The Adventures of Feet and Peet's

Most of the humans with whom I confer regularly participated in a St. Patrick's Day 5K race downtown, and they encouraged me to leisurely participate with them.

For more than 3 miles.

Downtown.

At 9:30 on a Sunday morning.

I said I'd think about it. That night at the gym, I put myself on a treadmill and tested myself. After 0.65 somethings, I felt the overwhelming desire to curl into a ball and sob like a newborn. It may have been the metric ton of sushi I'd just put into my stomach, it may have been nausea caused from trying to do this while reading Richard Dawkins's The Selfish Gene. I don't know. But it took me a ridiculously long time to get that far, so I abstained.

Instead, I simply crashed their brunch at Etta's afterward.

Ken and I agreed to finally go to Peet's Coffee and Tea together, which he highly regards. I ordered their loose leaf Earl Grey with bergamot, and deem it "not at all bad". Fortunately, the woman who took my money and prepared my tea was named Chelsea. When she leaned forward to put my ten-spot into the till and extract my change, she gave me a great tour of Upper Chelsea.

I oversteeped the tea, but that isn't Chelsea's fault. We then removed ourselves back to Ken's place to enjoy non-broadcast, non-cable comedic programming and roast coffee. You heard me. Ken roasts his own beans (or at the very least has the capability to do so at his discretion). He donated a fifth to go with the fifth of tequila I procured last week for the Melt 41 cloning project I've accepted.

I recall from a long-ago episode of Good Eats that freshly roasted coffee beans continually produce carbon dioxide, so at some point in the next few days after the outgassing process has died down I will begin testing various steeping/brewing procedures on small test batches. Most cold-brewing coffee instructions (yes, they exist) suggest a 10 to 12 hour steep time, which is much shorter than I was anticipating: I put a vanilla bean in a bottle of Grey Goose last week and I'm not going to crack that thing open again until my birthday at the earliest. Ken urged me to consider the Melt 41 clone as I would making tea, as opposed to, say, herb-infusing vinegar or vanilla-izing vodka.