Tag: coffee

Tuesday’s Theme Music

Mood: Coffeevescent

The spinning never stops. Despite this, activities on Earth shift and a new day arrives. This one is May 7, 2024.

In Penn Hills, PA, we all awaken to light rain and 50 degrees F. Rain is expected to command the day. Cloud cover makes me think, yes, that’s going to happen. But the weather seers say that it’ll be 79 F before Penn Hills is spun away from facing Sol today.

Mom had a rough day yesterday. ‘Bowel matters’, you know? Apparently drained her pretty well — that pun is totally inadvertent — as she napped through the afternoon. I’d ordered Echo Pops for her house so we can use her Alexa as an intercom. That will end the need for her and Frank to bellow across the domicile at one another. Alexa can also be used to call others, including an ambulance. As Alexa is voice activated, if they fall and can’t get up, they can still call for help.

The Pops were a breeze to set up. Three were added to the system. At less than $20 each, they seem like a simple and inexpensive intercom solution. Because issue will be conditioning Mom and Frank to use them.

I’m at the coffee shop now. I’ve established a basic routine. Up a 7:45. Mediation, exercise, dress. Out the door to the coffee shop. Back before noon.

Mom and Frank are usually sleeping until tennish. Incidents in the night frequently break their sleep. Mom gets out of bed, dresses and comes downstairs by noon. I relieve Frank. He takes off to visit his family and work out at the gym. I visit with Mom, make her ‘breakfast’, and help her with her needs. Breakfast is marked like that because it’s usually after one before she wants to eat.

It’s a crowded coffee shop today, so I’m in my spaceship fantasy, where we’re not a planet hurtling through space, but a human made machine destined for a new planet.

Today’s song has unknown origins in my morning mental music stream (Trademark confused). The Neurons ordered up “Little Miss Can Be Wrong”. They’re treating their reasoning for that song choice as double top-secret closehold information.

Not that I mind the song. Released by the Spin Doctors in 1992, it’s energetic and beaty. Not bad music to be revolving over and over and over again in your mind, right, right?

Coffee is being inhaled. Be strong, stay cool and positive, and Vote Blue n 2024. That’s my current plan. Here’s the music. Cheers

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: coffeemistic

I’m ensconced in Penn Hills, PA, an eastern suburb of Pittsburgh, visiting family. A light rain is scenting the 64 F air with petrichor. Temp should peak at 67 F.

Weirdly, the weather seems ‘right’ to me. I emerged from my cocoon in this area and first spread my wings. Lived with Mom and grandparents when I was a child not going to school, moved away in conjunction with Dad’s military service, then returned here. Attended school in several small burghs for second grade through my high school sophomore year. Since Mom and a buncha extended family live here, I’ve been returning again and again on my own cycadean rhythm.

Tragically, Mom only serves decaf. She and her man only drink decaf. So, they make a big pot of coffee. Once it’s done brewing, they draw from it for days and doctor it with cream and nuke it in the microwave. Gag gag gag.

So I slipped away for coffee and writing, heading for a Starbucks. That works for Mother and I and the general household, since Mom and her BF sleep in late these days. She said she doesn’t emerge from her nocturnal seclusion until almost noon. Then her BF, already dressed, ensures she’s set up for the afternoon, and goes out on his errands. His first stop is the gym, where this former boxer, now in his early nineties, works out.

The Starbucks was chosen because it’s where my niece and her boyfriend work. Both are college grads with bachelor’s degrees. Her’s is in business administration. She speaks several languages and plays the violin and is still attending college, going into software and database administration.

So guess who served me? Yes, she looked up with widening eyes when I said, “Morning, Amy.” I hope to have more of a visit with her than that, of course.

Amy and I have a running joke from when she was a child. There’s a movie called The Mothman Prophecies which came out in 2002. It’s about a bridge collapse in Weirton, WV, and a mothman warning it was gonna happy. A brother-in-law (not Amy’s father) saw the movie while traveling in West Virginia. It freaked him out because after watching the movie, his hotel room phone began ringing, just like in the movie. He and I and Amy talked about it in subsequent years. I began calling her Mothgirl. She dubbed me Mothman.

Today’s music arrives via a conversation about me living on the west coast. Everyone hearing hat immediately asks, “California?” No, I’m from the Pacific Northwest, Oregon, to add more precision, Ashlandia, to get granular. But the California suggestions kicked The Neurons into filling the morning mental music stream (Trademark with “Californication”. The Red Hot Chili Peppers released the song in 1999. I immediately took to it. It’s a drool commentary about how Hollywood sells California as the place to be. Several little plays on pop culture are woven into the song.

On to the day. Stay strong, be positive, and Vote Blue in 2024. Here’s the music video. Cheers from Pennsylvania.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood:

Thwump thwump thwump…the helicopter goes on, up above the mountain high, hovering and waiting, waiting and hovering, picking up its load, going away again, dumping the load, coming back again.

Gotta be boring up there. Least the pilot should have a nice view, up above the trees so high, like a moon in the sky.

It’s a clear Monday, with blue running infinitely on and back again. Sunshine drenches the scene. 69 F now after an overnight low of 40 F, the thermometer is scaling the degrees. Probably stop at 76 F, they tell me. It’s April 22, 2024, for those keeping score at home.

The cats are as happy as floofs lazing in sunshine. An ear sometimes stirs. Another moment witnesses an eye cracking open a hair width. Other than those infrequent movements, they seem set for the next few hours.

Back in Pittsburgh, a new report has Mom feeling unwell again. Tests are being run. She’d been doing well and was scheduled to return home tomorrow. We’ll monitor all for the outcome. Little sister, aka grandma G, provides me with updates. She and her hubby had been sick herself recently. But they’re better know. Just seemed like a mild flu. I think we live in an era of health uncertainty. Sure the pandemic plays a role. I notice that many people around Ashlandia grow angry but resigned when they get sick. Wonder if that’s must my bias, or does this happen elsewhere?

Musically, The Neurons have “For All the Cows” ringing in my morning mental music stream (Trademark backtracking). Utilizing that song’s melody, I’d been singing about coffee. Actually, it was about my coffee cup. Like, I need a cup, a coffee cup, I’ll fill it up, if I had a coffee cup. I’d been wandering with the cup. It mindlessly departed my hand as I slipped through rooms and tasks. Found it in the third place I looked, my bathroom. Yes, I drink coffee in the bathroom while I’m shaving and dressing, okay. Although I didn’t shave today. Didn’t feel the need for a blade on my skin.

“For All the Cows” is a Dave Grohl/Foo Fighters production. Came out in 1995. It’s soft quasi-jazz opening and strange words are beguiling. I listen to it and search for some kind of meaning for what he’s singing about. I’ve always tentatively concluded it delivers an analogy comparing people to cows but also addressed success and the changes success brings to the herd, how you change herds with success. I don’t know. My understanding shifts, depending on my moo-ed. Heh.

Stay positive, strong, optimistic (that the same as positive?), and lean forward. Please Vote Blue. Now, more coffee and cow music. Cheers

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Sunday’s Wandering Thoughts

I was skateboarding the net yesterday, swerving from click to click. An ad bounced up for an Ashlandia coffee shop I used to regularly frequently. It permanenly closed due to the pandemic, Jan 2021.

My backstory is that I enjoy coffee shops as a place to write. I began doing that when I started working from home and began writing short stories in parallel. I use the process of going to the coffee shop as a method to put on my writing hat and throw off the rest of the world. Finding the right place is a challenge. There’s the taste. Location. Prices. Staff. Decent writing surface and a place to plug in. Wifi is a nice convenience to add.

The coffee’s shop closure during the pandemic was the abridged edition. Located in a hotel, a husband and wife team managed it on behalf of her father. He owned the hotel He came in one December day and told them that plans were changing. They protested. The exchange grew angry and loud. The husband and wife were fired.

I’d been loyal to them. The staff walked out with the managers in protest. Long-time customers like me left and didn’t return. They made changes. I visited once a few months later. It wasn’t the same. Management declared after that that only hotel guests were welcome. That was only in the morning.

Replacing it had been difficult. An ad to come patron it surprised me. I checked online: permanently closed, according to its FB page and website.

But businesses are often shoddy about keeping their social presence online up to date. I drove by. Dark. Empty. Closed.

I went on to my new favorite coffee shop. I’ve already lost four Ashlandia coffee shops in the nineteen years I’ve lived here. Hope I don’t lose a fifth. Yes, it’s all about me.

Still, I had to ponder the business intricacies that had an ad for a closed business riding on the net. Sometimes, it’s still garbage in, garbage out.

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The Writing Moment

Finished. Done. Over. Completed.

Yes, I’ve completed rev five of the novel in progress. Its current working title is Memories of Why. Speculative historic fiction. Couple cups of science fiction tempered with a pint of fantasy and a few tablespoons of revisionism. 523 pages in Word. 160,000 words. Probably over three hundred large cups of coffee. Began writing it in March of last year. Started with a character — a cherub — and their imprisonment and sugar addiction. Grew from there. Humans are about as involved as Martians. Or the reverse. Azure Iarnum — AI — had a bigger role than Humans or Martians. Dragons played a small role, as did ‘spaceships’.

Next: revise again. I think I’m getting somewhere.

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Monday’s Wandering Thoughts

It’s a first for me. Today’s coffee shop crew is all male. I’ve seen all-female crews several times. As I wrote, this is a first. Wondered if it was planned, a response to females noting that there’s often all-female crews, or just happenstance of the schedule. I suspect the last one.

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The Writing Moment

One important matter that many new writers overlook is, what does their muse want?

The muse can fill a critical function in the fiction writin’ process, so identifying them and learning what they like — and DISLIKE — can be a significant component of your personal process. Sometimes, as it is for me, it’s more than one muse, so the aspiring writer must pay attention to who the muses are and what they do. Fer ‘nstance, my muses love coffee. Don’t try to pawn tea or chai off on ‘em; they’ll inform you with seething disgust that they’re not the same. However, some of the muses are more impatient and arrogant than the others. Some of them read someone else’s fiction and immediately scream into my ear, “Write something like that!” I’m always coping with them doing that. The way I do so, with more patience and caution that touching a sleeping cat’s belly, is to gently promise I will write something like that after I finish this (whatever this is) and hope they accept and quiet down.

BTW, don’t try to overlook the grammar and punctuation muses. They can be wrong but they will push and push for a decision about a comma, period, tense, noun, verb, and so on, until they’re satisfied (at least for the moment).

My muses are not fond of writing at home, cuz cats, spouse, phone – well, environmental distractions. (Yeah, we still have a home phone, althought it’s VOIP.) My muses like it in a noisy coffee shop where nobody pays attention to them and they can write in peace surrounded by people bustling around on their business. As I have multiple muses (sometimes called musi in the more traditional plural spelling) (yeah, just kiddin’ ‘bout that), I need to ensure the right one shows up on time. Little is worse for me than entering a revision session only to have a ‘new project’ muse enter to help, suggesting the concept for a new novel, novella, short story, movie, song, play, or essay.

Last, my musi demand time and focus on them everyday. If they don’t get it, they spoon crankiness, exasperation, and irritation into my mood. So, every day, no matter what’s happenin’, they want me to sit and write or edit. They don’t care if zombies are overrunning the neighborhood, a blizzard is underway, or nukes are falling. Nor is being hungry, sick, or social engagements a concern for ’em. They want their writing or editing time. And don’t think that research is good enough for the muse. I’ve tried mollifying them with research; my muses don’t buy it and will sometimes go off and sulk, leaving me without a muse to write. I can do it, but it’s a bit like having problems with a bowel movement.

Now, back to writing. So sayeth the muse what’s in charge.

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Monday’s Theme Music

Mood: coffeesophical (when you’re just sipping coffee and thinking)

Monday, which is today, Jan. 15, 2024, which is also today, is weather ala carte. Got some fresh sunshine with sides of 38 F, fog, and blue sky. Mixing it up, you know?

I have a John Prine song in the head today, an impromptu addition to my thoughts supplied by The Neurons out of the blue. Well, kind of out of the blue. I was thinking about how easily we become insulated against others’ worries and needs, actually, how we become thoughtless about others’ existence. Things are taken for granted; minor matters gain weight because we have so little bothering us. Out of that came John Prine and a song called, “That’s the Way the World Goes Round” orbiting my morning mental music stream (Trademark done). Originally released in 1978, Prine sang it with Colbert back in 2016, and Cobert broadcast it when he learned that Prine was stricken with COVID-19 and on a ventilator. Well complications from that took Prine in 2020.

Pursue a positive attitude, buck up and be strong, and remain leaning forward with hope for a better existence for people. I’m talkin’ less violence, greed, and hate, you know? Coffee time is fully underway. Here’s the music. Cheers

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The Power of Coffee

I probably mentioned it before, but my first sip of coffee is actually two or three deep inhalations of the aroma. I’ve done this more or less since I began drinking coffee as a young adult, but the idea was solidified as a ritual when I read that coffee’s smell enhances focus, memory, and attention span. Figuring I needed whatever advantage I could dredge up, I embraced my ritual.

I imagine that some day, I’ll be older, and sharing that with strangers in coffee shops. But not today.

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Saturday’s Theme Music

Mood: Hapup (happy and upbeat)

Saturday, January 13, 2024, has arrived with higher temperatures and heavy, wind-driven rain whipping Ashlandia (where the coffee is excellent and the parks are above average). It’s 42 F now, not far from the expected peak of 49 F. Rain has been falling all night, and the misty low, fat clouds look like they have a lot more to give.

The cats both wanted out this morning after their breakfast. Tucker settled in a dry but cold location on the front porch while Papi sought whatever drives him to wander. I managed to coax both back in after thirty minutes. When they came in, both dashed for me and I discovered Papi was soaked. I toweled him off (despite his protests and efforts to flee) and then Papi headed for the kibble station while Tucker went to the litter box.

Left home early, didn’t take the dog (don’t have one) or the cats (I have two). Coffee shop numero uno was at full cap so I went to numero dos. A prime writing location was available so I sat and began. Unfortunately, I discovered that a leak was exploring the ceiling above and splashing down. I alerted the staff and shifted sites. No good writing location was available but I found a table and set up camp. A young guy at my most preferred site. Understanding that I was on a laptop and could use an outlet, he approached and offered it to me. Such kindness. I offered to buy him something as reward but he declined.

One amusing thing was observed. I saw one barista drift through, washing off the unused tables and tidying. About four minutes after she went through, a second one went through, doing the same thing to the same tables.

Very satisfying and uplifting dreams were experienced last night. Hope everyone has such dreams in their life. Thinking about it had The Neurons plug “What Is Life” by George Harrison (1971) intorock the morning mental music stream (Trademark drifting). I get what The Neurons are doing there, because I’d been musing about life since a conversation with a friend about death the other day. Her husband worries about death and fears it. I related back that I didn’t worry about it because we don’t know if there is an ‘other side’ or the full nature of ourselves and our existence. I mean, between religion, science, and philosophy, we’ve developed some great ideas and insights about what it is. But knowledge is ever-evolving, and as we explore the quantum side of being more, we might surprise ourselves with what we learn. “I think, therefore I am,” might even apply to us after we die along paths that we can’t yet divine.

Stay pos, lean forward, remain strong, and test negative. Coffee and its bennies are already perking through my systems. Here is thy theme music. Cheers

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