Coffee Anyone?

  Jan and I celebrated our forty- second anniversary last month. It was fairly uneventful for the most part. There was only one restaurant open in town and I don't like the owner so we didn't go out to eat. We have to go to Juneau soon, so we'll do something there. She wants to have breakfast at the Sandpiper restaurant downtown. She has her heart set on having the french toast with marscapone or some such thing. I've eaten there a few times and I can attest to the fact that they put out a darn tasty breakfast. Anyway, when my daughter Autumn called to wish us a happy anniversary,she said to keep a lookout for a box. She has somewhat strange tastes in gifts at times, and her sense of humor sometimes drives her gift buying, so I wasn't sure what to expect.She once sent a card that showed a guy in some kind of strange contraption like a diving suit with a hose connected between his backside and his face. The caption was -so and so liked the smell of his own farts so well that he invented a special suit or some such thing. Of course she thought it was hilarious- I wasn't real sure what to make of it.She sent an anniversary card that shows an older couple looking out over the water and the wife says something semi-romantic like " Can  you believe we're still married after all these years" and the husband says " Yeah, I could sure go for a beer."  Hmmm... as the apostle Paul says- to communicate forget not.  Anyway, the box she sent arrived and to my surprise it was stuffed full of assorted bags of coffee. I'm really not much of a gourmet  coffee kind of guy- mainly because I'm so blasted cheap! Consequently, we drink lots of Folgers here. What the heck, it tastes good to me, and if I buy it at Costco, it doesn't cost all that much. But there is also the fact that my daughter Jennifer lives in town, and on a regular basis comes to the house and makes herself at home, which of course is fine, but if she is here any length of time she has to have two or three or four cups of coffee. I don't want to get too graphic here, but coffee has a tendency to rush through the kidneys and into the bladder, at least around this house, so then we're not only providing refreshing beverages, but toilet paper for the inevitable drainage that's going to occur. It starts to get  expensive. Anyway, I looked through the various and sundry bags of coffee she sent. There are several bags from the Island Trader Coffee company.  French Vanilla and Hazelnut Creme. Before I had my glasses on I thought it said Hazelnut Crime. I thought, what the heck kind of coffee is Hazelnut Crime? The bag claims that it makes one perfect pot. Guess we'll find out. I wish I had that kind of confidence. I catch only perfect fish. I write only perfect books. I'm the perfect man. Oh yeah, I could get into this!  We just finished off the bag of Outhouse Blend from the Alaska Coffee Roastery. As bad as it may sound, it was pretty darn tasty. We're in the process of going through a bag of Starbucks Dark French Roast, also pretty good. We've still to try the KIVU French Vanilla or the Cafe' Godiva from Godiva Chocolatiers. I don't know if it's chocolate flavored or not, but it has a drawing, somewhat crudely done, of Lady Godiva on a horse. In contrast, I have a bag of coffee from the Raven's Brew Coffee company. It features a goat with three times the number of male members that other Billy goats would have and is appropriately named and the drawing is fairly accurate. It's twelve ounces of dark roast that they describe as having a "velvety mouthfeel, superb body. Uncanny high notes of fruity sweetness hover over a dry chocolate base."  We may save that for last, or try it out on Jen first to see how it tastes. The name is somewhat offsetting, but it might be great. In any event, we've got enough coffee to keep a buzz on for the next month or so. If you're in the neighborhood, drop by; we'll brew up a pot and see how long the toilet paper lasts.