wandering

It's 12:30. I am done eating lunch (roast beef, cheddar, cucumbers and lettuce on Peasant White Springmill Bakery bread; Cape Cod russet chips, and an asian pear), so I could open my door, but I think I'll hide just a little bit longer.

One of my favorite kinds of weather is the just-after-a-rainstorm time. I love the smell, I love the lifting of spirits that comes when the sun peeks out, I love that it tends to cool down a bit. I hope that, if Frances brings us a storm, that the post-storm is a good one. This is also one of the reasons I wouldn't mind moving to Portland. Lots of good, post-rain weather.

My brain is not in this school year. It's on Tim finishing his dissertation and getting a job. Which is funny, since thoughts of my getting a job are absent from all these thoughts. I'm sure I will work, but I'm confident that I'll find something when I get there. This is the first time since grad school that I've had this kind of confidence. I like it.

My mind is also on travelling -- Phily for a daylong Scrabble tourney in a few weeks, Cincinnati for a conference next month, Dublin in November, back home to Chicago in December, and hopefully NYC some time before winter break, but I'm not sure how we'll fit that in.

Is it the weekend yet?

liquid refreshment

I brought a 1 gallon jug of water up from an open house this week. I think I like keeping a gallon of water in the office from which to fill my Nalgene. Perhaps I will keep it under my desk indefinitely.

I've noticed that since I started drinking more coffee, I drink almost a quart of milk a week. Healthy bones are happy bones, even if the caffeine is probably negating half the calcium.

I have now tried the following bubble tea flavors: black milk bubble tea with pudding, kiwi black bubble tea, coconut milk bubble tea, red bean milk bubble tea, taro black milk bubble tea. thai iced bubble tea, and probably some others that I don't remember. I have frequented Ten Ren and the bubble tea stand in Maryland, and Jenny's, Saint's Alp, Pearl, and Ten Ren in NYC, as well as the tea at the street fairs. My favorites so far were the black milk tea with pudding at Ten Ren, as the pudding adds an extra layer of texture, and the red bean bubble tea smoothie at jenny's on the lower east side. The bubbles taste sweeter, and the consistency of the smoothie was good -- no ice chunks that didn't get blended, or other problems.

I am going to miss sweet tea now that we're hitting colder weather. We've been making iced tea with Lipton bags, mint from the garden, and sugar. I'll substitute with apple cider from Farmer's, though, so that's a seasonal beverage to look forward to. Maybe I'll even try a hot bubble tea for a change, but really, the cold ones are so good...

When I'm home, I drink my coffee out of my big Chicago Starbucks mug. I don't know how much it holds, but I love it, and it's about the only mug I use. I have three rotating insluated cups for school, and inevitably leave them on my desk for a couple of days, which is why three is a good number to keep in rotation.

I learned from http://coffeefaq.com/caffaq.html that a 7 oz cup of coffee contains more caffeine than a 2 oz shot of espresso, so that makes me feel better about the relative amount of espresso I consume in one sitting. Caribou Coffee's turtle mochas are among my favorite commercial coffee beverages. Intelligentsia's are better, but nowhere near me, alas.

When I worked at Green Planet smoothie bar, I could drink 72 ounces of smoothie in a day. I'd have a 36 oz when I got to work, and take one with me for the road. This was usually in place of one, if not two meals. I'd almost always have an Espresso Express, which consisted of about 6 oz of espresso, 2 scoops of ice milk (similar to frozen yogurt), a couple squirts of chocolate syrup, a cup of strawberries, and as much milk as I needed to make it blend well. My second smoothie was usually some combination of cranberry juice, yogurt, ice cream or sherbet, and strawberries, blueberries, and/or peaches. I tried to avoid bananas. Also good was the 24 Carrot, which was half orange juice, half carrot juice and ice milk, with a little bit of honey.