Free booze from a tree!
I am buzzed to report that our first cider-making efforts have borne fruity booze.  The five-way apple tree I planted nine years ago yielded enough fruit this year to fill a 5-gallon carboy with juice.  Add yeast, secure airlock and stand back! Hard cider may be the easiest alcoholic beverage there is to make.  Unlike with beer, no boiling or cooling is involved.  The internet is replete with conflicting advice on how best to ferment cider, and almost all of the available instructions seem to give fine results.  HereR

Coffee Project: Day Eighty-One
Latest observations: The feeling coffee gives me is a lot like terror: my heart pounds, my chest tightens, my muscles clench.  This makes sense, because caffeine stimulates the release of adrenaline and stress hormones – it’s like a cup of artificial stress, basically. (Read that link: it’s kinda scary.) But my life is artificially low on stress: I live in Portland.  And this month I’ve really gotten to know the positive side of coffee, too.  It can give me focus and motiva

Coffee Project: Day Seventy-Two
(Sorry if this is getting tedious, but I continue to observe and experiment with coffee, and continue to assure myself that this is all good science and not just well-rationalized backsliding.  You judge.) This week I’ve had three more cups of coffee.  That’s one cup every two or three days, which feels moderate.  But this takes discipline, because I crave a lot more than that, and my neighborhood is a minefield of coffeeshops.  Abstinence was easier. Today, during lunch with my daughter, I had a 12oz latte.Â

Coffee Project: Day Sixty-Four
I had a cup of coffee on my birthday.  It was a latte from Stumptown on SW 3rd, downtown, and it was wonderful.  It’s hard to separate the coffee-feeling from the immense hangover and sleep deprivation I had from the night before, or with the euphoria and validation from all 300 of my Facebook friends wishing me happy birthday.  But I felt wide-eyed, imaginative, gregarious, festive and happy.  All afternoon I visited bookstores and bought tiny presents for myself with my gift money.  Happy birthday to me!  I stayed up a bit late but had no real trouble sleeping, and the next morning I d

Coffee Project: Day Fifty-Eight
I feel fine now.  My mind is in a good place.  I’m getting things done, I’m working, I’m even writing a little.  Life without stimulants isn’t so bad. But Monday will be the sixty day mark of this experiment, and also my forty-first birthday.  I’d like to celebrate with a really good cup of coffee. Abstinence is easier than moderation for me.  But moderation is what I want.  It would be great to enjoy a cup of coffee over lunch with a friend, every now and then, and not feel crippled without it.  To use it for what it’s good for, and then leave