CoffeeBear.net

Saturday

Posted by Mark | Filed under Life

Nor­mally given the choice, I will sleep bliss­fully through all of Sat­ur­day morn­ing, aris­ing from the depths of my slum­ber only when the morn­ing has past. Unfor­tu­nately, I’d got­ten stuck at work Fri­day night till nearly 7 and so I couldn’t get the rent paid the night before. Since rent must be paid within 3 days or you get hit with a late fee and since I’ve had prob­lems before with drop­ping the rent off in the night deposit box around a hol­i­day week­end; I really needed to get the rent paid while the bank was open. So my alarm was set and awaken in the wee hours of Sat­ur­day morn­ing I did. Ariesna decided to go along with me; so went off to the bank and suc­cess­fully paid the rent and then hit up the post office.

While I was wait­ing in line there, an old/odd friend of ours was there as well. Elf was far­ther up in line than I and was try­ing to be friendly, but I’m not at my best dur­ing the morn­ing par­tic­u­larly not dur­ing the morn­ing before I’ve got­ten some caf­feine in my blood. So, I apol­o­gize Elf; I wasn’t try­ing to be rude/mean, I just don’t do morn­ings. Finally it was my turn and I got my pack­age mailed off¹. The post office was kind of nice because my favorite worker waited on me. He’s an older guy who’s always nice and has a smile for every­one. Plus, he seems to take some real pride in his work and his appear­ance; as I’ve never seen him show up look­ing sloppy (like most of his co-workers do).

Any­way after leav­ing the post office, we went over to the Ter­rapin and had some break­fast (muf­fin & Red­wood espresso for her, crois­sant & Grand Canyon for me). While we were sit­ting their enjoy­ing our cof­fee; we saw Robert (one of the broth­ers who owns/runs the place) and said hello. He men­tioned that the 2 of us sit­ting their eat­ing our break­fast were look­ing hap­pier than happy. Hav­ing that sort of break­fast there does make me happy because the place is so warm & invit­ing and the cof­fee is just fan­tas­tic! Robert than took off to talk to pretty much every­body else in the shop (some­thing he always does) and we went back to just enjoy­ing our cof­fee. While we were sit­ting there; I saw some­body who looked like a for­mer employee of my com­pany. The main rea­son I some­what remem­bered him was he started maybe a year after I had and then quit after a cou­ple of months because the com­pany wouldn’t give him a leave of absense, when an oppor­tu­nity came up for him to go to Scot­land for some­thing like a month. When he left; he gave him his Min­is­ter of Silly Walks poster which I still have hang­ing up next to my cubi­cal. We chat­ted with him for a while and he’s cer­tainly had an inter­est­ing time since leav­ing the com­pany. Besides Scot­land, he’s been over to Mon­go­lia and is working/living mostly in Korea now teach­ing Eng­lish. After a nice chat, we fin­ished our break­fast and headed out.

Just as I was start­ing to back the car out of the park­ing spot, Robert came run­ning out wav­ing at us to stop. I did, Ariesna rolled down her win­dow and Robert asked if we might have a torq screw­driver. He was try­ing to repair one of his espresso machines and needed one to get it open. He didn’t have one, but thought we might (prob­a­bly because he knows I work on com­put­ers). I told him I’d check and let him know. He offered a free cof­fee in exchange; Ariesna tried to say that wouldn’t be nec­es­sary, but I cut her off and told him it was a deal. :) Hey, what can I say? I love their coffee!

We went home and checked our tools, but we didn’t have any; so I called over at my Mom’s house and asked if I could go through Dad’s old tools. She let me and we found a set of hex keys and a cou­ple of torq screw­drivers. I took the lot with me in my tool­box because I didn’t know what size Robert would need. When I got back to the Ter­rapin; Robert was out­side chat­ting with his mom and a lady who turns out to be a neigh­bor of my Mom.

Sat­ur­day was def­i­nitely show­ing me what a small world we live in and that Ter­rapin is appar­ently the cen­tral nexus of it.

I sat down with them to let Robert do through what I had. He selected one of the torq screw­drivers and then asked what kind of cof­fee I wanted. My mind froze up a bit as I’d already had my reg­u­lar and I couldn’t recall what all else they had that I’d like to try. Robert sug­gested their DaVinci which is 2 shots of espresso, steamed milk, white choco­late syrup, vanilla syrup (not sure about this ingre­di­ent, have to go back and dou­ble check) and real caramel melted at the bot­tom of the glass. He got up to go get it for me; I started to fol­low but he said I should just stay there and relax since I was already doing him a favor.

Actu­ally, what I was think­ing is that I’d head with him to see the bro­ken espresso machine and watch him work on it while sip­ping my cof­fee. Instead, I got to spend some time chat­ting with his mom & the lady is my Mom’s neigh­bor. Robert dis­ap­peared for a while after bring­ing my cof­fee (which although very sug­arly was deli­cious). When he came back, I asked if the tool worked for him. He looked some­what stunned for a moment and said that he hadn’t tried it yet; he’d stopped to talk to some­body and… Then Mom’s neigh­bor chimed in that he didn’t have to say any­thing more than he stopped to talk; as we all know him well enough to under­stand that means he got dis­tracted. I left the Ter­rapin shortly after that, leav­ing the one screw­driver with Robert and tak­ing the rest back to Mom.

I helped Mom with her com­puter for a while and then we looked over her plants for a bit. I took a few pic­tures² of her flow­ers which were look­ing won­der­ful and all fresh & clean since it had been rain­ing all day (a light sprin­kle, misty sort of rain).

I didn’t stay very long, as it was get­ting to be after­noon and we had plans to meet up with some friends at Aizuchi & Komainu’s house to make char­ac­ters for next RPG we’re gonna play. So I headed home, woke Ariesna up and we headed over to A&K’s place. There was lots & lots of talk­ing about what dif­fer­ent peo­ple would be play­ing and sug­ges­tions were shouted back & forth across the room con­stantly. It looks like L (who’s just join­ing our group on this game) will be inter­est­ing to have around but I won­der if she’s been work­ing in audi­ol­ogy too long and thinks the rest of the world is hard of hear­ing, because she was rather loud. Ah well, no need to worry about such things as she’s fun to have around (same L from Dav­en­port and our guide to the tea shop, as men­tioned pre­vi­ously).

As we fin­ished up plan­ning our char­ac­ters and set­ting a date for the next ses­sion (which oddly enough will be before the Japan trip) “Unknown Bob” showed up (he’s really a friend of A&K). This event was fol­lowed by more & louder talk­ing. Dur­ing which L snuck off to get her­self some car­ry­out Chi­nese food. After a while, some of the rest of us headed over to the mall’s food court and got some din­ner. AWelkin, Ariesna & myself got food from Mondo’s Bread Gar­den. Mine was a Chicken BLT sand­wich on some funky bread and was very tasty. Ariesna & I also got some tortellini salad which wasn’t bad but not some­thing I’ll be order­ing again.

After we fin­ished eat­ing, we headed back to A&K’s to watch a movie that “Unknown Bob” made as an ada­p­a­tion of Dorothy Parker’s “The Game”. It was kind of fun, though A’s sound sys­tem was hav­ing prob­lems with the audio at the begin­ing. Oh and the actress who played Thelma made her seem capa­ble of great & most vicious evil deeds. I had a good time watch­ing it and then there was more con­ver­sa­tion about what really hap­pens in the story; but since it was a short, nobody knows for sure and you’re left to guess. We had to leave not to long after that as we were some­what tired and needed to do some gro­cery shop­ping for the 4th (gotta have some water­mel­lon with your fireworks).

After get­ting the water­mel­lon from the store; I sat down to update my blog here and dink around the com­puter for a bit when some­thing occured to me. See, back when we went up to Dav­en­port; at the end of the night, L gave me a bot­tle of Scotch that we won at the Robert Burns sup­per put on by H.A.G.G.I.S. She doesn’t drink Scotch, but I do and when she gave that to us; we promised her a bot­tle of honey mead in return as that is some­thing she’ll drink. Also, a while back Ariesna & I were enjoy­ing an after­noon over in down­town Iowa City and stopped in “Dirty Jon’s” where we picked up a bot­tle of honey mead for L. So while I was sit­ting her last night, I sud­denly remm­bered that we had this for her and didn’t give it to her. So I quickly called over to A&K’s to see if L was still there; she was. So I hur­ried over with the bot­tle, intend­ing to leave imme­di­ately but L decided to open it and offered to share. I’d never had honey mead before and decided to stick around to try a bit. It was good stuff but much stronger than I had imag­ined it would be. *whew* Still, it’s defi­nately some­thing that I’d be will­ing to drink again. Any­way, I got to hurry back (the family’s already started in on the brats with­out me).

¹ There’s a rant behind that pack­age which I’ll go into another time.
² Yes, the pho­tos were taken with my dig­i­tal cam­era. How­ever, I’m not post­ing them yet as I’m still try­ing to fig­ure out the best way to do that with WP.

Similar Posts

• Movie Review: The Bourne Supremacy
  This afternoon Ariesna and I went out to see The Bourne Supremacy. As I expected it was mostly a fas ...
• What’s in your cup?
  I'm normally a coffee drinker. Heck, let's be honest here; I'm more than just a coffee drinker. I'm ...
• Note to Self: Mixing Drinks
  We're having some issues with the lights/power/air conditioning in my office this morning.  As I'm ...
• Blargh
  You know your morning is shot when it takes you half an hour and multiple attempts to drink from an ...
• Burns Supper
  Ariesna and I just got back from our local Burns Supper. For those of you not entirely up on your S ...