The title’s reference being from this: www.tmcm.com

This last week was a peak for me and my coffee/caffeine intake. So, Sunday afternoon, after 3 big French press style cups with no effect, I decided to take a break, cold turkey. Unfortunately, this resulted in waking up with a headache Tuesday morning that lasted through till this morning when I caved and grabbed a medium (as opposed to the usual large) iced coffee from Dunkin Donuts on my way to work. And, the headache is gone! Along with my eerie cravings whenever I passed the coffee machine in the kitchen at work.

One such instance, the coffee maker had its door open saying “please insert espresso package and close door”. When closed without inserting a pack, it opened again. I had to make an espresso shot, and dump it out. In reality, someone had pressed the “Cappuccino” button, which requires 2 separate package insertions. They obviously walked away with a cappuccino sans espresso.

I’m going to try and hold off for a while still. Maybe I just need to slowly ease off of coffee rather than quitting (for whatever time period) cold turkey.

Since this blog wasn’t “functioning” back in June, I will summarize here.

Matthew Good was in Las Vegas, staying at a friend’s house for a few months which spanned June 29th (his birthday). On June 15th on his blog, a website that I regularly read, Matt posted this:

For those of you in the States that keep asking me to tour down there, I’m going to do my utmost to make it happen. That said, being that I’m in Las Vegas for a month, I might do a little campfire thing without amplification, etc, sort of like I did when I left my old apartment. So if you’re in the area, or can get there, drop me a line at email@email.org. Like last August’s apartment show I will have to limit the number of people, so if you’re seriously interested then best to respond as soon as you’re able. We can make it a bit of a pool party, I’ll play some tunes, and maybe even preview some of the new release. Being that it’s in the high 30’s during the day, I’ll most likely do it in the evening when it cools off a bit. As for the date, I was thinking of doing it on my birthday, the 29th.

Since I frequently get to “the office” before 9am, I was fortunate enough to read this post before ANY comments had appeared below (with many devoted fans, comments tend to appear within minutes of a post). I immediately sent an email with my interest (after calling, and waking up, my 2 good friends who are equally huge Matthew Good fans to confirm they could make the show if we got an invitation). Then, I waited for 3 of the longest days ever when I received an email back from Matt with the “Re: Las Vegas - You’re Invited to attend. (3 people)” note.

Flash forward past booking the flight, car, and hotel accommodations, past the follow up emails with further information about the show’s location/etc, past the email introductions among the guest, past the 5+ hour flight into the Vegas strip and the first late late evening, past the guests meeting up before the show for dinner and laughs, and arrive at a cozy home in a gated community well outside the flashing lights of the casinos.

June 29th, 2007: Matthew Good and his close friends, joined with 15 or so fans who had been selected and invited by Matt himself, gathered around in the living room. Matthew Good, barefoot with only an acoustic guitar, performed 10 tracks for a completely awestruck group. His setlist was (all acoustic re-workings, similar to the “Rooms” portion off In A Coma):

1. Metal Airplanes
2. I Am Not Safer Than A Bank
3. Champions Of Nothing
4. Suburbia
5. I’m A Window
6. Black Helicopter
7. If I Was A Tidal Wave
8. Odette
9. Born Losers
10. True Love Will Find You In The End

Max and Jason from CurrentTV were there filming an interview/documentary about Matt, his career, and his new record (embedded below).

It is safe to say that the entire weekend (Show + Vegas with a great group of people) was, and will continue to be, the most incredible experiences of my entire life. I am looking forward to the September 20th show in Vancouver, British Columbia, where there will be a mini-Vegas reunion with most of us who became friends over the most memorable weekend ever.

Link’d

This morning I went to the gym, which requires me to get up somewhere between 5:15 and 5:30 am. Everything was great, and right now I feel fantastic. My gym, the Park Slope YMCA, just got all new weight room equipment. So it was cool to have the place basically to myself to try everything out (its empty in the mornings).

For breakfast, I made myself a 2 egg and cheese sandwich, on toast, with minced garlic. I also ironed a shirt to wear today, but it was too hot out so I’m just in a t-shirt (Vespa!).

The summary of my morning is basically that I am fully awake and was ready to read a bit on the train ride into work. In respect of this story, I am ironically reading God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens (Interview on the Daily Show). Anyway, I really want to finish this book by Friday because I will have 2 Metro North train rides this weekend with lots of time to kill and I want to start a new book (leaning towards a Carl Sagan one).

Today’s morning train ride was a rare treat. No more than 4 times so far (all on morning commutes, today included) there has been someone preaching on the train. Its usually only annoying for the reason that their stories completely lack logic. They usually draw on recent events, such as the flooding from a couple weeks ago that stalled the commute into Manhattan, and attribute it to “God’s wrath”. Today in particular, the guy preaching was very loud, and was walking up and down the subway car — completely distracting, and made it very hard to read. In fact, I didn’t read. I “read” 3 pages by “reading” the same paragraphs over and over again, not absorbing anything I was looking at.

And now to end this post with a period at the end of this sentence.

The change in matter of a gas to a liquid, is called condensation. This commonly occurs around the outside of cups that contain a liquid that is colder than the air around it, such as an iced coffee on a hot summer day. What ultimately happens, is the water vapor in the air “condensates” onto the outside of the cup and either drips to the floor or is transferred to the hand that is holding said cup. In the first case, the “floor” may be replaced, and is frequently replaced, by the shirt or pants of the holder of the cup. In the second case, the wet hand is usually wiped onto the shirt or pants of the holder of the cup. Drippage usually occurs when taking a sip of the iced beverage, since this action tends to jostle the cup and shake the liquid build up into falling off the cup, and wiping usually occurs immediately after taking a sip.

The point of all this is condensation sucks. I hate condensation for the very reason of drippage/wipeage. Wikipedia lists some applications of condensation. Of which, I could do without to save myself the mild inconvenience of getting my shirt or pants wet with a quickly drying drop of water.

More worthwhile posts to hopefully follow in the near future. This one was stupid, I know.

9:27:15 am | 9:28:02 | 9:29:21 | 9:30:02 | 9:32:20 | 9:32:57 | 9:33:18 | 9:33:50 | 9:35:33 | 9:41:28 | 9:48:47 | 9:57:25 | 10:09:52 | 10:11:09 | 10:16:39 | 10:19:42 | 10:20:53 | 10:34:54 | 10:35:43 | 11:15:02 | 11:16:31 | 11:18:59 | 11:25:27 | 11:40:12 | 11:44:22 | 11:47:03 | 1:50:40 pm | 1:59:12 | 2:00:12 | 2:02:01 | 2:10:53 | 2:16:07 | 2:21:20 | 2:22:31 | 2:31:47 | 2:31:52 | 2:39:47 | 3:11:43 | 3:34:36 | 3:39:29 | 3:49:36 | 3:52:50 | 3:53:04 | 4:00:02 | 4:08:42 | 4:11:30 | 4:32:49 | 4:35:09 | 4:35:46 | 4:56:26

Maybe this will kick-start me into making a decent webpage for myself.

Everything is set to the defaults at the moment and will be changed in the (hopefully) near future.