I have stumbled across a resource overflowing with possibilities. The Bureau of Communication facilitates the amazingly easy customization of letters in the form of fill-in-correspondence. Need to profess your undying love? Need to send holiday greetings or convey a begrudging apology? No worries. Just fill in all the pertinent information and click in the appropriate spots and you're golden.

A decade ago, an unknown toy designer (at least to me) pitched some designs to Lucas right before Episode 1 came out and most of them didn't make it to market. Heaven knows why as I would love to have these adorning my living room/balcony/person ... if I was firmly committed/resigned to leading a bachelor life ... and having only Star Wars nerds as friends ... and believing that I could subsist entirely on barbecued meat, Death Star gumballs and carbonite-chilled Pepsi.

I'm not the biggest Star Wars fan by any stretch but it's still fun to see these.

In recent months, I have become something of a coffee afficianado (despite being cursed with a low tolerance for caffeine and can't drink the stuff after 6pm) and have spent no small portion of my abundant free time delving into the dark depths of this roasted world garnering information on everything from the types of beans available and degrees of roasting, to the various methods of coaxing that magical elixir from said beans. Being something of a gourmand herself, ets has also taken an interest in my dabblings, albeit that of an observer who benefits from my experimentations.

My Hario Nouveau vac-pot will be arriving soon and my eager hands already have in their grasp a bag of whole coffee beans and a ceramic burr grinder. I am assured somewhat indirectly by others that the vac-pot is the way to go and has the added bonus of looking like something a mad-scientist might use. It seems like the ideal trade-off in terms of time, hassle, and end-result for me. I draw the line at actually roasting my own beans which seems a bit too fanatical for me.

Since the grinder arrived in the post yesterday, I woke up extra early today (all of 30 minutes) to grind myself some beans and use ets' French press in lieu of the vac-pot. Following numerous accounts found on the net and adhering to coffee canon, I ground 20 grams of beans for the 2-cup (allegedly) French press which actually fit in my regular-sized mug. The resulting concoction has me still riding the crest of an epic caffeine high 2 hours on. Thankfully, my hands aren't vibrating themselves into oblivion.

I don't know if it's just that cold here or whether it's because of the coffee but I can't feel my face.

That said, the coffee was remarkable and so unlike the supermarket coffee we usually imbibe that I felt even more justified in sinking a bit of money into the new toys. I already intend to make my earlier-than-usual waking a regular occurance just to make a fresh cup of joe and head off to work brighter-eyed than before. I doubt I'll use the vac-pot and instead use the press for my daily pre-work fix and save the gravity-defying feats for the weekends when ets and I will also most likely have some fresh bread to go along with it. Good times.

Labels: coffee