Grueling schedule

When focus is required, distractions must be eliminated. This is why the library awarded me 8-month renewal intervals. I keep books circulating, and when the chips are down, I focus.

Archival material

I got hot sauce on my finger while I made the chili. It burned my tongue afterwards when I licked the finger. Unexpected, that burn, but not really unpleasant. I ate a pineapple that had to be refrigerated, or it would have been hot like every other thing in the whole place. Even the sheets seemed to be collecting heat, storing it until it was needed to burn me when I sat down on the bed. When the rain came, I celebrated the cool coming back; I didn't have to pine after winter, at least for the moment.

Ben-Hur

Wallace will outlive the war, but I will not. Early will write his memoirs, but I will not. The Georgetown Pike, after the covered bridge has burned, I will fall there not to rise again.

Winter trains part 3

There might have been a sense of community in the broad atrial waiting area of the station, but it was quickly drowned out by the survival instinct that emerged among comfortable people who are slightly alarmed. Lines formed quickly at the handful of fast-food/coffee places and people scarfed pizza with wary eyes trained on their neighbors, eating as a dog does: quickly and too efficiently to relish the alimentation. Sulking overcoated patrons trudged everywhere to and fro or circled shark-like for the remaining seats on the benches. Smart ones read to stave off impending madness, with ever-more erudite reading fodder glimpsed around every corner.

I was reading Tony Judt with two different frowns. Alternately I displayed my public-transit-has-forsaken-me-never-will-I-see-home-again grimace, and then my furrowed-brow-because-Tony-Judt-is-postulating-a-complex-political-idea-in-clear-and-readable-prose-and-I-am-striving-to-understand frown. I have discussed with my significant other that I ought to stop frowning when trying to understand something or flesh out a thought because the expression is frightening at close range. Maybe I'm often puzzled. I do feel the need to manifest what's going on in my head to the world at large. I furrow my rather prominent but nonetheless brow and try to work out a sentence that might express what I'm thinking.

Found exactly where I left it

Machine-Age Espresso

The changes effected affected us. The coffee machine was taken away to avoid ambiguity and duplication. Coffee is dark, ideally faintly smoky. Medium roasts are said to have subtler and more complex flavor profiles, but this is not universally agreed upon. Coffee is good on ice, but it is not candy and should not be mistreated by the addition of pumpkiny treacle. Coffee can be consumed hot, ideally not boiling.

habitual consumption may contribute to osteoperosis


Coffee is sometimes avoided in the mornings so that I can deceive myself regarding my dependency upon it. Coffee is prepared by the cup in the K cup machine at work. K cup != K Street; Coffee is not a conspiracy of powerful Washington lobbyists.

recent studies suggest that these may be the result of relieving the initial symptoms of overnight caffeine withdrawal!


French cooks were the first to Westernize coffee brewing techniques in the mid-1700s. Coffee is decaffeinated sometimes which is to say denatured and disemboweled, without being too dramatic.