Coffee and Salad

As our regular patrons will know the Boss puts on a special lunch every day. I don’t know how she does it as it is my avowed intent to stay out of the kitchen forever, but she does, and who am I to ask questions?

Today’s piece de resistance (as the Germans say) is a Caesar Salad with anchovies so I thought that I would share with you the reason a Caesar Salad is called a Caesar Salad

In 31 AD Julius Caesar was having his birthday in Londinium, which as you are well aware eventually became London. The local tribes known as the Angles (from which we derive the term Anglo-Saxons) hated the Romans whom they correctly thought of as foreign invaders. The maurauding tribes were, however, very much smitten with a Roman import know as lettuce which previously had not been seen in England. So the bandits invade Julius Caesar's birthday party seeking the said lettuce. Caesar shows them a truly beautiful salad to which the bandit chief replies, "We come to seize the salad, not to praise it!"

And you thought that today was going to be wasted. Now get back to work.

TCB

Coffee and more Internet

Do you remember all the nausea I experienced trying to set up an Internet connection? Well you can remind yourself here and here and here and here and here. Finally we ended up with two different service providers and as one was free I was cool with having one for me and one for the hoi polloi. The salespeople from the free service promised me an upgrade to 5Mbits, a portfolio of promotional stuff and a $75 commission for every sucker I converted to them. Sadly none of this materialized but what the hell I still had free DSL. Then without warning the modem started flashing all of its lights like a disco on acid and making strange noises which must have translated as “Argghh I am about to die”, which is indeed what it did. Then I discovered that the Smalltown Telephone Company had pulled the plug on the DSL line. What a bunch of cheapskates. These Scrooge like antics, coupled with the stories that I hear concerning the reliability of the 2 wire router lead me to recommend the Smalltown Alternative IP Provider, however………….

This month my bill was up from its normal $42 to a staggering $153 (an I assure you that I did indeed stagger when I opened the envelope). Closer examination showed that the difference was due to 4.4 Gbytes of overages. Now FOTL2 is home for the summer and up until now things have been just sweet. She of course denies everything and I hate to put 2 and 2 together but I know the little hellion is guilty as sin. They say that if you love someone set them free, if they don’t come back they were never yours. If on the other hand you set them free and they come back, eat your food, mess up your home, watch your television and rack up your Internet bill then they are probably your student child.

As a postscript I spoke to the wonderful people in the billing department and they agreed that I had suffered enough (I expect that they know FOTL1 and FOTL2) and agreed to drop the overages. In view of this supreme piece of customer relations I shall do the unusual and out them. The Coffee Bitch recommends the great guys at B2X Online.

Now if you will excuse me I need to download some vast amounts of smut while the Boss still thinks it is FOTL2.

Striking whilst the iron is hot.
TCB

Coffee and the brown stuff

One of the benefits of working in a place where I meet lots of people is that if I whine on long enough, eventually I will find someone with a solution to whatever the vexation special of the day is. Recently my customers have found me an honest roofer (I will let you know how that works out), an automotive paint sprayer and 320 square feet of scrap corrugated tin (don’t ask).

Last week I was bleating on to all and sundry about how horrid the Kissboty County dirt is and how badly my lawn is faring seeing how it hasn’t rained for about 100 years. I was explaining how I hate to use chemicals and what I really wanted was to add some body to the nasty soil. Well right on cue a nice lady mentioned that she had a donkey (or an ass or a mule, I really don’t know the difference) and a pile of donkey poo. All I had to do was drive over and collect it. Well, as you know, as a result of my shenanigans at the Coffee House I am usually up to my neck in doo doo anyway, so a spot of shoveling wasn’t going to make a difference to my life and we made an appointment. The nice lady offered me directions but I declined as I have a GPS in the truck so I just needed the address.

On the appointed day we set off for what started as a pleasant jaunt through the leafy byways of old Virginny (as no one calls Virginia in these parts). Things were going well until we flashed past a strange looking sign. It was yellow with black dots and just as I said, “I wonder what that means” we rounded a corner and discovered that it meant the pavement was about to end, and we were on gravel. In truth the sign actually meant that the road would turn to gravel, then dirt, then mud and then water. It is not possible to exaggerate the crappiness of this “road”. We drove for miles and miles in four-wheel drive, axle deep in slime and slithering sideways at every turn. Throughout this drama the GPS helpfully reminded me to “turn right in 2 miles, approaching in 30 minutes”, 4 mph top speed.

Now the Virginia legislature (may Allah shrivel their private parts) has decided that Virginia drivers who fail to use a turn signal or other serious offense are going to be fined $2000 and this fine will be used to improve the roads. (As an aside this law does not apply to out of state drivers, so come on in chaps, it’s a free ride). I therefore respectfully suggest that the boys in Richmond start with SR715, or at least put up a sign that says the road will become almost impassable in 5 miles so turn around now while you have room to turn.

Eventually we arrived some 45 minutes late and I confess in a foul mood. I chased the donkey around with the pooper scooper and finally collected a truck load of donkey dump. Needless to say I decided to ditch the GPS and get direction back that did not involve a washed out logging trail.

On the off chance that you may think I have exaggerated this tale I challenge you to drive SR715. To make it really exciting go to your video store first and rent the movie Wrong Turn.

Coffee and Food

Funeral Blues (Song IX / from Two Songs for Hedli Anderson)

Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone.

Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,

Silence the pianos and with muffled drum.

My life is over, let the mourners come.

Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead.

Scribbling in the sky the message, fun is dead,

Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public doves,

Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.

It was my North, my South, my East and West,

My working week and my Sunday rest.

My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;

I thought we would last forever, I was wrong.

The stars are not wanted now; put out every one,

Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun.

Hide all the food, I cannot buy it;

For the Boss has put me on a diet.

With apologies to;

Wystan Hugh Auden (1907-1973)

Coffee and (de) Construction

Directly opposite our little slice of caffeine heaven is a funny looking building that has been empty for the longest time. It was rumored that it was to be demolished but nothing ever seemed to happen. Then this morning a monstrous machine and its baby brother were parked on the sidewalk so it looked like we were set to go. As this looked like it was to be my only intellectual stimulation for the morning (what with Bertie failing to appear) I thought I might sit in the window taking a few snaps. The backhoe wriggled itself into position and extended its bucket. As it reached out a small amount of debris fell out of the bucket and showered a lady who was walking out of the front door.

Now I am the first to admit that what I know about building demolition can be written on a postage stamp and still leave room for the US Constitution but in my opinion, and I could be wrong here, the first thing that you want to do before sending a shanty off to building Valhalla is to make sure that it is unoccupied.

Still as we say here in Kissbotty County all’s well that ends. The building came down and there was no loss of life. All in all rather a disappointing day really.

Coffee and Genealogy

As the regular reader (all two of you) will know, Bertie Grabbitt (Sue, Grabbitt and Runne LLP) generally picks up his morning coffee and lingers whilst we put the world to rights. This morning Bertie recalled a tale involving his genealogy. Grandfather, Father and himself. Of course I knew that he was making it all up. After all, show me an attorney who actually knows who his father is.

Coffee and Guns (part , oh whatever)

Finally we got some shootin’ in. One of our faithful customers who has a spot of land in the depths of Kissbotty county invited us to his place in order to mix and match guns and have a little fun. You will recall from earlier blogs that the hunting experience in the UK involves considerable volumes of food and it looks like the same applies in rural Kissbotty although I believe it is called victuals or something. Anyway the preshooting experience included gallons of coffee, OJ and mountains of food and after that, well the shootin’ was the cherry on the cake.

They gave the Boss a 38 Walther PPK to try out. (In case that rings a bell, it is James Bond’s sidearm of choice). Well after she finished everyone’s mouth just dropped open. It may have been the fact that she killed three coke cans out of four (and let me tell you people, at 14 yards that is no mean feat). Or it may have been that as she did it she screamed “Take that you motherless little sons of a ^%$#@!. Whatever, it was all round a damned impressive performance, which may be repeated in the Coffee House one day so just watch out all you complainers.

After we ran the gamut of 44’s and 45’s I pulled out my 50 caliber Desert Eagle, which really is a dichotomy of a firearm. The DE is about the size of a cinder block and weighs about the same. When you pull it out at the range, mere mortals quiver at your overt manliness and nubile virgins (who are few and far between here in Kissbotty) instantly throw themselves at your feet and offer their virtue. However the DE has a major design flaw and that is that the spent round is ejected not from the side where it should be, but vertically. This ensures that a red-hot casing is almost guaranteed to hit you in the face. If you are really unlucky it will also jam across the bridge of your safety glasses causing you to scream like a girl and ruin the illusion of your manliness. It is in short a piece of Israeli crap. I actually asked Magnum Research what the deal was and they replied that this can happen if the shooter is firing “limp wristed”. In England being limp wristed is an anachronism for batting on the other team, so not only is the DE a piece of crap but the manufacturers think that I am a gay boy. On a more hetero note I also use a Smith and Wesson Magnum 500 which has the twin virtues of being the most powerful handgun bar none and also American made.

Now I am off to buy a Walther PPK. I know that 38 caliber is a tad girly but if the Boss can use it to blow the testes off the flies in the kitchen then at least I will have some distraction during the quiet times. By the way before you start to whine about buying American, the PPK is made under license in the US by the finest gun maker in the world, Smith and Wesson.

Ka-Boom
TCB

Coffee and the 4th

Listen up people, you are going to have to stop asking if I enjoyed the 4th. Of course I didn’t. I am English, we lost you insensitive clods. Asking me if I enjoyed the 4th is akin to asking Mrs. Lincoln if she enjoyed the play so knock if off.

Actually one of my customers (and you know who you are) had the audacity to ask if the English celebrate Independence Day. Natch I replied, “We sure do, we call it thanksgiving”.

As it happens I had a very nice day as the Sci Fi channel had a marathon of the Twilight Zone and those were the days when you colonials could make television programs. It was also better than last year, check it out. Is it really over a year since I started this nonsense?