zoinks

What on earth would possess someone to create a shirt like this??

I'm off to China! So I suppose that means a week of no facebook (banned), possibly no blogger (maybe banned?), and potentially no internet (depending on the generosity of the local starbucks). If by some miracle I update this blog in the next week, well, that'd be cool I suppose. Otherwise, I'll try to update this in a week or so.

sad time for television

As a child, I was a big fan of TV Land and nick@nite, and enjoyed watching some of the old time tv shows. I remember viewing reruns of classics like I Love Lucy, Mork and Mindy, McHale's Navy, and The Andy Griffith Show. Though these shows were made during a much less politically correct era, yet there was something timeless about some of these black/white classics. This past week, I was saddened to learn of the passing of not just one, but two classic tv icons, Ernest Borgnine and Andy Griffith.

Ernest Borgnine, the star of McHale's Navy, had been a character actor with a career that spanned six decades. I may only remember him in McHale's Navy, but he was so much more than just that. Apparently he had a 10 year Navy career that included 5 distinguished service medals, won an Oscar award in 1955, was nominated for an Emmy for his work on ER, and was the Mermaid Man on Spongebob Squarepants.

I was exceptionally saddened to hear of the passing of Andy Griffith. The eponymously named Andy Griffith Show was both entertaining and funny. He was a trustworthy small town sheriff who had both a sense of humor and common sense. Oh and his show was funny. These days, in the era of edgy shows like Jackass and Punk'd, it's nice to know that the Andy Griffith show can still air daily on tv and get good ratings. Since his days on The Andy Griffith Show (by far the best theme song to whistle), he's had successfully performed such a wide range of characters, although my favorite has definitely been Matlock. As he aged, he gave off that warm grandpa feeling, and you can't help but trust the guy.

I'm saddened to hear of the passing of both of these men. They were both incredibly likeable and disarming and they'll definitely be missed for their comedy.

bathroom faux-pas

**disclaimer: this is about bathrooms…do not read on if you don’t like people’s interactions with bathrooms**


The bathroom is a sacred place. It’s a place of solitude, a place of peace, where you can think and be alone with your thoughts. Well today, I may have taken it a bit too far. So I was in the 3rd stall today on the 10th floor men’s room, doing my thing, minding my own business. For the record, I like to zone out a bit when I’m in there. In a world of cubicles and open offices/conference rooms, it’s pretty much the only place you can go to be alone with your thoughts.

Anyways, I was in there doing some thinking (don’t judge), when I started thinking about music, specifically Meaghan Smith’s It Snowed (love that song). Playing music in my head is a nice way to pass the time, but yea, tragically it didn’t end there. By the time I realized what I was doing, I was whistling the chorus of the song. That’s when it occurred to me: I’m not the only one in the bathroom.

Ohhhh nooooo…

As a matter of fact, in the afternoon, the bathroom gets a decent amount of traffic. Great. Now what do I do?? Of course I cut off the song mid-verse (just when I got to the good part too!!) and waited…and waited…and waited. There was a chuckle by the sink, but the guy left right after. At this point, I try to use my ears to take inventory of who else is left in the bathroom. Aside from the guy at the sink, there seemed to be three other people in the bathroom. I need to wait for them to clear out, then make my daring escape.

Four minutes go by, two guys leave, talking about work on the way out. One left. Ok, since this guy’s occupied in the next stall, I surmise that it’s time to channel my inner Steve McQueen and make a great escape (sans the germans, electric fences, and a motorcycle chase…). The second I hear toilet-paper unraveling next door, I quickly flush and fly out of the stall. So stealthy and nimble was I that I had washed, dried, and departed the bathroom before the stall door closed. Ohh yea, bathroom escape ninja-turtle style. As I get back to my desk, I think of the close call from just seconds ago. *sigh* crisis averted.

SF defies logic once again.

Strap yourself in…we’re going on a rant.

This morning I had to head into san francisco to submit a visa application. I get up this morning and Sunnyvale is a nice sunny 65 degrees. Ahh…the weather was perfect, I thought as I don my flipflops and tshirt and head out bright and early to SF, giving myself a little bit of a cushion in case there’s traffic. Of course the minute I hit SF city limits the cloud appears out of nowhere and the temperature drops 15 degrees. Didn’t know overcast weather adhered to city borders.

Anyways, the consulate opens at 9am, and I arrived in town at 8:15 (yes…I like to be punctual). Perfect! I’ll just swing by Blue Bottle for a little Kyoto iced coffee to jumpstart my day. I pull into the meager (3 spaces and two are handicap only) parking lot. No open spaces. Ok…I’ll just find street parking. I pull out into the street and there was a row of open spaces…great! I pull into one…yellow (loading only). Ok, I’ll move ahead to another space…white (who knows what that means)...grrr. So I move up a few more spaces to no paint on the sidewalk and a free meter. Awesome! I get out to feed the meter when I see a that the meter had a friendly tip printed on it: Check for restrictions before feeding this meter. Oh that’s nice of them, so I look up:

No Parking from 2am-6am
No Stopping from 2pm-7pm
Passenger Loading only from 7pm-2am
No Parking on Thursdays from 4am-9am for street cleaning

Wow, if this is a space with no paint, I’d hate to see the restrictions on the ones with paint. I needed a calendar, a watch, and a magic 8-ball just to figure out the sliver of time in which I could park there. Oh and did I mention I needed $3.50 in quarters for 1 hour? After searching every crevice of my car for spare change, I was finally ready to get some coffee. I pick up the heavenly coffee in a to-go cup and think to myself…hey this day is turning out to be alright.

Too soon. Wayyy too soon.

I decide to take a brisk walk over to the consulate (it was on Market street a few blocks down). As I pass by a nice looking parking garage, I decide to glance at the rates, hoping it’d make me feel better about saving so much $$ by parking on the street. $2.75/hr. How the heck is garage cheaper than street parking?? *sigh* oh well, just keep walking.

I get to the consulate, which is in a high-rise (kinda weird, but meh…whatever works), and I check in at the ground floor. I take the elevator, which apparently makes you type in the floor you want to go to, and if you mess up, sorry, you’re going to that floor (sucks). Anyways, I get to the front door of the consulate on 24th floor, and the guard makes me sign in again, and does a body search, just in case I’m there to hurt the three admins and security guard. And that’s when they broke the news: the coffee needs to go in the trash.

WHAT???

Yep. I asked if I could just set it aside for later…nope. Can I leave it outside the door? Nope. They watched as I slowly lowered it into the garbage can. After an appropriate time of mourning, rending my garments and donning sackcloth and ashes, I was ready to submit my application. 15 minutes later, it was over. Come back in 5 business days and get your passport, only in the afternoon though.

Great, I get to see what the other end of SF rush-hour looks like. Yippee.

some tv learning

Recently I've discovered that I'm capable (barely) of studying in front of the tv! Naturally I pretty much spent a majority of today studying (mm we'll call it that) to the sights and sounds of history channel and food network. In addition to re-learning geometry, trig, and grammar (I hate sentence correction...), I've learned quite a bit from the tv that's been playing in the background.

I suppose this isn't really that much of a surprise. Since I was a kid, I remember using television as both entertainment and a learning tool (at least that's what I tried to persuade my folks). I was always sucked into shows like Nova and Mythbusters and was a perennial viewer of shark week on discovery channel. These days it seems harder to learn stuff from television. The sometimes mind-numbing shows on tv these days leave much to be desired from the intellect after a half hour episode, yet nevertheless there are little morsels of learning to be gleamed from tv (esp history and food network):

Don't fly bomber planes. In WWII only 1 in 3 B-17 bomber crews survived their first 25 missions.

Giada has a huge head...it doesn't really look proportional to the rest of her body...

History Channel plays ChristianMingle.com ads during every break. Is there a large demographic of single christian history buffs out there that I haven't encountered??

I am officially sucked into this season of Next Food Network Star. These folks are all so raw and rough around the edges right now, and yet one of these guys will have his/her own show in a few weeks. So yes...I will be glued to the food network until this season is over.

Apparently LL Cool J is a history channel narrator. Yea...I too did a double-take when I saw that...economy must be rough these days.

food network pro-tip: apparently if you need to seer a bunch of small stuff in a pan (i.e. shrimp, scallops, beef chunks, etc), instead of taking a long time flipping each of them, you can put then on skewers, and then flip the whole skewer. I tried this today and it works!

I'm sure there's more to learn from tv...maybe after tomorrow's day of studying I'll have more to write about...

my favorite weekend

five things I liked about this weekend:

friday morning run to Davis Ace yielded the unexpected pleasure of a conversation and a free mug/tote

I got to finish off an interesting vbs week that included unexpectedly well-behaved kids and an underlying threat of stomach flu

Davis is void of students this weekend. I find myself in town (on vacay) the week between graduation and the start of summer session. The line at dos coyotes was actually manageable

I was finally able to get some quality studying done

I got a chance to toy with my new aeropress this morning. It was magical (review to follow whenever I get around to it)

*sigh* now back to work tomorrow...

50 beans | the SoMa coffee crawl

clockwise from top left: eggs florentine from Stacks on Hayes St., gelato from union square, bacon waffle from Stacks, Owl logo on the office door at Sightglass Coffee

One of the great coffee cities in the world, san francisco is home to many superb small-batch roasters. For decades, coffee has protected local residents from the steely, low-60's temperatures that plagued the city. Yesterday, I took a friend and met with a few locals to take a journey through SoMa in SF to taste the different coffee places that I've read so much about! The plan was to meet at Stacks in Hayes Valley for brunch, and then walk on over to Blue Bottle and back-track through SoMa and visit three of the best independent roasters in SF.

We were almost completely successful:

Blue Bottle Coffee - clockwise from top left: affogato, the kyoto cold-brew drip, the siphon contraption, the kyoto drip (left) next to the siphon coffee (right), blue bottle's slightly understated logo

Blue Bottle Coffee – 66 Mint Street
Blue Bottle has a few locations in SF and it’s roasting kitchen is in Oakland. Blue Bottle has been touted by folks at CNN for being possibly the best coffee you’ll ever drink (here’s a NYT slideshow on this shop and it’s siphon coffee and a CNN article about blue bottle). The 66 Mint St. location is located near union square in SoMa, tucked away in the alley behind the old US Mint building. This location features the halogen light Japanese siphon (the only one in the US).

The story is that the founder of Blue Bottle, James Freeman, wanted to purchase a siphon from the Japanese beverage giant UCC. They stipulated that he could purchase one of the machines on one condition: that he go to Japan to learn the art of stirring the water. He spent months learning to stir the water (apparently a good stirrer can create a cyclone in four flicks of the wrist) before he was able to finally purchase one. This machine sits at the end of the bar, and has different operating hours than the rest of the coffee shop (depending on when the operator takes breaks). Next to the siphon pot is the kyoto cold-brew drip contraption. This is also a japanese produced machine that does cold-brew a little differently than what I do (mason jar --> french press --> chemex filter). This machine drips cold water through coffee in such a slow painstaking process that it takes the water about 14 hours to make the journey through to the carafe.

Since I was at the only location that featured the siphon, I ordered the ethiopian tuktant (single origin) siphone coffee. My friend ordered the Kyoto, but out of fear of a caffeine headache, left me most of it as well. The siphon had a sweet fragrant taste, but it's very similar to the taste you get from brewing fresh roasted coffee in a moka pot (without the aluminum flavoring). The kyoto was similar to my cold-brew coffee, and was incredibly refreshing after walking through downtown SF looking for this place. Seeing as this contraption costs a bit more than my mason jar method, I think I'll only enjoy kyoto coffee as a rare treat, and do cold-brew the old-fashioned way. We also got an affogato (espresso poured over a scoop of honey-almond gelato). The gelato was incredibly light and airy, like someone had taken a whisk to it before serving, and the espresso mixed with the gelato to make the best coffee ice cream flavor. All in all this place was so impressive that I submitted my resume on the spot and asked them to take a chance on a coffee-nut with no barista experience. They nodded and smiled and said maybe (also read: maybe not).

random artwork on the side of a building depicting crap flying out of the windows

Ritual Coffee Roasters – 1050 Howard Street  somewhere too far to walk
One of the best known SF coffee roasters, Ritual Coffee is a popular meeting place for start-ups. These folks take their coffee seriously. Too bad we actually turned up at their old location (or the roaster facility) on howard street. All that marked the location was a little sign with an "R" on it. Since it didn't have Ritual Coffee's hammer and sickle on it, we figured it wasn't the right place. It's would've been nice to visit Ritual though. Maybe next time...

Sightglass, from across the street

Sightglass Coffee - clockwise from top left: their cool looking menu, the vintage Probat roaster, their water comes in a mason jar!, the espresso bar

Sightglass Coffee – 270 7th Street
One of the newest micro-roasters in SF (opened last august), this coffee shop is run by two brothers who both came from Blue Bottle Coffee (here’s some pictures from their opening). Set into the bland beige and white exterior of the rest of the 7th street block, Sightglass Coffee's dark brown exterior sticks out like a sore thumb. The interior of the roaster/café has a warehouse feel to it, with seating at natural tree-trunk plank tables in the loft spaces above the espresso bar. To the left of the bar is their vintage Probat roaster on display.

I got a Los Rosales (columbia) in a V-60 drip straight over ice. It came in a to-go cup since I wasn't sure if i'd be able to finish my third cup in the shop. The ice was a welcome break from the heat (low 80's is hot for SF) and the sweetness was a little surprising. It almost tasted like there was some hickory added to it. We found a table in the loft upstairs and took in the sights and smells of this new coffeehouse.