Free Rangin' Friday - Coffee, Beer and a mention of bread

If you read this blog much, you've seen me mention Suzanne of the Finca a few times. That's because she impresses me,  bringing much into my day, not only with her really good weather information, not only with her little tidbits of interest she includes in her daily emails (and sometimes more than once daily, if the weather is looking ominous for our area), not only for her vanilla beans that keep my sugar special, but for her ongoing good spirits that spill from her words like...well, a good cup of coffee, which she also grows and sells.  Smiling is good, laughing is good. Suzanne is, in a (four word word) word, good for my soul.

   credit: from the Finca website           

Yesterday I missed the fact that it was National Coffee Day. Suzanne included this article from the Washington Post and it made me smile enough to think it worth passing along.


Coffee! (Evy Mages - FOR THE WASHINGTON POST) National Coffee Day. 

It might as well be called National Day Day. What's a day without coffee?

Every so often someone in a lifestyle magazine tries to make us rethink our caffeine habits by observing that “For the money you spend on coffee every year, you could buy eight designer bags!” Now when anyone gives me the chance to buy eight designer bags, I quail. “Are you kidding me?” I say. “For the price of these, I could consume twice as much coffee annually!”
National Coffee Day should be a holiday. There ought to be parades. There ought to be tributes.

If you don’t think coffee matters, consider. In Biblical times, when no one drank coffee, a woman named Judith killed a man with a tent-stake. In 1066, when coffee had yet to reach that part of Europe, William the Conqueror stormed over to England and seized a large swath of territory, and he did so very grumpily. Some say that beauty killed the beast. I say that it was the fact that King Kong never drank coffee in his life.
More recently, the Census Bureau released a memo complaining that workers are falling asleep in the middle of the office, and it seems unprofessional.
“Sleeping on the premises is not acceptable behavior,” the memo noted. “It is manifestly unprofessional and creates an impression of carelessness, which unfairly impugns the hard work of the entire Census community. Moreover, such behavior can lead to safety problems in the event of an emergency.”

There’s only one solution to this, and it’s dark and contains high levels of caffeine. Not to say that the Census Bureau is not a fascinating, pulse-pounding workplace that generates as much adrenaline as watching a Jason Statham movie while diving from a plane, but — well, this is why they invented coffee!

Studies have found that the more coffee women drink, the more they reduce their risk of depression. I’m on my fifth cup today!!!!1!! “That’s probably plenty,” my co-workers murmur. But why take the chance? Sylvia Plath drank fewer than five cups a day, and look what happened to her! Meanwhile, I am ebullient! I am shaking with glee! Or with something!!! I am so ebullient that people think I am about to have some sort of seizure! Earlier today I cleaned every surface in the whole office, and someone asked me to join a study group of my peers, whose other members all turned out to be cocaine-addled rats.
Coffee is the tie that binds us. Garfield has become a popular national comic strip, even though it contains nothing that can be reliably identified as a joke, simply on the strength of the fact that its protagonist is a cat who hates Mondays and loves lasagna — and coffee.

Coffee keeps us happy and allows civic life to function. Case in point: I drink lots of coffee, and to my knowledge, I have never assassinated anyone.

We like our coffee like we like our men — half-off, today, thanks to promotions at 7-Eleven. 

We like our coffee like we like our men — in large quantities. That’s why Christie might have to run.

You think those were dinosaurs? That was just how the Earth looked before its coffee.

My point is, Happy Coffee Day.

If you need me, I’ll be off somewhere never sleeping again.

Ok, enough about coffee! There is another beverage that might be its only true rival in popularity, beer. I have to say, I'm not a beer drinker, really. Oh, I'll have the occasional 'been working outside and am so hot I think my head is going to explode' icy brew to cool me down. I'll take a taste of something imported or microbrewed and like it. Not enough to exchange my usual drink order, but enough to almost appreciate the beer drinker's pleasure. Almost. But then, I like sushi and raw oysters and have eaten the testicles of bulls with glee, so I get that tastes differ.

One thing I do know about beer drinkers is that they don't want to wait around for a re-fill. Good bartenders are very aware of their beer drinking customers in this regard. Drinkers of other beverages might have to wait a bit and don't mind much, but beer drinkers seem to want an endless bottle or glass filled almost before the last sip/slurp/dregs of the previous one is gone. I guess it's a beer thing.

Neil, who owns Dinghy Dock, tends to feel slighted in this regard, so he came up with a unique solution. The bike bell mug. Attached to the handle of his mug is, well, a bike bell. And he isn't shy about using it, much to the annoyance of certain other customers, one of whom has promised to put the bell in a place where...let's say the sound of it would be muffled.

 Happy Birthday, Neil!!!!

These threats bother Neil not one bit. His next 'beer refill reminder' he tells me, is a Wooga Wooga device. Like Dick and Joyce have on their Model T, I ask. Yes, he says. I'll keep my eyes and ears open and get back to you readers on that. dispatched from your on-island reporter, MJ

But isn't Free Range Friday about FOOD? you might be asking. Where's the food? Well, since yesterday was Bread Baking Day, food other than the staff of life sort of took a back seat. Way in the back. I think I ate...bread. I'll work on that for next week. I was trying to find a Kylie Kwong video, because she is such a wonderful chef with a great style, but the ones I want are all in...Chinese. Go figure!

Have a food inspired Friday! Do something un-frangible.