no cup of joe

Thursday Aug 17, 2017 - coffee cup crisis 
Apparently sometime during the daylight hours yesterday my favorite coffee cup was set down somewhere unusual in this house. I’m frustrated in my inability to locate this excellent coffee cup. After looking in a few obvious places like next to this computer I took a break from the search and drank some coffee with a backup cup.

I feel more upset than if this coffee cup had been dropped and broken. That would have be upsetting but at least I would have known what happened to it. Not knowing if it is still intact or broken somewhere increases the stress.

last seen 8/16/17 answers to "smell the coffee"

Our house is smaller than most so after the few rooms I would expect to see it sitting on table/shelf/box/something. Also, bothering me is how a missing coffee cup could upset me. Just adds yet another dimension to the dilemma. How could I misplace a useful clearly visible object like this? I’m one of few in the family that even drinks coffee. Hopefully writing about it will help me to move on.

That coffee cup has warmed my hands on countless mornings. The thick sides and well rounded rim keeps the coffee warm and flowing easily.

What will I misplace next?

I regularly derail my train of thought. I’ve gotten use to that. However I'm typically OCD about putting things back in the same place.

Oh, on a brighter note - did you see these cool eclipse stamps? My nice brother-in-law alerted me to this post office offering. I ran out to the post office to pick-up a sheet. These forever stamps ($0.49 ea) are sensitive to heat. The black moon clears to reveal the moon’s face after you hold your thumb on them. Also, so far I have not misplaced them. (I know I didn't bring my coffee cup to the post office)

sun moon stamps

BREAKING NEWS - Lisleman’s treasured coffee cup has been found. The cup is in fine condition. After a day long search by as many as 3 adults, the cup was discovered abandoned inside the microwave.

I was just about to publish this when she-who-found-it announced the news. I can’t believe I didn’t reheat leftovers today and found it myself. I'm feeling dumb now.

In celebration here’s a song about losing it by Lucinda Williams.

I think I lost it
Let me know if you come across it
Let me know if I let it fall along a back road somewhere.

Lions and Tigers and lactating Cockroaches, OH MY!

Do scientists get grossed out?

I suspect many do. I could narrow the field and ask, “Do biologists get grossed out?”. I did two projects in high school that might be too disgusting for some. My father help me obtain a live chicken (I think it was a rooster but it didn’t matter) for a science project. I killed the chicken and then laboriously clean it down to each bone. Then I took on the task of reassembling the bones into a skeleton. It turned out OK, but was more work than I had expected.

The second project came in my senior year. I signed up for an advance class titled Physiology. Each two person team was given a dead well preserved cat. Over the semester we dissected the whole cat. Actually finding body parts was very interesting. At the end I was allowed to keep the cat skull. Great teeth. I know I had the skull in our current house but have not seen it for many years.

I posted about this class on my high school reunion FB page (ok that’s one good thing about Fakebook). Other classmates remember the class and commented. A few of the women recall discovering their cat was pregnant. Maybe it was a different class period than mine but I don’t recall any pregnant cats in my classroom. Being a guy maybe I wasn’t as interested. It’s not like I was the father.

all the better to eat you with, my dear

Oh if you are wondering those teeth in the above picture are NOT part of the cat skull. It was a small gator skull our grandson had.

Still remember the post title? Go ahead look if you need to.

Adding cockroaches to the Wizard Of Oz movie script would have been an opportunity for insecticide product placement. I find cockroaches and many other insects disgusting. However, why do some insects get adored for their beauty (butterfly) or talent (bee)? I don’t know. I suspect their movements, smell, look, what they feel like to touch influence the level of disgust we give these creatures.

Also, our background and culture is very important. But across cultures there are some common disgusting things. Most decay and waste fluids are considered disgusting worldwide. There are exceptions.

How about a delicious Peruvian cuy for a snack? It’s fried/roasted guinea pig. I skipped the offer and just snapped a picture.

When I lived in North Carolina I went to my first pig picking. It was great and somewhat competitive picking your selection right off of the roasted pig.

Have you heard about this expensive coffee that’s made from beans defecated by the asian palm civet? (I thought it was a cat. I looked it up and discovered it’s more of a raccoon-like rodent) Hey cat owners do you think your cat would eat coffee cherries? You could start your own business.

There is a good market for cow urine in India. (story)

A topic for another post - modern manufactured food distances us too far from the source of the food we eat. What’s your opinion?

My research on this post lead me this article about the science of disgusting stuff. In her book, "Don’t Look, Don’t Touch, Don’t Eat," Valerie Curtis focuses on our disgust emotion and its day-to-day effects on our lives. She has been studying disgusting stuff for thirty years. Curtis traces the evolutionary role of disgust in disease prevention and hygiene. Better understanding of disgust she believes will reduce disease in the third world by raising standards of hygiene.

Believe it or not, our disgusting presidential campaign did NOT give me the idea for this post on disgusting things. No it was hearing the news of an ideal protein supplement - cockroach milk. Yeah, my disgusted reaction was followed by, “what cockroaches milk their young?”.

Professor Barbara Stay, University of Iowa, has developed a cockroach milk extraction method called “milking a cockroach”. (I can’t help but think of “jumped the shark”) Oh it’s only the Pacific beetle cockroach that has this unique lactating ability.

Biochemists researched the the nutritional value of this crystalline milk.

Hey Joe, what’s on the schedule for today? Just a cockroach milk analysis. We should finish up early.

Turns out the stuff is highly nutritious. So protein and calorie rich that it might just show up in your energy bar someday.

Future thoughts

I find it paradoxical that the younger we are the less we concern ourselves about the future. Now when you are just a kid you haven’t had enough life experience for a basis of your future thinking. However, wouldn’t it be more sensible for a 20 year old to think and care about the future more than a 60 year old?

I see the opposite happening. I in my sixties ponder the future more than I did decades ago. Could it be that my personal future appears to be approaching quicker?

For this post, the future I’m referring to is the time coming in more than 10 years from now. Much further up the road than we typically take the time to consider during our busy days. Also, I don’t claim any inside knowledge or predictive talents. I’m not stirring tea leaves. I wasn’t even able to reach pinball wizard status.

2025 - ? It’s only 10 years away. Remember the one hit wonder song called, “In The Year 2525”? Now that’s way out there, 510 years from now. I had to look up the group that sang it. The duo Zager and Evans hit song's predictions covered about 10,000 years. One of their predictions is test tube (in vitro fertilization) babies for the year, 6565. They misjudged how quick this technique would become popular.

Future pondering often leads down a religious path. That’s ok. I’m not taking that path on this post but I will share one recent religious thought.

While driving down a very scenic highway in eastern Tennessee on sunny Sunday morning, I noticed a sign telling me, “Jesus is coming soon”. The sign looked old (many years) so I don’t think their prediction was very accurate or their definition of “soon” is different than mine.

This isn’t a picture of that sign (I was driving then) but one from a scenic overlook on that road:

Thinking of definitions, I suppose you could say “change” is the opposite of “constant”. But isn’t strange that change is constant?

Drinking my senior coffee at McDonald's ($0.69) this morning I thought - in the distant future will it be senior energy drink instead?

I believe a concern for the future and its future children provides a good guide. Music will continue to emotionally move us to think too.

Back when he went by Cat Stevens, his song asked:

I know we have come a long way
we’re changing day to day
but tell me, where do the children play?

pic from years ago in small town on the Adriatic sea

flippin Frappuccino

I learned that most of the product names the great star of bucks displays and then trains their customers to use are made up. However according to the wizard wikipedia site - not so with Frappuccino (not made up by them).

no waffle house nearby, I put Starbucks in my cup at home

From the wikipedia site -
Frappuccino is a portmanteau of frappé and cappuccino, an espresso coffee with frothed milk. The word was coined and trademarked in Boston, Massachusetts.  In the Boston area, a "frappe" is a term for a thick milkshake with ice cream, derived from the French word frappé. The original Frappuccino beverage was developed, named, trademarked and sold by George Howell's Eastern Massachusetts coffee shop chain, The Coffee Connection. When Starbucks purchased The Coffee Connection in 1994, they also gained the rights to use, make, market, and sell the Frappuccino beverage.

Boston? I would have never guessed.

I do enjoy Starbucks coffee but most often at home, poured out of my french press. I drink my hot coffee black. However, if the coffee is iced then the creme and sweetness of their coffee Frappuccino makes a great blend of taste.

Did you know it’s a better deal to drink the coffee at their coffee shop. Not only do you get the free wi-fi, you can get free refills on coffee (don’t think the fancy drinks are included in this).

After getting my engineering degree, I thought all college graduates would be coffee drinkers. Those crazy energy drinks didn’t exist when I was in school.

The mention of caffeine reminds of my caffeinated little gadget. (an excuse to show you a youtube clip I made years ago)





Please note this post was not sponsored by Starbucks. However, if the nice people there would like to pass a few gift cards my way that would be flippin Frappuccino!