Walked to a festival in town, and enjoyed 2 pit sandwiches while walking around town in AMAZING weather, listening to music from the various locations (including a Lady Gaga compilation sung by an a capella group ), and enjoying the smells of the food. Gotta enjoy the simple things

$20 Steak 'n' Shake gift card + Game 1 Canucks @ Blackhawks NHL Western Conference Semifinals on Versus + hockey-loving girlfriend who likes Steak 'n' Shake and has a cable package that gets Versus = night of WIN.

Mmmm, Takhomasak.

SO MUCH SUSHI

I AM IN SUSHI HEAVEN

I will name my food baby Charles and live with him in a sushi paradise.

Rock Band Network finally coming out for the PS3. Code Monkey like you!

that song.

EDIT: As a related rave, I just recently discovered Amie Street. So many new songs. A fair number of them are really good. Sometimes, the really good ones are also free, and they're almost all cheaper than iTunes. Woo!

AP Government exam tomorrow. Will be beasting towards a 5. Best friend giving me a ride to and from it; Government teacher herself will be at the testing location with breakfast for our entire class. I love this woman.

Also: getting addicted to Reddit, reading stories of people going to college or surviving harsh situations and going on to have totally enjoyable lives. Gives me hope. I'm rearing to get myself an apartment now.

If only I could figure out where the money comes from. *cough*

Just found out that my seismology final (that I have yet to start studying for) is not tomorrow but -next- Monday! Woot! Maybe I'll be responsible enough not to procrastinate.

Trip to LIGO with the physics class. So coooooool. Related rant: 12 hours of driving this weekend.

I got Oblivion working after a crash-course in mods taught by Professor Internet.
It no longer crashes whenever I draw my sword!

Yeah, I'm becoming Reddicted too, it's sort of bad actually.

I can sometimes barely play Oblivion on my PC. I'm waiting for it to die so I can buy a new one, and the darn thing just won't die.

Finally back home at my own computer, with my huge 1680 x 1050 LCD monitor and familiar mouse and keyboard.

After using a netbook for over three weeks, seeing the big screen again for the first time was like the world turning color in The Wizard of Oz.

My job is safe until the next round of redundancies :/

100% Colombian imported coffee beans, fresh-ground and French-pressed with distilled water by a consummate coffee snob (me), is delicious. Swing low, sweet chariot, comin' for to carry me home....

I never drink coffee away from home. It all tastes like essence of gym sock in comparison.

Coffee snobs unite. I'm still trying to get ahold of some kopi luwak just to say I've had it. But I regularly keep three/four different coffees in the freezer.

To give an idea, I gave my last girlfriend a blue-ray player for Christmas. She gave me a pound of Jamaican Blue Mountain. I feel I got the better end of that deal.

People look at me weird at Bed, Bath and Beyond (where I'm working as a side job) when I start going on about coffee. Now, all the other employees point coffee questions my way, heh.

I know it's washed and all, but I just can't get over the squick factor of how kopi luwak attains its flavor.

Felicia: Does distilled water offer a significant advantage over filtered water?

Enjoying the best pita I have ever made right now. For those curious, it is of the Smoky Hawaiian Chicken variety.

I'm sure there is no noticeable difference. Most people, myself included, probably wouldn't be able to tell if the coffee had been brewed with decent tap water instead. Actually, filtered water is probably better if you do your own filtering, not because of the water itself but because of the plastic jugs and bottles in which distilled water is sold. (You can't realistically distill water at home.) Plastic containers slowly leach chemicals into the water they store.

Mentally, I feel that purified water (of whatever sort) and a scrupulously clean French press offer the best tabula rasa for the perfect cup of coffee. It's essentially a little spot of obsessive compulsiveness on my part.

I also refuse to use anything but hand-made earthenware mugs to drink coffee from. My aunt and uncle have been potters in North Carolina for almost three decades, so there's no shortage of earthenware anywhere in my family, thanks to nearly thirty years' worth of Christmases, birthdays, and family purchases at pottery shows and auctions.

Hawaiian Kona, Jamaican Blue Mountain and Colombian coffees are my favorites. Those three varieties are pretty cliché where gourmet coffee is concerned (they're like the Achaea of coffee varities), and I initially tried them years ago because they're obvious choices for a hopeful future coffee snob, but now I stick with them almost exclusively.



EDIT: Oh, one final, curious factoid: Caffeine has no effect on me. I've had ADHD all my life (diagnosed in the mid-80s, before it was being over-diagnosed to everyone and their dog), and I still take medication to treat it. One time, I mentioned to my psychiatrist that coffee had absolutely no stimulating effect on me, and he said that's actually a confirmed physiological side-effect of ADHD.

As a result, I can drink as much coffee as I want, whenever I want to, without getting the jitters or being kept awake all night. However, I also can't take advantage of its stimulating effects, either. That's the downside.

One of my best investments in college was a Brita pitcher, because the water where I was living at the time was just simply godawful. It tasted bad, smelled very chlorine-y and made unpleasant-tasting coffee. The water where I live now is somewhat better, but I've kept up the filtered water habit. I was curious as to why you'd use distilled water, since, yes, it needs to be purchased and isn't something that can be "made" at home (so plastic consumption, leaching chemicals, plus it's an extra purchase).

I cycle through coffees in terms of what I like, though Kona really is lovely.

Coffee only has an effect on me if I've been up all night, at which point it makes me jittery. No problems falling asleep after an evening cup, or jitters during the day, though.