Not To Be Trusted With Knives

Despite my coffee snobbery, I’ve started drinking Tim Horton’s coffees of late. It started when I was in the hospital for my Dad’s surgery. The coffee shop in the hospital¹ was a Timmy’s. And my Dad *loved* his Timmy’s, so drinking it makes me think of him. I had one at the airport on the way home from Ontario. And when Devon texted this past weekend when he was on the way over to my place informing me that it is Roll Up The Rim to Win season and offering to pick up coffee, I said “Yes, please!” And when I rolled up the rim on that coffee, I actually won!

1. As an aside: the hospital also had a Colonel Sanders Wing. Like as in the Kentucky Fried Chicken guy. Apparently he lived in Mississauga at some point and gave a bunch of cash to the hospital and they named a wing after him. It was called something like “The Colonel Sanders Family Care Wing” or some such. I thought it should have been the Cardiac Care Wing, personally, but perhaps that is a bit too obvious. [↩]

As I’m sure you know, I’m a coffee-holic. So I thought I’d share the follow two coffee tidbits with you.

First, ThinkGeek has a grown-your-own-coffee-plant kit! Seriously, it comes with everything you need to grow coffee plants on your window sill. How cool would it be to drink coffee that you grew yourself? Sadly, they don’t ship this product outside of the U.S. =(

Second, did you know that people drink coffee made out of cat poo? True story. Apparently coffee berries get wonderfully fermented while traveling down the digestive tract of civet cats and then people pick the coffee beans out of their poo and roast it and then charge a crazy amount of money for this coffee. Did I mentioned that this coffee is made from pooed out coffee beans? I think I’ll stick to my regular feces-free coffee, thank you very much.

I had my annual eye exam yesterday and, happily, everything is exactly the same as it was a year ago. In fact, I just read over my blog posting from last year’s eye exam and I could pretty much copy and paste it and it would be accurate for this year’s exam – my optometrist did all the same tests and said all the same things: my vision is still great, more than two years after my last laser eye surgery, my retinal latticing is still there, but hasn’t changed and she doesn’t really expect it too, but is keeping an eye on just in case. And I took another photo of my dilated pupils:

My optometrist showed me the pictures she took of my retinas, where you can just  make out  my retinal latticing – it’s slightly worse in the left eye than the right eye. Oddly, my right eye is also better in terms of vision – it’s 20/20, whereas my left eye is slightly less than 20/20 – even though the retinal latticing and the vision are in no way related. Fortunately, I’m right eye dominant, so if one eye has to be weaker, it’s good that it’s the left.

In related news, since my optometrist’s office is in my old ‘hood on the west side, I popped into Stong’s grocery store to see if they had any of my favourite coffee, as I’m running low. The last few times I’ve been there they didn’t have it in whole bean form, only in ground form, but since I’m running low I figured it was better than nothing. However, to my surprise, they not only had it in whole bean form, but it was on sale for $3 off! And they also had the decaf coffee I like¹ on sale for $3 off! Needless to say, I stocked up on as many bags of coffee as I could get. Translation: I spent an unholy amount on coffee beans today, but I save $27 (!) and now have coffee supplies to last me well into next year!

1. I use it half and half with the regular stuff so as to cut down on the amount of caffeine I consume. [↩]

Shortly after signing up for the Longest Game of Hockey for CF, I came to a stark and unwelcome realization: I have to stop consuming caffeine! Playing hockey all day, every day means I won’t have time for such things as drinking coffee. And I know that whenever I go a day without drinking coffee, I get a caffeine withdrawal headache. From what I’ve read, those last for several days – unless of course, you go back on the caffeine, which I won’t have the option to do given the aforementioned playing of hockey all day, every day. Since the last thing I want is do is suffer through several days of headache while I play hockey, I figure I should stop with the caffeine already.

Consuming less caffeine – ur doing it wrong.

I have been a caffeine addict¹ for my entire adult life. It started when I got a job in a coffee shop at 14 years of age. Having to be up at 5 a.m. to get the store opened + access to an unlimited supply of free coffee = one bad coffee habit. University didn’t help, with its several all nighters per week in undergrad and its round-the-clock lab sessions in my doctoral studies². Thus, coffee has long been a staple in my life. In addition to coffee, I’m also a big drinker of diet Pepsi. And black tea. A typical day of caffeine consumption³ for me looks like this:

To put that into context for you, Health Canada’s recommendation is:

For women of childbearing age, the recommendation is a maximum daily caffeine intake of no more than 300 mg, or a little over two 8-oz (237 ml) cups of coffee. For the rest of the general population of healthy adults, Health Canada advises a daily intake of no more than 400 mg.

Holy crap. I knew I consumed a lot of caffeine, but I didn’t realize I was getting more than TWICE as much as is recommended⁶. And this doesn’t even count days that I go to Starbucks or Esquires⁷ for an afternoon cup of joe.

Coworker came into my office with chocolate covered espresso beans. Mmm, chocolate covered espresso beans!

Obviously, I need to do something to bring my caffeine consumption into check. My first action on this front has been to mix my regular coffee beans with decaf ones⁸. This brings my daily total down to a mere 487 mg. Still too much, but it’s a start. My initial plan was that I would gradually up the decaf-to-regular ratio over the course of the spring/summer, and switch to decaf Diet Pepsi⁹ and decaf tea in order to gradually wean myself off caffeine. But now I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to just go cold turkey, suffer through a week long headache and be done with it. I guess I still have some time to decide. But I’m curious – anyone out there have any experience with giving up caffeine? Any thoughts/recommendations for me?

1. Technically, I should say that I’m “dependent” on caffeine rather than addicted, as my requirement for caffeine does not really fit the definition of addiction, primarily in that I don’t “compulsive[ly] drug seek[...] and use, despite harmful consequences.” [↩]
2. When we had experiments running, our schedules were totally dependent on the circadian rhythms of the rats – we needed to weigh and feed them in the afternoon, take blood samples at midnight, and be back in the lab very early for the morning sampling, which would last until it was time to weigh and feed them again. [↩]
3. Source of these caffeine contents data: Centre for Science in the Public Interest. It was easier to Google it than to get up and retrieve one of my textbooks. [↩]
4. I drink one mugful while I’m getting ready in the morning and put the rest in my travel mug to take to the office [↩]
5. Or sometimes at dinner, if I don’t have one at lunch [↩]
6. Even if I go with the fact that I know I’m not knocked up and use the “regular” healthy adults recommendation, rather than the one for “women of childbearing age,” I’m still consuming 178% of the recommended amount!! [↩]
7. Which are rare, thanks to my cheapness. [↩]
8. This was something that a naturopath recommended to my ages ago. [↩]
9. Or, really, just cut out the Diet Pepsi altogether. [↩]

When I was doing my month of hot yoga, every day on the way from the yoga studio to work I woud pass a teepee where they sell coffee. Seriously, there’s this little building that looks like a teepee on King George Boulevard (of Broken Dreams)¹  and with a sign that says they sell organic coffee. And I’d always think, “I wonder if their coffee is any good.” Today I decided to find out. On the way from my morning yoga class to the office, I drove up and purchased a large coffee for $2.25.

For the record – the coffee is pretty decent.

1. King George Boulevard used to be, until quite recently, called King George Highway. When they renamed it to a Boulevard, Kalev and I found it quite amusing, since it really doesn’t have that “boulevard” kind of feel to it, and when he came to Surrey to embark on our Seattle road trip this summer, we started calling it the “King George Boulevard (of Broken Dreams)” and I can’t stop calling it that! [↩]

So, we’ve all heard that buying coffee is one of the big ways that a lot of people blow huge amounts of money without even realizing it.  Drink a coffee a day? If it’s simple $2 coffee, that’s $730 a year… and if it’s a $5 fru fru Starbucks drink, you’re talking $1,825 a year! That’s enough to cover my car insurance for the year… or almost three months rent¹!!

So, how much cheaper is it to make coffee at home?  Well, being the scientist that I am, I decided to do some fancy pants maths to figure that out.  Where by “fancy pants maths” I mean counting how many pots of coffee I can make from a bag of beans.  Now, I’m a bit of a coffee snob, so I won’t drink cheap, crappy coffee.  My coffee of choice is Fair Trade Organic Bolivian from Level Ground Trading²  A 300 g bag of this deliciousness makes ~500 fluid oz of coffee.  If you divide that up into 12 oz³ cups, that’s 42 coffees.  And though a 300 g bag of beans officially costs $15, I always stock up on it when it’s on sale for $11⁴.  That works out to 26 cents per 12 oz cup.

Let me me say that again:

• 12 oz cup of coffee at a coffee shop = ~$2.00
• 12 oz cup of coffee at home = $0.26!

That’s EIGHT TIMES cheaper!  Even if I paid full price for the beans, it would still only be $0.36 per 12 oz cup!  And remember, I’m not talking about some crappy tasting coffee – this is fair trade, organic and absolutely delicious!  In fact, I actually like my homemade coffee more than stuff from a coffee shop!

Given my cheapness, I’ve been pretty good about not buying coffees out since I’ve been on my budget, but even *I* didn’t realize that that making it at home was so much cheaper! Now that I’ve done the math, I have a really, really hard time buying coffees!

Image Credit: Posted by Refracted Moments on Flickr using a Creative Commons license.

1. granted, I do have pretty cheap rent [↩]
2. as usual, I have no financial interest in this company.  I know it’s surprising, but they haven’t paid me off for this endorsement.  Though, for the record, I’d *totally* take a bribe in the form of free samples.  I’m just sayin’. [↩]
3. or a Starbucks tall [↩]
4. and on very special days, it’ll be on sale for $9, and then I *really* stock up! [↩]

There may be no such thing as a free lunch, but I seem to have won myself some free coffee!  As you know, I heart free stuff, so when I saw that one can have their name entered into a draw for a free gift card by tweeting @BlenzCoffee, you know I was right on top of that one.  And then I promptly forgot that I’d tweeted about it.  And later I got this message:

And shortly thereafter I received this in the mail:

Now if only there were a Blenz coffeeshop anywhere near my home or work!  Ah well, I’m pretty sure there’s one on Broadway that I’ll end up at sometime in the near future.

Anyhoo, thanks Blenz!

It’s time for another round of “random stuff on my cell phone camera”¹.

It’s always funny to see Windows error messages out in public and now that I’m a Mac owner, doubly so:

Saw this on the wall of a Starbucks:

I think they mean to say that their coffee is made from the top 3% of coffee beans in the world. But when I read “Can you spot the coffee made from 3% of the world’s best coffee beans?” that sounds like there is a pool of the “world’s best coffee beans” and then Starbucks only uses 3% of that pool – meaning that someone else is using 97% of the best coffee beans in the world.  Am I off on that?

And speaking of coffee:

“Best of BC” coffee?  What, exactly, about coffee from “Indonesia, Columbia and Central America” makes this “BC” coffee?

Saw this in Chapters one day:

And all I could think was “yeah, $1 for the Leafs. That’s about what the team is worth.”

Also saw these two displays in Chapters:

And all I could think was “It’s A Guy Thing”? “It’s a Girl Thing?”  How about “It’s a Sexist Thing”?  The “girl” display had romance novels, and books about dieting, relationships and celebrities – none of which I would read, although I am most decidedly a female.  The “guy” one contained books about business, politics, sports (all of which I would read), plus heavy metal and, of course, “How Do You Light A Fart?”

Next door to Chapters was Winners, where I saw these stamps:

Seriously, how many sick people do you have to know to make buying a “Get Well Soon” stamp worth the money?  Like, you just find yourself writing”Get Well Soon” so freakin’ often that you really need the stamp?

Similarly:

This stamp says, “I’m thinking of you, but not enough to write “Thinking of You” by hand.  I think about a lot of people, OK?”

This next photo is clearly one I took a long time ago, ‘cuz it’s at a bus stop and I haven’t taken a bus in ages²:

Ah, young love where the young “lover’s 4ever” have the same unisex name and don’t understand when not to use an apostrophe.

And finally, I just loved what the artist who made this sign thinks slipping looks like:

1. which is just stuff that I’ve photographed thinking “I totally have to blog that!” and then it sits on my phone for months on end until one day I’m flipping through said photos, usually to show someone a photo of Tod’s cat (cutest cat ever, btw), and see them and go – oh yeah, I *totally* meant to blog that! [↩]
2. since buying my beloved Smart Car [↩]

OMG, this coffee is delicious!

Yesterday I hit my 800th Tweet. In commemoration of this momentous occasion, and because I am putting all my mad writing skillz into writing this big ole report from my recent work in Yellowknife and thus have none left for blogging so I decided to steal my previous writing from Twitterland, and besides, everyone loves a list, don’t they?, I give you a list of my favourite Tweets:

• Nutrition pop quiz: What would be worse for me to get for a lunch: a Tim Horton’s cheese scone or a Häagen Daaz ice cream bar?
• Had a meeting this morning, followed by a post-meeting debrief meeting. Now, to change things up a bit, I’m going to go run a meeting.
• Rest in peace, green pen I was using to mark exams. You will be missed.
• Just knocked half a cup of coffee onto the floor, on top of a pile of papers. Awesome.
• Summarizing a 500 page Senate report. You know you are jealous.
• Parts of me that hurt: groin injury, neck, left triceps.
• My amount-of-work-to-do to motivation-to-do-work ratio is waaay out of whack.
• Flickr search for photos to use in my nutrition lecture reveals a surprising number of cats are named “Scurvy”
• Best line from the meeting I was at tonight: If there’s one thing that this group needs to do, it’s… something.
• @touchyoulast When is the movie marathon? What movies are you watching? Crimetime? Crimetime? Have you thought about watching Crimetime?
• Not enough hours in the day. And my thigh highs are being less than cooperative.
• I dropped my earring in my coffee this morning. And my very first thought was “I need to Twitter this.”
• The Canucks *finally* listened to my advice to use a Sedin in the shootout. And by “advice,” I mean “yelling at the radio.”
• Drowning Canuck-related sorrows with chocolate chip cookie dough.
• Feeling pressure to Twitter something now that I’ve joined. I have Twitter block!

In an attempt to prove that I’m only partially, and not completed, ego-centric, here are the three Tweets written by other people that I’ve favourited:

• touchyoulast Currently taking care of business. Every day, every way, it’s all mine, and working overtime. Also: work out.
• todmaffin BREAKING: Parliament recommends funding increase for CBC. In related news, pigs have been reported flying and a cold snap in hell begins.
• audihertz Aww… Adam Foote hurt his arme

Also, I just wanted to show y’all that I have 69 followers. Tee hee… 69.