Coffee Weapon

A state Senators trip to the lounge for a snack ended with him being tallied as voting with the Democrats.
Around noon, Sen. Frank Padavan (NY-R) walked through the back of the Senate chamber to fetch some coffee from the senators’ lounge as 31 Democrats were convening a regular session. They contend that his brief appearance provided the 32 members needed for a quorum to conduct business and began passing bills. “My only motive was to get in the lounge and get a Coke or cup of coffee,” Padavan told Newsday. He ended up with a Coke, a V-8 and a tuna fish sandwich. Senate clerk Thomas Testo said he marked Padavan as present. Under Senate rules, a member marked present is assumed to have voted “yes” on all noncontroversial bills unless they say “no.” “We passed critical legislation that we expect the governor will sign,”
Newsday.com

Author of ‘How Starbucks Saved My Life’ Michael Gates Gill considered himself a failure. He had lost his advertising job to corporate downsizing, his wife to divorce and his health to a brain tumor. One day Gill walked into a Starbucks near his New York home.
Sitting there sipping his latte he almost didn’t hear a young black woman ask, “Would you like a job?”
He took the job and also began keeping a journal of his experiences as he learned to call out drinks, operate the cash register and interact with customers and employees,  people he might not have talked to before he fell out of the middle class.

Gill’s journal is now the best-seller How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else. The book has been optioned by Tom Hanks for a movie.

Article here
By Jim Jordan
HERALD-LEADER BUSINESS WRITER

Hi there.. I know that I have some readers and I would love to hear from you about your strange instances involving coffee. Did something happen to you and you remember you had or were consuming coffee at the time?

What haven’t curled up with a good book lately?
Upon learning that this brewed coffee delicacy is produced from beans picked from the excrement of the “Luwak,” a catlike animal common to the region. Author and Scientist Massimo Marcone adventures begins with a request to investigate the mystery shrouding the world’s most expensive, bizarre and also the most coveted brew, Sumatra’s Kopi Luwak coffee.

Marcone explains his penchant for unusual foods in his recent book In Bad Taste: The Science and Adventures Behind Food Delicacies. His discovery that the coffee bean is effectively cleaner after passing through a Luwak’s rectum.
“When I incubated the sub-samples, allowing ample time for bacterial growth, I was shocked to see that the Kopi Luwak beans had one hundred times fewer bacteria than the corresponding control samples.” He also uncovers how progression through a Luwak’s digestive system chemically alters the bean so that it produces a different, richer flavor. Umm yea..A few chapters in and you might just find yourself hankering for a cup of Kopi Luwak joe.

A Man stole five jars of coffee in an act of revenge at being accused of a theft he had not committed.
Lee Tobin’s temper got the better of him after he was accused with a theft from the One Stop shop, in the town’s Wynyard Road, magistrates heard.
Alan Davison, prosecuting at Hartlepool Magistrates Court, said: “Mr Tobin was suspected of acting suspiciously by a member of staff, who challenged him and asked to see his bag.
“He emptied it and the bag was searched, but nothing was found.
“But later, CCTV footage was reviewed and staff saw him leave with six
jars of coffee which he hadn’t paid for.”
In police interview, Tobin, 29, said he was “upset and frustrated at having been searched and in temper took the items as a form of revenge” and that he sold the coffee for £5, Mr Davison added.
Tobin, of Campbell Road, Hartlepool, admitted committing the theft on May 10.

So I should mention something about my free cup of Starbucks coffee on Thursday.. I have really only been in Starbucks a few times. The coffee I had from there always has a burnt taste to me but it’s free today so what the heck. We usually go to Starbucks when the wife wants a book since the Starbucks around here is in a big bookstore.

This place Starbucks can really be intimidating to someone like me, a regular coffee drinker. Oh well the coffee is free today and I’m already stoked up from the pot of Folgers from this morning. I get in line, check my watch,  yep still time for some free coffee. As long as this line keeps moving and I can place my order before noon.

Looks like they are not so happy to be giving away the coffee this morning. Suppose a lot of us here aren’t part of their regular Starbucks crowd.  As I get closer to ordering I have a gaze at the board above those busy, annoyed looking baristas. Yikes, I don’t see anything that I recognize, nothing resembling cup-of-regular-coffee. What the heck is a Venti and why would i want the special.. It’s a low-cal frappe-mocha with a triple shot of caffeine boosting apricot oil. Yuck, do people actually buy those. It’s on sale today. only $4.90.. what?? I’m sorry but I would never pay that for a cup of Joe. Anyways I spot tall coffee on the board, oh yes, that’s for me, I like my coffee tall and long lasting so it lasts along time. yes!

Somehow I feel out of place standing in line but finally I am the next to order, just in time as they are just a couple of minutes left in the free coffee give away. The nicely dressed woman in front of me places her order. She orders a Ethiopian cha-cha mango fruity Raspberry frappe-latte with cinnamon-hazelnut dust, steamed French laced soy milk. “Make it a Grande” she says. I’m thinking, Why not pour it directly in the toilet and  just watch it. Wow, I guess there is such a thing as crapp-achino.

Finally, it’s my turn to order, To make it look like I know what I’m doing in this snazzy coffee house, with confidence, I tell the barista, ahem “Hello I would like a fresh regular extra-Columbian roasted full flavored java, add no sugar with whole milk and make it a large.. um.. tall.. yes make it tall!” I’m so proud of my order but the female barista just stared at me dumbfounded. “I’m sorry sir but we would have to brew you a pot of regular coffee and if you are in line for our free coffee offer that just ended five minutes ago. Groans from behind me , I just tell her, relieved, “never mind I think I’ll just go read a magazine instead.”

Kevin

The owner of a coffee stand north of Seattle is offering free coffee for a year to anyone who helps catch a robber.
Troy Malchow hopes the offer will create a buzz that finds the man who pointed a gun at him Wednesday at Perfetto Espresso.

Malchow, who has owned Perfetto Espresso for a decade, says the business had never been robbed until Wednesday. But in the past two weeks, his business in the parking lot of an auto repair shop has been both vandalized and robbed.

Also
A well-known antiques auctioneer from Maine who disappeared nearly five years ago after telling his wife that he was going to get a cup of coffee was found in Allentown last week trying to rent an apartment.

Claude Van Tassel, a 71-year-old father of 12, apparently has no plans to return to his old home in Lyman, Maine, or to be reunited with his family.

Van Tassel and his wife were shopping at the Ames department store in Dover when Van Tassel vanished and was reported missing in April 2002. She said they had gone out for breakfast, he went for coffee, and she went to buy something in the mall.

Beatrice Van Tassel said her husband told her to find him when she was ready to pay, but when she was ready, he was gone, she recalled Friday. His car was found in the mall parking lot, she said.

”I have no idea why or how he left,” she said. ”He ran away like a little kid.”

Took off this past weekend to do some crafting at NJ Expo.

Had some coffee from a coffee machine and I have to say it wasn’t so bad. Better then the Wawa. I tried the hazelnut from there and it’s not so good. I think they go to heavy on the oils. I recommend sticking with the Regular blends from there. Folgers for breakfast, drink half before anyone gets some. No other coffee of note in Jersey this time, other then the coffee I had at the diner. Wait never offered a second cup, guess she figured it was 10:30 pm and I wouldn’t want another. Same thing at a Olive Garden but it was only 6 pm. I had to drink morning coffee when we got home.

On my trip back to my home praying that the ball joints hold out I stopped in the Saratoga area. I usually can get to maplefields but the truck won’t go as far. Anyway.. I needed gas and a bathroom break from the morning folgers. Many choices DD was right there off the thruway but no I tried what looked like a local convience/gas place. Gas up and went in to find a pretty good selection of coffee, they sold their share. Got a hazelnut 16 papercup, lotica cover, those are the kind that are ready for sipping. from Bengal Traders. Never tried them.. Gotta say coffe was hot and flavour was of good quality. Wait took my money and I was off. Without her saying a word to me.. Ok I will give this place a break as they had a gasoline situation in the second bay. Two girls were outside doing their best to sop it up. While the old guy that did the dirty deed waited inside. enough already.. til next time