365 Days of Coffee [my favorite color]

We'll keep this simple:

Tanya asked me what my favorite color was.  Can you guess the answer?

It begins with T . . . and ends with . . . errr, kwoise?

Tomorrow is all about the skill I'd love to learn . . . if I'm able to pick only one between now and then:)

365 Days of Coffee [my favorite room]

Tanya at Dans le Townhouse has asked me to answer eleven questions as part of some bloggy fun, and today I'm answering Q2 . . . what's my favorite room in the house?

Friends, it has to be the dining room.

Mr. Espresso is hanging out on the dining room table today, which is flooded with light a massive amount of the time.  It sits in the open center of the house, thus illuminated in the morning from the living room windows . . . 

old morning photo - last summer

 . . . and then again in the afternoon [and at sunset!!] by the Ridiculously Difficult To Clean French Doors of the sunroom.  

[Yes, there are doors in that overblown top half of the photo]

So while it's not the largest room, nor even the most used [while we endeavor to eat dinner there every night, there's usually too high a pile of mail, purse contents, etc] it's the most beautiful to photograph, and photograph in.  

Stay tuned tomorrow to find out . . . what is my favorite color?  See you then!!

365 Days of Coffe [starting a project . . .]

I feel like such a tease with my post titles.

Like today, it's not as though I'm starting a bathroom reno.  It's just that I decided to address the questions posed by Tanya at Dans Le Townhouse as part of some bloggy fun.

She's an overachiever, and thus answered eleven questions and asked eleven more in one post. My attention span rivals a mosquito's, so I'll tackle these one by one.

Question One: How much time to you devote to blogging each day?

A:  Never can tell.  Today's pictures are an example of tiny itty bitty amount, as I scrambled to race home after work, get the dog out & fed, make my espresso, set up & shoot it - all in the literal 20 minutes of light I had after walking through the door.   Then, of course, there's the tagging, sorting and editing . . . all of which occurs before the actual posting.

But is that all that blogging is comprised of?  What about the 600+ items in my Reader that I go through on a 50-70/day basis?  The comments I write on those posts?

Then there's accurate judgement of time - after all, I'm making/eating dinner, watching the news, taking the dog out for the umpteenth time, texting the SO in Nebraska, folding laundry, bidding on Ebay [ahem], changing into pjs, doing dishes - all since the editing was finished, with paragraphs half-written, pics exported, Blogger open, sentences written a minute at a time before I'm on my feet again.

This is turning into a missive on the sad state of my multi-tasking addiction, when it was meant to be a testament to how difficult it would be to pinpoint how much time I devote to blogging alone, since I'm never doing it in a vacuum, and the process has a lot of moving parts that don't just involve typing.

Let's put it this way - today, a fast-fast-fast go-go-go day [italics + repetition + hyphen = getting my point across] I've been home for EXACTLY two hours.

And I'm hitting publish in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1. . .

Wait!  I forgot!  Tomorrow I'll be telling you about my favorite room in the house to answer Question Two.
Know what else I forgot?  To love on Miss Tanya.  She's a Canadian DIY rockstar.

365 Days of Coffee [present-tense]

That title means we should lose all the "tense" in life with this present!

[oy, sometimes I even impress myself with my word-dorky-ness:)]

At any rate, this candle smells heavenly [in a very fresh way, surprisingly], and was part of my Valentine's Package from CKP.

And if your screen is large enough/this picture is good enough, read the description on the box!  So cute.

I like you, little soy candle.  Probably enough never to burn you . . . at least not in the present tense.

[PS - no retouching tonight!  Is it obvious?]

365 Days of Coffee [semi-triumphant]

I got an awful lot farther in my .gif attempts tonight than I have in previous weeks, however it's stil stuck in an image-resize program after 45 minutes, so . . . we're not there yet.

It's okay!  Backup couple images from my first cup this morning:

The earth is clearly not shattering with this post, but other things in life are improving steadily [my mood included] so between that and the pretty-pretty swirls, I still feel semi-triumphant:)

Yay for gains, big or small!!

365 Days of Coffee [of note]

I got my Field Notes not too long ago, and have been furiously scribbling ever since.

That is one flawlessly beat-up notebook, right there.  It makes me wish I had better penmanship, even.
[Truthfully, I took a few shots with my notes open, but my handwriting made me grimace.  Grimace].

Oooh, and the packaging!  So good:

As pictured, I went with the "County Fair" edition, because who can resist random facts about states they love?  For instance, did you know the invention of mechanical refrigeration was in Florida in 1851?

Or that the state song is "Old Folks at Home?"

Shocker, that one:)

365 Days of Coffee [new! new! new!]

After six months of calls, hassles, whining and plumbers, our landlord has finally replaced this . . . thing:

Please note the missing buttons.  The rust.  The font.  And who here believes that, in the last five years, this thing has ever been WhisperQuiet?

This, though . . . this I believe in:

Oooh!  Shiny!

No metal push buttons!  Lit up sections to denote dishes as both clean AND sanitized!  It's a beaut!!

And yes, you may have noticed that I can sit an espresso cup atop it at the moment . . . since it's sort of in the middle of the kitchen floor [actually, mine is a galley kitchen.  Everywhere on the floor is the middle of it].   Because while you may have thought the rusted out dishwasher was bad enough, Home Depot actually refused to install this new one until the corroded old plumbing has been replaced.  Now that's bad.

So the new dishwasher is more of a kitchen island for another week or so while the plumber comes in, replaces nasty grossness and then HD can be scheduled to come back.

But my happiness in newness will not be deterred . . . I will have clean dishes again, and soon!

Say yes to sanitized!

365 Days of Coffee [sunlit]

Yay for a day off!

Because I missed the sunlight.

Thanks for appreciating it with me . . . 

See you tomorrow [night:)]

365 days of coffee

This.is. Ellenton.

Ima try to Instagram these (attempting genius) but know that you are marveling at outlet madness

365 Days of Coffee [doily action]

I have a lot of paper doilies in my house.  I've picked them up from volunteer work, work at the cafe, random toss-in-the-basket purchases at Michael's . . . I just have a lot of doilies.

Knowing this, and knowing that I need to spend the next month sending my CKP sweet gifts in an effort to compete with his orchid-roses-cards extravaganza, I got to work on a decorating doilies.

No, you don't get to see any of the finished product.  Trust me, my handmade items look as though they're been created and doodled on by a bored middle-schooler.  In looooooooooove.

But I will say they're surprising!  What ended up happening was your basic Priority Mail Flat Rate envelope got stuffed with pink and purple hearted/love bugged/sweetie-pied doilies, a few bags of green  and chamomile tea dyed pink with marker, the Blackberry holster he forgot [plastered with "LOVE" tags] and a picture of the two of us.  Then, of course, I couldn't stop and the envelope got covered with swirly, girly doily action, as well.

Whoever handles this package on it's trip to the midwest will surely chuckle in amusement, and I sort of hope CKP's coworkers are around when it's delivered.  And then that they buy him dinner, because anyone who deals with this level of lovesick girlishness surely deserves the best dinner Hastings, Nebraska has to offer:)

365 Days of Coffee [the determiner]

My number one top way to determine a photo's true greatness:

How much can I do to it, and still love it?

This is an orchid CKP got for our Valentine's Day While He's Away, photographed in setting light and filtered like crazy.

Slightly different photo, vastly different processing.

Vastly different photo, slightly different processing.

So maybe I just love my orchid:)

Yeah . . . that might be it.

Oh wait, I take pictures of espresso, don't I?

365 Days of Coffee [thorny]

Approximately every single job I've ever held has involved managing customer satisfaction at some level. At the television station, the customers happened to be advertisers or agencies, and at the record label the customers were agents . . . but lately the customers [for me] have been your typical, garden variety consumers.  Diners at a cafe, now everyday shoppers at a florist.

And it has never ceased to amaze me that during these simple, everyday transactions, normal people can just. plain. lose it.  

And while they're screaming, or crying, or swearing, or refusing, or interrupting [or sweating.  I get a lot of profuse sweaters as of late], I try to think of them - and picture them! - a little like this pineapple.

They've just lost their head.  Exploded.  They may be sweet, juicy folk on the inside, but right now they have a prickly, hard outside and wacky things sprouting from their cranium [or their mouth].  It's not particularly my fault or theirs, it's just reality at the time, and it's my job to cut into that exterior and dig into the human.**

If the gracious employer would allow, I would keep this pineapple at my desk as a reminder.  Alas, he must stay in my level head, along with the reminder of espresso to come.

Who wouldn't feel a little better picturing pineapple-people?

And as Santino once quipped on the illustrious Project Runway, " . . . you can either just agree with me, or I can eat you.  I mean, those are the options . . ."

**full intention to post pictures of delicious pineapple being eaten.  But instead, you know, I ate it:)

365 Days of Coffee [falling into place]

Our landlord's handyman is kind of great, for a few reasons:  He's pretty much retired, has a down-home kind of British accent plus he has jovially been to coming to play with the Augustus puppy during the day while I'm at work and CKP is in Nebraska.

For free.

So what's with the picture of my tabletop, you ask?  Another bit of greatness about him - he loves fresh veg.

Upon discovering my equal love of all things ground-grown, he brought me a present from his extra farmer's market purchases - tomatoes!

Seriously, could we have gotten any luckier with this guy?  And did I mention he lives on the other side of the cul-de-sac?  A dogsitting, veg-toting handyman neighbor.

Sometimes everything just falls into place.

365 Days of Coffee [feeling the love]

I can't get over this card, from my very own Man of the Year:

Eeek!  Is it not just so . . . endearing?  Sweet?  Soft?  Loving?  

I just want to make watercolors now.  I want to to fill my house with them.  I want to eschew the trend toward graphic shapes and sleek modern simplicity in favor of . . . this.  

And the envelope!  Look at the inside of the envelope!

This kind of [admittedly mass-produced - the card is from Papyrus] handmade-feeling daintiness makes me seriously consider how often I send people notes or cards.
Read:  Mom, you're about to get a lot more correspondance.

365 Days of Coffee [my valentine]

My honey may have left me for the cold reaches of Nebraska today, but he made certain I wouldn't feel neglected . . . 

Le sigh.  You'd think I'd be sick of roses after these past two days,  but even espresso pales in comparison to this arrangement, and the sentiment inherent in it.

Many thanks to my wonderful valentine, my sweet, big-hearted honey.

365 days of coffee (Athena)

I am a goddess of war on flower orders!!!

Powered by caffeine & girl scout cookies ....

365 Days of Coffee [almost a gif!!]

Seriously, I spent so long trying to turn this series [plus eight more] into an animated gif.  Actually, that part was easy - exporting it in any manageable way seems to be impossible.  I get warnings about computer meltdowns, etc.

Probably the fact that they're all RAW images.

Duh.

But now I have to go to bed, so here is a bunch of pictures that may eventually be animated, but not yet:)

PS:  I eat the chocolate in the next bunch!