Coffee and other thoughts

Last week, i used up the last of my roasted coffee, and had no more coffee to roast (I had gotten a five pound sampler from Sweet Maria's coffee roasters in Oakland when I bought my new roaster). I decided to make due with inferior coffee options until I could get to Seattle Coffee Works and get a green beans.
Which is what i set out to do on Saturday.
But! Capitol Hill Coffee Works, on Pike, is closed (and in the process of becoming a Jewish Deli, which requires further investigation at some point). So, to Downtown I go, and the Original Store (or, rather, the relocated original store).
BUT! They don't have any Green Coffee on display. I asked the person behind the counter. They say, No, No More Green Coffee. And another person behind the counter elaborates. Seattle Coffee Works have been bought by Vivace Coffee. And, They have decided that "keeping green coffee is too much trouble". How,I ask, is NOT roasting the coffee More Trouble than roasting it!? It KEEPS LONGER this way! And other ranting thing, which they agreed with (I tried to be clear that I was ranting with them, not at them, as I know it is not their responsibility and not their decision, etc.) There was shared dismay.
So. I no longer have a reliable local source for Green Coffee. I have ordered coffee from Sweet Marias (they have a subscription model that I am curious about; eight one pound bags every two months, automatically. Will this result in an excessive amount of coffee? probably. But, as noted, it does not go bad quickly, so I can pause if things get out of hand).
In the meantime.
I got a growler of Cold Brew from downstairs. And I am, slowly, figuring out how much concentrate to dilution is required. Not least because it appears to be a dark roast, to the point where it causes me issues.
The coffee journey continues. Maybe I should just open my own shop? How hard can THAT be?

ETA; As of yesterday, I got the mix (concentrate to water) right. Or more right. It did not cause stomach or headache issues. I was, however, Jittery AF. Which served me well, riding my bike to work.

Since I took Shiva to the vet, and then came home alone.
Grief is a thing.
I was getting coffee, and she asked me if I want cream or sugar, and I started to say (like I always do) "no, I like it black like my cat", but what i actually said was "no, I like it black like..." and I had to stop and NOT cry, because crying at a barista for no apparent reason is generally rude, at best. I mean, there are times and circumstances where it might be totally reasonable. But I don't have that kind of relationship with this barista.
So, I had to explain myself (had to because I am me) with a lot of "And this is not your problem and nothing to do with you and I am sorry to be this weird guy at you and thank you for being so amazingly kind about all of this" because she was. I could not avoid being weird, that was built in; I could avoid being creepy, I hope, and that required a sort of honesty and openness, because she asked.
I told my coworker that I was a bit off, in the first days, and he said that he was dealing with two years ago that day that is brother died. So. We shared the grief, a little. And maybe made it a little easier for each other.
And today, I am giving the massage i was supposed to give two weeks ago. To my friend who cat sits... cat sat? for me a couple times, who Shiva really liked (in fairness, on the whole, Shiva liked most people, and REALLY liked people who gave her food). So, massage and more grief processing.
Therefore, Dutch baby with Cherries and a side of bacon and fresh coffee.
Oh, and. I have a "spare" D&D character, who is kind of sort of semi canon in my game. A Warlock who lives in a bottle on the shelf at the coffee bar. I had already pretty much decided he was Pact of the Chain, with a psuedo dragon familiar. But I hadn't found the right name for the Psuedodragon, until this week. You see, I know virtually nothing about Hinduism. The cat Shiva was named by my daughter, who knew slightly less than I do now (hence a male name for a female cat (which is probably not bothersome to either the cat or the deity (though I am certain there are folks who can speak to that better than I can (on the Diety's behalf, I am certain the cat regarded it the way all cats regard the names people give them)))). However, one of the things I kind of knew about Hiduism is that Shiva has many alternate names.
So, I named the psuedodragon "Mahadeva", and found a token for her that is black with green eyes.
Because grief is a thing.

I realized something.
I have fresh farmers market strawberries, sheeps milk yogurt from the farmers market, and orange juice.
And I have a hand blender.
What I am saying is, I have the components of a breakfast smoothie.
And it is awesome.

Not a big deal. Right.
I am drinking coffee I roasted myself.
Again, if we have met, no big deal.
I am drinking coffee I roasted myself in my brand new Popper.
Now we are getting somewhere.
You see, several weeks ago, my roaster ... died. Just flat out stopped working. Which, having been of use for many many years, is tragic but not unreasonable. So, a new roaster was shopped for, while I made do with coffee that other folks have roasted (Seattle Coffee Works (a high 2 / low 1 most of the time) and Stumptown (a mid to high three).
How I rate coffee. 1 to 5, on a pyramid shaped graph. My own roast, in my own home, with my own french press, is generally the pinnacle of this system. It gets bonus points since I don't have to put on pants to make it happen (leaving aside I don't actually wear pants). A low five? Peets, for a start. I have had it many times, and it tends to make me sick. It is SO dark, so over roasted, so acidic, that I literally horf after drinking it (I drink black drip, or black espresso, when I am ordering coffee, unless it is a special occasion (one does not go to Dilatante for coffee; they are a mocha bar, and it is a shame to deny oneself of their chocolate (when i was working at the airport, I invented the Triple X Mocha; Extra Large, Extra Dark (chocolate), Extra Shot (of esspresso)))). This rating system is Entirely and Gleefully subjective. No coffee I am served by anyone in their home is less than a 2. Unless it is my oldest brother who once had Peets, and kept the beans in the freezer...
That should be a cut tag, but I don't know how to do that, so I will leave this here and someone will tell me.
I ordered the Popper (https://www.sweetmarias.com/popper.html) from Sweet Marias. A bit more expensive than the "buy a popcorn air popper" method, but not much. Largely because it is, in fact, a somewhat modified air popper. It has timer and heat and fan controls, and many many years of many many many coffee geeks using it. It is, in a nutshell, the Linux of coffee roasters. I bought a digital scale for use with it, and (after running the "do this first" roast, per instructions) I roasted my first batch yesterday.
And now I am drinking it. And it is, indeed ... it's a 1. Maybe not as high of a 1 as it is possible to be. I have much to learn. I am looking forward to it.
Oh, and. The Popper says it comes with four pounds of assorted green beans. They sent 5 pounds of green beans. I am not complaining at all.

i have precisely as much expertise in psychology and neuroscience and such matters as a BA in Behavioral Sciences with a Second Major in Psychology imparts. Not much, not none.
And I was thinking about Fb and doomscrolling and the nature of random rewards.
What I recall of reward systems is that Consistent rewards will promote consistent behaviors. Press a button, get a treat, pressing the button happens a lot. This is a way of measuring problem solving capacity, of course, another issue for another day.
Conversely, punishment; pressing the button and getting punished, in some way, will result in not pressing the button, soon. If, and only if, the resulting punishment is immediately and innately the result of pressing the button, AND there is no resulting reward for doing so. Consistency, again, is key. And punishment for doing a bad thing is far less effective teaching tool than rewards for doing the good thing. Long rant for another discussion another day.
The thing is, if you push the button, and SOMETIMES get a reward, and sometimes get nothing... that is random reinforcement. And that will get the button pushed A LOT. Inconsistency of reward without punishment directly time to the action will result in a constant pushing of the button.
Add to that, in a nutshell, my theory of human personality; People will always seek to do what they think is the easiest thing for them to do. This combines with the fact that habits are easy to form, and difficult to break. So, people do things the same way they have always done them, because that is the way they have always done them.

So. Doomscrolling.
Constantly searching the fb feed for that hit of reward. The cat pictures, the update from friends and family, the good news... The reward that comes from the building, reinforcing, connection. And of course, there is the sense of doing something. Getting angry at things. I actively avoid using the angry reaction on Fb, because I know that is what they will show me more of, and I do not want to be angry. I don't want to engage with things that cause me pain, because I know it will not be relieved by doing so.
That is the complication, and I don't fully understand it. I know objectively, some people (many people) like being angry. Like being incited towards anger. I think it is a reflection of feeling powerless and from anger comes a sense of power; If I can be angry at something outside of myself, that is easier to deal with then the fact I have stuff going on inside. And then that is rewarding enough to become a habit.
So, even in the absence of anger responses (and trust me, I am DEEPLY angry about much of what I see on Fb, and other places), Fb wants to keep me on their platform, trying to sell me stuff. The longer I stay, the more of the ads I see (nevermind it is usually for stuff I already have, not stuff I need or am likely to need anytime soon (side note, I just bought a new coffee roaster and five pounds of green coffee; I don't need coffee. Still, want to bet that i am going to start seeing ads for Starbucks? The Fb AI is actually pretty stupid, from a human point of view)).
And, because I want to see things like the news of my Awesome Niece L coming in second place in her division in a three mile ocean swim (second to an olympic athelete, so... pretty damned good). I want to share cat pictures, because I have the Best Cat Ever (as determined by that cat, per protocol), and I know it brings joy to some people.
I will stay on Fb because it brings enough joy. I am very conscious of the random / intermittent nature of the reward system,though, and I want to figure out how to mitigate that. Putting all that into some kind of word salad is a step towards that.

Most of the time in my current schedule, Saturdays are not a busy day. Kind of deliberately; I like having nothing set in stone (Except when I do, like Birthday Dim Sum), to balance out the rigidity of the rest of my work week. Sleep late, leisurely coffee, morning rituals when I get around to them, and the rest of the day is what it is.
This time, i had been reminded that my Friendly Local Game Store (Phoenix) has Queer Boardgaming on this particular Saturday, and I keep seeing it happening, and regretting missing it. So, I decided to show up, on time, and Be Social. Bonus, I would likely get to cross Paths with Emily, who is an old and dear friend with whom I have not spent enough time hugging.
So, that was the Plan.
And then, while I was there, C asked me if I wanted to do Sushi at Sumo on Broadway. The only correct answer was yes, with the caveat that i was mid game, and would like to finish said game. And so it was that The Plan Was Amended.
I played, and had a good time. I was torn asunder by dolls in a haunted mansion, but then one of the other players got the cat to destroy all the dolls (as one does), thus achieving the victory condition.
Met C on a local bench, and we walked to Sumo, only to find they were not open yet. We came back here to wait the necessary 45ish minutes, and C told me about her adventures at Pottery show, which resulted in a Brand New Coffee Cup for me (spoiler alert, it works; drinking from it now). Then Sumo for Sushi, then Vivace for espresso. I commented that going to Vivace for something OTHER than espresso / espresso focussed drinks is like going to a place that specializes in a thing and does it very well and getting something other than that thing (metaphor fail).
We drank. She went home, I went home. I read the new Ben Aaronovich novel (Modern Fantasy Police Procdural, which is a bit heavy on the culturally specific jargon, which I have decided to embrace as part of the charm of the series (complaining about that is function of my privilege, not of his failure)).
It was a Good Day, plans or no.

So, just had a great weekend. Saturday was, of course, Free Comic Book day, so I went to FLCS, and discovered that they had some writers there doing signings. Specifically, Jim Zub (whose work I am not at all familiar with) and G. Willow Wilson (whose work I follow enthusiastically; She the Kamala Khan version of Ms. Marvel, did some great work on Wonder Woman, and wrote a series called Invisible Kingdom). I didn't realize they were going to be there, so I didn't have anything for her to sign. And then I realized, i live like three blocks away. I hopped on my bike, returned home, grabbed my copies of Invisible Kingdom trades, and returned to the FLCS, to have them signed. I also got to ask her how much creative control she had over Ms Marvel. Like, this is a specific character in a shared universe, so was there any kind of editorial directions before she set out?
And, in a nutshell, No. Kamala Khan was all her own (by whatever processes, which i don't pretend to be privy to) creation. That said, she mentioned that it was expected to be no more than a 10 issue run. I think it is safe to say, She (creator and character) have done Very Well for themselves. This is not the first time I have met her, which is why i only had the three books for her to sign. She's already signed all my Ms Marvel, Air, and Cairo trades. But it is always nice to see her, and it puts more stuff into my "signed by the author that i have met" collection.
I was going to talk about my whole weekend, and I am deciding Sunday is mostly it's own thing. Short version, I got lovely fresh greens from the farmer market, bok Choi, Pork Loin, pastries, and Bacon. I maybe miscounted meals, but it will work out. Tacos and Spiderman movie with Cristy for the afternoon, and then we watched Trevor Noah at the White House Correspondents dinner. Great fun.

So, here's the thing.
Right now, my work schedule is 4 / 10. Which means I have to get up at 5, to get to work at 7. Breakfast has to happen in between those to things. And I love fresh biscuits. I mean, I REALLY love fresh biscuits. And I am pretty good at them. A simple recipe, to be certain, but it takes about half an hour, and a bit of attention. More time or attention than I am likely to have at 5 a.m.
So, in the midst of yesterdays food prep frenzy (wherein i did things like cut and marinate meat, and chop vegetables for stir fry dinners), I decided to test the theory that I could make biscuit dough, and cut the biscuits. Then put them in the fridge, and this morning, take some of them out, and put them into a preheated oven. Then make sausage and eggs, and, obviously, coffee.
Victory. Timing was even more or less correct (Biscuits bake for 11 minutes, sausage and eggs take less time on the stovetop, but how much less is a bit tricky) (coffee takes significantly less time, and is a little flexible; once i put the water into the french press pot, how long it steeps needs not be precise (I mean, I could geek TF out about the variables of grind v water temp v time to get specific results, but I'm not there ... yet (and how much does the roast, and bean origin, play a part in that equation?)))
The results were ... Excellent, though not necessarily perfect. Not as much rise as I would expect from freshly made / baked. Though that may be a factor of having not used frozen butter in the dough (Whoever told me about freezing and grating the butter for biscuits deserves a great deal of thanks).
End result, a full hot breakfast, and I am ready to do what comes next.
More or less.

So. Wednesday Night D&D game (Dark Academia theme with Coffee), I am playing a Dwarf Druid Barista. We have, so far, encountered a Ghost, an attack by haunted swords and armor, a human sacrifice, and a massive disruption in the way history is to be studied. Character is proceeding from the assumption that the ghost and sacrifice are related to each other, as well as to the disruption represented by the changes in the study of history. After all, it all happened more or less at the same time, right? Correlation equals Causation.

And the thing is, Daiv knows perfectly well it does not. At best, it is not that simple.
But Dobson the Druid is... maybe not as smart as Daiv? 12 Intelligence, so a bit above average. Also, there is a huge cultural shift in perspective, from Me as a player and Me as a character. Which is what I am trying to simulate, and having immense fun exploring.
One aspect of that is that Dwarves are inherently traditional, to a nearly fanatical degree. We do this because we are Dwarves. We are Dwarves because we do this. Of course, I am also playing a youngest of many children, and as such, a bit of a non traditionalist. I like to question the traditional application of tradition.
Also, things like Ghosts and Magic are, to some degree, a constant everyday reality. Dobson can turn into animals, or summon a Raven named Fitz (who wears a small tricorn hat, per tradition), and can do other magical things. In a world with Fireballs and Disintegration spells, what are the assumptions about correlation and causation?
And, as noted, I think Daiv is a bit smarter than Dobson. One of the things I note about Intelligence is that people who are smart tend not to realize that they are above average (not that I have studied it a great deal, of course). But the Dunning Kruger effect (which I was able to find the name of by googling "you don't know how stupid you are"), I think, goes both ways, to a degree. I mean, Stephen Hawking pretty clearly knew he was ... smart. But the average somewhat above average intelligence folks maybe not so much. And it is not as though we have found a really good way of measuring intelligence, certainly not across broad swathes of people (last I checked, anyway).
So. Dobson is slightly above average. Daiv is maybe a bit above that. Daiv knows correlation does not equal causation. Does Dobson? Or, when two (possibly three?) disruptive events occur at the same time in the same place, why not assume they are connected?
On the other hand, is that not a bit of metagaming? Daiv also knows Dobson is a character in a story, so OF course these events have some degree of connection. Unless the GM is just throwing us three unrelated mysteries, any one of which may be a red herring.
I am going to have fun figuring it out.

Once, a therapist asked me if I "feel like I fit in, in Seattle". And I thought about it, and I said, no. But i am not sure anyone does, and maybe that is why we belong here. Maybe I belong in the spaces where fitting in is not a prerequisite.
Merry Christmas. I hope it is a time of joy and love for all.