my explanation for irrational numbers, even these things don't get done, the job, it has to go, it's the only thing I have to look forward to...
#1 Bowness to Forest Lawn
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2525
There's a poem in there somewhere....
It runs across Calgary from ghetto to slum, then back again. Now maybe it's the hours I take it, respectable people take the bus from 7-9 to get downtown to work, then again from 4-6 from downtown to get home again, but when I take the bus, given the odd hours I work, it's a different crowd completely.
Teen single mothers pushing baby carts. Guys on their cellphones, the cellphone just the polite prop, really they're talking to the whole bus..."Just got out of prison....yeah, 2 hours ago...is she waiting for me?...tell my kids I miss 'em, eh?....Tell her I'm still hard for her...Yeah, missed them something fierce....just got out 2 hours ago...". Old folks coming home from the legion. Strangely made up old ladies and their shopping trollies, other people trying to carry on conversations on their cell phones but prison dude, he's talking too loud and they have to yell to to make themselves heard. The weekend stop in Kensington, more inebriated passengers board, people chatting at the stop get separated in the rush to get on, almost about to get lucky but he or she has disappeared and they don't care, they can make new friends, the sober talking loudly about the 12 steps in AA, what step they're on, the not so discreet fraternity of unrepentant and reformed alcoholics...
I could drive, I don't have a car but I could get one, only it doesn't work into the budget, not now, there are still too many bills to be paid. And the bus is cheap, it's quick enough, and somewhat entertaining in a circus-sideshow kinda way...
Missed Connections
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- Written by: Rod Boyle
- Category: Miscellany
- Hits: 2292
A fruitless day off, early morning but I force myself to sleep another hour, get up, call friend for coffee but he's not home and so I go on the weekly thrift shop tour.
Lots of attractive women's handbags today. Sadly I'm not a woman. Still I manage to turn up a couple of pairs of jeans, some tea lights, nothing else. There's a dearth of real treasures.
Then home, I attempt to answer some emails but the neighbor downstairs is playing with the fuses, power blinking on and off; internet modem perpetually resetting and eventually give up. Leave to pick up my daughter.
We have a date to go and make her mother's day gift.
Now I've budgeted an hour to get to her school, it's nasty out and so I'll take the bus. It's about 4 or 5 miles from here, sadly there's no direct buses but I can transfer downtown, should be about 20 minutes early...
Should be.
And the #1 to Forest Lawn gets me downtown in record time, but I'm waiting and waiting and waiting and there's no #2 up to her school. Almost 40 minutes I wait for a #2, and by the time it shows up I'm already late....
The stress builds inside like a volcano...
By the time I get to her school I'm almost 20 minutes late, almost an hour and a half on Calgary Transit to travel a total of 4 miles, quicker, in fact, to have walked, bus averaging roughly 3 miles per hour...
But more importantly I'm late and I search the school and she's not there, not surprising, and so I try to find out where she is and I can't and so I presume she's taken the bus home and so I walk over to her mothers to wait for her there....
Now it's 4:00 and the bus shows up and she's not on it.
I wait for her mother in the back of her house.
We track her down to the after care place she's looked after when her mother's working, and go to pick her up. She'd wisely chosen to walk there when she saw that I wasn't coming, and by the time we pick her up, the day, the weather, the Mothers' Day gift building just isn't going to happen.
Dinner, brief nap (an hour), strangely refreshing, that feeling of having slept enough, but it never lasts that long....
Then surf the net, finish the emails unfinished earlier, light cleaning, feed and coddle the cat (who's getting slimmer, I notice, as she purrs on my lap, good kitty...)...blog, scotch and bed.
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