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Black Coffee in the Shower

Submitted entry: It’s been a full day already. There are some days here where you look up in the late afternoon and it seems like all you’ve done since waking in the morning is made some lunch somewhere in the fog. But today was different. Today Sage woke up at 6:30 and was on the net for a while at the house while Paul and I slept in to about 8:00. Then when she got back we packed our books, I went for a shower and we were on the road for Springfield to two of the big libraries there.

Showering this morning really reminded me of a simple pleasure I had all but forgotten. Some people like long, lingering baths with lots of bubbles, maybe a few candles and incense. Not me. I’m a shower kind of person. I’d much rather have a 15 minute shower surrounded by steam than any time in a bath, hot tub or whatever you might suggest. Partly it’s because at six feet tall I have yet to find a comfortable home bath. But mostly it’s purely visceral. Showering clears my mind, makes me think better and wakes me up. But the simple pleasure I had forgotten was that of having a cup of strong black coffee in the shower.

Sure, I discovered this pleasure under less than inspiring circumstances. About 10 years ago I was living in a shared house with 3-4 other guys and weekends were very often spent drinking until the wee hours and listening to classic rock by the likes of Jeff Beck, Yes and others. The morning I discovered showering with a cup of coffee I was hung over after a particularly rousing night (you could tell how much we drank by our progression through the music - we’d start the night with Yes or maybe Eric Johnson, work our way through Deep Purple and Black Sabbath and if we’d really had a lot to drink we’d end with Judas Priest - let’s say that night was a Judas Priest evening). I have always found that coffee helps a headache as does a hot shower on the back of the neck. This morning I thought that I’d try the two together for maximum effect. And, embarrassingly enough, I tried one more remedy at the same time - another beer. Fortunately for all of us only the coffee and shower combination really stuck otherwise this might be a totally different journal with different readers (or the same readers reading for different reasons). And so this morning I found myself in the shower waking up with a cup of coffee for the first time in about 2 years. I always feel the really inspired in moments like that.

So after I showered we took off for the library. After a short detour in town for breakfast (a rather uninspiring one of french toast, potatoes and coffee).

I got interrupted and sidetracked and now it’s 11:30AM on the 21st)

So anyway, we spent a great day in Springfield, and loaded up on even more books, and CDs. I got a card (we were only using Sage’s) and so now we can have up to 100 items out at any one time. I think we’re close to that now. It’s amazing how differently the yurt feels when we have a ton of books, either our own or someone else’s. It’s hard to imagine us living in a home without books.

When we got home it was nearly 4:30 and so we put the laptop battery in to charge and then I went back to the yurt to start dinner. Sage did some work on the computer at the house. Since I was tired from the trip I just threw together a Bengalore Phal of tofu and a little rice. And having installed some recipe cataloging and menu planning software on the laptop I threw away the recipe and saved it on the laptop (which was with Sage). Fortunately I had a vague memory of what the recipe required and so I made it from memory. Both Sage and I agree that batch was among the best ever. Now if I could only figure out what I did differently!

After Sage ate, I played with Paul for a while and Sage had a bath at the house. By the time Sage returned, Paul was ready to nurse to sleep and Sage also was ready for bed (it was only 8:00 but as it’s getting darker earlier in the night we’re all getting tired early). Note: upcoming technical drivel - I’m indenting it so that those of you who aren’t interested can skip it easily…

I, meanwhile, removed Redhat Linux and installed Slackware Linux. I liked this one much better as far as installing went. Redhat was much like Windows in that it didn’t tell what it was installing just how far along it was. Slackware was the opposite. I had no idea how long it was going to take but it told me what every package it was installing was for and asked me if I wanted to install each optional one.

So finally, around midnight I got the whole thing installed, got XFree86 configured so that I had a graphical interface and the mouse worked and called it a night. Sadly, as far as my mind was concerned that was only the beginning. It was an effort just to pull myself away from the computer instead of staying up a couple more hours fine tuning. And so my mind got it’s way too - I slept really lightly and dreamed all night about what comes next - rebuilding the kernel so the soundcard and PCMCIA stuff works and installing the network card. I’m excited to start in again when I can - probably later this evening. Oh, and the verdict is that I found that Redhat’s distribution running Gnome was way slower than Slackware’s for some reason.

The weather has flipped back and forth over the past several days, probably prolonging this minor cold we’ve all had. Yesterday morning it was warm, then the wind switched to the north, clouds rolled in and a chill breeze came through. Last night it got down to 40 degrees but still not really cold enough for the stove to be installed unless in the search for a warm morning we want to have a stuffy yurt all day as the temperature goes to the 80’s during the day. Today the wind switched back to the southeast and it is a gorgeous, clear and sunny day.

Interesting observation today too. Having been up too late last night and not really sleeping well or very much last night I expected to be a zombie today but instead I’m feeling pretty chipper. I do feel tired, don’t get me wrong, but it doesn’t seem to be impacting my productivity. If I could bottle this phenomenon and sell it I’d make a bunch of money. Of course, it could be bottled. I’ve been taking multivitamins (with ginseng) for about a week now.

That’s about all for now, I think. Sage is on the laptop so I can’t put this up yet (Paul’s off with his granny) and so I might heat up a little of this morning’s scrambled tofu (dissolve 1 tbsp of vegetable broth powder in about 4-6 tbsp of olive oil, fry a pepper, onion and about 6 cloves of garlic in that, add a pound of tofu and mash it. Mix in dried herbs (oregano, thyme, basil, pepper and dill) and a little chili garlic paste and serve with toast) make another cup of coffee and read a little.

I must remember the beans. I must remember the beans.

Saying Yes and No