Take Five

One evening in 1998, we were visiting the Yafo (Jaffa) street in Jerusalem, enjoying the various sights and sounds of the bustle of modern life in Israel, when I heard a lone saxophonist belting out some Jazz.  The ghost of the tune haunted my subconscious for a few years, before I was able to track down the spectre.  Now whenever I hear the song, I remember that lone saxophonist, belting out his heart to the night.

Fermented Carbonated Coffee

Long ago and far away...  it was the spring of 1996.  I was a freshman in college, living in the newest dorm on campus.  On of my friends from High School had preceded me to college, and lived down the hall at the dorm.  He happened to also work at Starbucks. At that time, Starbucks was still a Pacific Northwest phenomenon.  A store didn't arrive in Idaho for several more years.  However, in Salem, Oregon, it was now beginning its domination of the coffee scene.

Starbucks was looking for ways to revolutionize the coffee industry.  Besides launching spacecraft crammed with coffee beans toward the sun, they were trying new and exciting products out on the general populace.  One of their new products was Mazagran.  Mazagran was a carbonated cold coffee beverage.  It was not popular, and as such, my barista friend ended up with a four pack.  It wasn't very good, and many were already prejudiced against cold coffee beverages (excluding espresso beverages, especially the then new blended espresso beverages).

One afternoon, my friend opened a new Mazagran.  He had drank a Mazagran the day before, and this Mazagran would be his second or third.  As my friend was drinking the Mazagran, he remarked, "Every time I drink one of these, they taste more and more like beer."  Puzzled, he shared it with the rest of us, and we agreed.  The Mazagran seemed to transmute into beer.  We took the Mazagran to the resident expert, and we were assured that indeed it had fermented.

Characteristics:
A burnt tartness bubbling up to intermix both the properties of caffeine, carbonation, and alcohol.

Learning about how we got our Bible

I've been teaching a class at our church, How we got our Bible, as a followup for a class I taught last year, Bible Study Methods.  One topic of interest to several of the attendees in the first class was Bibliology, specifically, how the Christian Bible developed.  I finished the class, and proceeded directly into Sinus infection.

Coffee Table - Round 2

The color of the first coffee table did not take well to its new abode.  So after trying it out for a bit, and talking Melissa out of attempting to remove the stain, we manufactured another coffee table.  It's pretty much the same table with a different color.  However, during the drying process, a cold weather front rolled in, which slowed the project down a bit.  We finally got the table inside, and just in time, as the snow stacked up yesterday and today.

Coffee Table - Round 1

Melissa was looking at Pintrest and ran across this neat coffee table design.  Our previous coffee table was a large 1970's tempered glass circle atop gilded tentacles.  We had spray painted the gold paint with hammered bronze paint, to remove some of the late sixties and early seventies gaudiness.  While the previous table was battle proven, Lauren was crawling up on the glass table and slid the top off inadvertently.  So we decided to fashion up a new coffee table.  We went with a gray weathered stain.  I also beefed up the plan with some biscuits between the boards.