Latte love

It’s Tuesday Thanks day, so I’m grateful for the small beauties you can find in life if you take the time to notice.

Such as: latte art.

First of all, I can almost equate a coffee shop that gives you latte art with a coffee shop that’s going to give you really good coffee. Not 100%, but pretty damn most of the time.

Latte art means that no matter how crazed the place is, the barista is taking care with what s/he is producing for you. Brewing the coffee with just the right amount of crema. Steaming the milk so the foam’s air bubbles are tiny and what you get feels like silk flowing over your tongue, not like a an inch and a half of tasteless, frothy air (which seems to be the Starbuck’s norm). They tap the milk pitcher on the counter to settle it.

And then they carefully pour the milk into the coffee—just as you do a flute of champagne and create the design. Kind of like a Tibetan sand painter.

What’s even more remarkable is when they do it in takeaway cups, and hand it to you with the lid on. Because you could drink it without ever knowing that lovely little heart or flower is right there, made for you.

Latte art is kind of like the cotton candy artist I wrote about a while ago: exquisite as it can be, its one constant is that it’s ephemeral. It’s made to be consumed, distorted with the very first sip, presumably before the coffee cools. Yet baristas go on making it.

And I go on loving it.

So, thanks, latte artists!

Gratitude Monday: actual weather

On Gratitude Monday of the week of Thanksgiving, I’m grateful that we had some actual, recognizable rain last week. I even heard it against my kitchen window.

It wasn’t enough to do any good with respect to the drought we’re under here in the Golden State. But I’m sure it snarled traffic all over the Valley They Call Silicon, and 60,000 customers of PG&E no doubt lost power.

But it was lovely to see and to hear, and to remember places where I actually enjoyed changes in weather.

Not quite Willie Wonka...

I may have gone just a teensy bit overboard with my Christmas gifts this year. It’s my tradition to make candy of various sorts; in recent years that’s been limited to fudge, toffee and a couple of types of spiced pecans. This year…

Since I started last Saturday, here’s what I’ve produced:

Toffee—five batches

Fudge—one batch

Garam Masala pecans—three batches

Spiced pecans—four batches

Caramelized chocolate almonds—one batch

Peppermint bark—one batch

Coconut bark—one batch

Truffles—one batch

I’m not exactly sure what happened; like Topsy, it just…growed.

Roughly I’ve used about nine pounds of chocolate, six pounds of sugar, seven pounds of pecans, one pound of walnuts and varying amounts of ancillary stuff. I was already sick of chocolate after the second batch of toffee—I don’t know how I do it, but I get that stuff on every surface of my kitchen and my person and it just becomes revolting.

For the past week, I swear I've become an Oompa-Loompa Lady Macbeth, continually washing chocolate off my hands.

I’m not showing you any photos of my kitchen. I’m never going to win housekeeper of the year awards, but this is seriously beyond the beyond. I actually decided to stop making candy today because I cannot bear the floor any more. (And there’s not much point in mopping while you’re still in production, because the instant you start on the next recipe, you’re crunching sugar and dribbling chocolate over everything.) I've run the dishwasher every single day and lost count of the number of times I've washed the stove top. 

Why? Two words: burnt sugar.

While making those almonds I realized that I was using four bowls and three pans. It was like putting on Thanksgiving dinner, for heaven’s sake.

So, I collected it all and looked at it…and realized I’m made all this stuff for nine people. I, uh, I kind of overproduced. Well, it's not the wildest I've ever got; that would be the year I made 17 kinds of candy for 21 people. That was either the acme or the nadir. Either way, I don't like to think about it.

(Here’s the irony: I started making candy because I calculated that Christmas cookies were too labor intensive. Ha, ha, ha.)

It'll take me a couple of days to package all this stuff up in the little cellophane bags, and then I can bring out the vac and the mop.

Well—I suppose my friends will appreciate it. I know I’ll appreciate having my kitchen back.

And now a word from...

Well, alrighty, then—let’s close out the week with a product advert that reminds me why—occasionally—we should actually pay attention to television commercials:

Yes.

Turning to the Dark Side

Yes. Through the generosity of a friend, I am finally in possession of an Apple product. Viz.: a 64Gb iPad Air 2. I decided that I needed to get my head around iOS so I don’t appear to be so last-century when I speak with with-it thought-leader Ninja-rockstar innovators here in the Valley They Call Silicon.

And—I was getting a bit uneasy that my friend Amy would refuse to speak to me if I didn’t cough up some Apple app-ness. :You might not think it to look at her, but you do not want to get on the wrong side of Amy’s expectations of tech cred.

I actually went looking into iPads in August, and they were fine and all. But when I asked about using Swype (I wouldn’t be able to do anything on a virtual keyboard without Swype capabilities), the Apple-boy told me that iOS 8 would have it, so I told my generous friend that I’d wait for that. And he replied that if I wanted to wait a little longer, the Air 2s would be out in October…

When I saw that those would have anti-glare screens and that totally cool fingerprint access, well…

Yes, I can be as shallow as the next guy.

Naturally, you get this beautifully designed package, containing only the tablet, a power cord and outlet connector. Nothing that in any way might resemble any sort of user manual, no—either you’re meant to pick this stuff up in the air or…I suppose there are YouTube videos.

(And, BTW, Apple—a unique connector for this device, which means I have to use this one specific cable and therefore have to take this one specific cable with me when I travel. To add to all the other connectors I need for MP3 player, cameras, laptop, etc. Thanks so much for non-interoperability; such a great design concept.)

And I got it set up (pretty much), although so far I’ve found their interface pushy and heavily geared towards upselling me on add-ons.

Here’s what I’ve done in the slightly more than 24 hours that I’ve had it:

Been forced to get an Apple ID. (After which they sent me an email congratulating me.)

Been forced to sign up for iCloud. (Email.)

Been forced to sign up for iTunes. (Email.)

Been unable to download Firefox. (Doesn’t support iOS.)

Downloaded Kindle app. (Email.)

Downloaded Twitter app. (Email.)

Downloaded Facebook app. (Email.)

They also heavy-handedly tried to get me to give them all sorts of PII, and credit card information, which activities ought to have a “get stuffed” option.

Okay, I'll confess that the fingerprint unlocking mechanism is really cool; especially the process you go through to set it up. I may have to go through it for all ten fingers, just to watch it populate all the ridges and whorls. Yes, I am easily amused.

I’m going to have to break down and go to one or more of their “how to use our incredibly cool and intuitive devices if you’re not cool and intuitive enough to pick it up through the air” classes.

I’m sure that at some point the device’s capabilities will outweigh the corporation’s capacity for pissing me off.

Meanwhile, I'm really enjoying the exploration process, and I'm massively grateful I have the opportunity to join the cool-kids table, even if it's kind of under false pretenses.

Need for speed

There’s been a bit of a hoo-ha about the Oxford Dictionaries naming “vape” as its word of the year for 2014.

It evidently refers to…something to do with e-cigarettes: the device itself and the vapor it causes. (Color me clueless, because I’ve not experienced this so far.)

I did find this “explanation” of the choice from Casper Grathwohl, president of the dictionaries division at OUP kind of cringeworthy: “I particularly love watching a word like ‘vape’ create linguistic knock-on effects, like hearing the word ‘tobacco’ now used to qualify ‘cigarette. But this year ‘vape’ also served as an insightful window onto how we define ourselves.”

Maybe onto how you define yourself, Casper. I don’t even know what you just said.

And anyhow, for me “vapes” will always refer to the moisture discharge that whooshes off the wings of an F-14 Tomcat as it’s breaking the sound barrier.

The little trendoid e-cig yappers got nothing against that.

Opening the season

Yes, indeed—spammers are warming up with the “undeliverable parcel” scam.

It’s a sure sign that we’re heading into the holidays.

Kind of like the old Salad-Shooter commercials.

Gratitude Monday: Something to revel in

Okay, today my gratitude is a little…well, I’m grateful and I’m not grateful.

You may recall the Eastern European adventures of my friend Dick and his wife—which included the surprise addition of a stay in a Dresden hospital and an aborted break-out plan from those of us who heard about it via clandestine messages tapped furtively and under the influence of pain meds on his iPod.

Really—there does need to be an opera about that.

In my post last June I mentioned that Dick performs in the Washington Revels every year, and he had to work his audition for this year’s Celtic-themed show around the Ostmark trip. But his “Eileen Aroon” did the trick, as witnessed by the Revels’ Facebook frisnic this week about him:

If you’re not able to access the page, here’s the opening graf:

“Dick's only Irish connection is marriage to a direct descendant of Daniel O'Connell (an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century who was known as The Liberator or The Emancipator). It isn’t really the Irish that attracted him to this show—it’s the Revels—Dick performs this year in his 17th show, with his first appearance being 1993. His role this year-- an antique Irish peasant—mirrors his first Christmas Revels appearance as an Irish antiquarian scholar. He has also been a kilted Scot, a Victorian toff, a medieval royal counselor, a sword-wielding Elizabethan yeoman, a French Canadian village elder, an Andalusian rabbi, and as a peasant in various times and climes.”

I’m so grateful that social media enabled me to see this story (and amazing photo) of my friend. What I’m ungrateful about is that I’m 2500 miles across the continent from this show and won’t be able to see him.

But if you’re anywhere in the DC area—if you can still even get tickets—go.

The poppies flow

Okay, one final story out of the UK for Remembrance Week.

Last month staff at GCHQ (Britain’s intelligence and security agency; roughly the equivalent of our NSA) formed a human poppy in the atrium of their headquarters in Cheltenham. 

They put on red rain ponchos to form the petals, with a few folks in black in the center, and a bunch of people in cammies holding up tarps for the stem. Really pretty visually effective, and interesting that they did it, because the only visual impact comes from the air.

I like it because it’s another form of installation art—ephemeral, so you have to take hold of it when it appears. Rather like life, actually.

And here’s how they put it together:

The official “remembrance” period has passed. But I hope you take some of this week’s sights and sounds with you throughout the year, and spare a thought now and then for the men and women who go in harm’s way in our behalf.

Sod off, sunshine

Ah, hell. British actor Warren Clarke died yesterday after a brief illness, according to his agent. At age 67 he was way too young to stop engaging us on the screen.

In his career Clarke gave us everything from the psychopathic (in A Clockwork Orange) to the servile (an episode of Inspector Lewis). 

I loved him in the series Sleepers, about two KGB agents who’ve been in deep cover for so long in the UK that they’ve become quintessential Brits. And he creeped me out as that menacing Corporal Dixon in The Jewel in the Crown.

Of course, mostly for me he was the personification of Chief Superintendent Andy Dalziel in the BBC series based on Reginald Hill’s Dalziel and Pascoe novels. I’m told that he wasn’t quite Hill’s notion of the vulgar, relentless, chain-smoking, heavy-drinking, vastly politically-incorrect Yorkshireman (not fat enough); but he certainly got the job done for me.

The man had a voice that rumbled like a West Riding thunderstorm and a face that looked the Afrika Korps had run over it. And his body was definitely more by Pillsbury than by Fisher. So I thought he was pretty damned good as Dalziel.

(Yes, I think the series jumped the shark with Season 8, and Clarke himself seemed to come somewhat artistically unhinged. But, damn, he was good until then.)

Everyone from Malcolm McDowell to the cast of Call the Midwife has spoken of what a great guy Clarke was to work with—professionally and personally. In a fear-driven and ego-based industry that’s saying a lot.

I believe a small splash of single malt is in order. Because I miss him already.