There are too many things I love too much...

[rhienelleth]

Tonight I have to take a night off from jewelry. Last night was the roleplay game of doom - meaning I spent most of it making jewelry because it's the crappy game where nothing happens no matter how hard you try to make it happen. I know, by now you must be wondering why we subject ourselves to it every two weeks. The simple answer is, because the guy running it is our friend. Also, he has run good games in the past, and hope springs eternal.

Anyway, I made myself my very own labradorite necklace, which I am wearing right now. *is in love with new necklace* And I finished up a project for a friend. She went to a bead show with me a few weeks ago, bought a couple strands of beads and said "Here, make me something with these, I don't care what." They were interesting beads, irregular shaped and colored in such a way that designing with them was challenging. Although I sort of fell in love with this strand while I was making her necklace, so I will look for more this weekend at the gem show I'm attending.





I added the red pearls - her beads are the others, called "raspberry quartz". It's quartz with mica inclusions that appear as sprinkles of red inside the stones. Very pretty. I added the pearls to help accentuate that red. I may try for matching earrings, but not sure if she'd ever wear them. She wears the same pair of earrings for a year at a time. I hope she likes it. It's always a little intimidating making something for someone when they give you license to do "whatever you want".

In any case, the last two nights of intensive jewelry making have put strain on my neck and shoulders again, and I'm feeling the first signs of headaches/possible migraine coming on. So, a break is in order tonight. Possibly a massage if I can fit it in anywhere this week. (I really should.)

In the meantime, I've taken ibuprofen, and I'm drinking some coffee I roasted last weekend, sweet maria's moka kadir blend, which mixes yemen and ethiopian beans. Very strong, rich, earthy flavor. Hopefully it will help kick the hungover feeling I have from two nights in a row up late, doing jewelry. Also, it is good, though not my favorite coffee tone. I think I'll roast up some guatemalan huehuetenango this weekend, which has a less heavy flavor, more nutty and fruity - my favorite single origin coffee to date.

In the meantime, I have words to write!

Oh, and update on the LJ scenario - work computer still shows everything to perfection, but on my Mac at home, userpics STILL won't load.

Comments

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

Oh, you roast your own? Do you have an actual roaster or do you do the popcorn thang?

Do you do espresso?

I'm saving for a Rancillio Silvia and a Rocky grinder this year. :-D

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

OH! Another coffee geek!

I have a Rocky and I LOVE it. (Do you know coffeegeek.com? Sometimes people upgrade and sell off their perfectly good 'old' equipment for less. That's how I nabbed Rocky for half the usual price.) Sadly, no Silvia yet. I have a Bux Barista (repackaged Saeco) with a regular portafilter (not the pressurized one that comes w/the unit). I keep thinking about Silvia, and then thinking if I'm going to upgrade that far (what with the mods and temp surfing and stuff), I'll go all the way and get a Quickmill Anita (my current dream machine).

But for now, Rocky with the Saeco works well. Enough, anyway, that all our friends are wowed by what I give them to drink when they come over, LOL.

For roasting, I started out with the popcorn popper, and then upgraded to a Turbocrazy to do larger quantities. I love it. :-)

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

I adore coffee. I want to open my own place eventually. Sometime. Down the road. Which means I actually have to, liek, pull shots. LOL!

I read Coffee Geek and listen to the podcast. I hang out at Specialty-Coffee.com, and I'm reading in-depth at EspressoMyEspresso.com until I can get more hands-on with my own stuff.

I made the pilgrimage to Murky in Arlington VA... I am now a snob. Nothing else will measure up.

I'll look into the Saeco... it's hard choosing, you know? XD

ETA: gorgeous necklace too! I was so intent on the coffee that I didn't look at the picture! LOL!

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

Saeco is about on par with Gaggia Coffee - entry level espresso machines, beginning in the $2-300 range, and going up from there. (I'd never buy the $4-500 ones - for that price, the Silvia would get my money.)

I love the CG podcast! It's a staple in my podcast rotation for work. I haven't checked out EspressomyEspresso yet, I'll have to put it on the list.

I got into coffee a couple of years ago, when I stumbled across CG looking for advice on buying a home espresso machine. Imagine my shock when I discovered I'd have to buy a machine and a grinder to get a truly good coffee experience. Since then, I have definitely become a snob! I try to explain to friends and relatives about the importance of fresh roast and a good burr grinder, and their eyes glaze over. I ended up buying my Mom a Baratza Virtuoso grinder, just so I could get reasonably good coffee when I visit her. :) And I usually prefer my own cup to any of the places near my house.

I don't think I'll ever go so far as to open my own place, but I would be a loyal customer to those who know coffee, and do. :-)

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

ETA: gorgeous necklace too! I was so intent on the coffee that I didn't look at the picture! LOL!

Thank-you. :)

LOL - I totally understand! It is so rare to stumble across true coffee aficionados. My husband doesn't drink it, so I rarely get the opportunity to really chat about my obsession. Which, yeah - somewhere around here, there is a post about the lengths to which I went to have good coffee while on a camping trip. It's almost pathetic, really.

[kayjayuu.livejournal.com]

I wanna read that story. ;) I'm happy to chat away about it, my whole family loves the stuff but I'm the one who is becoming edumacated about it. Son wants to learn and work in a coffee house, but the only "serious" one is 40 miles away and he doesn't drive.

I'm known for privately critiqueing the pulls of the baristas anywhere we go (like I know what I'm doing, lol!). And our idea of a great date? Two laptops and $50 bucks spent on coffee and food someplace with great atmosphere.

I'm doomed.

[shadawyn.livejournal.com]

Wow. That necklace.

*drools*

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

Thanks. :) I hope she feels the same way! And I'm really hoping to find more of the raspberry quartz now...

[un4scene.livejournal.com]

That is such a lovely piece. Seeing your stuff always inspires me to keep trying to improve my skills.

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

Oh, thank-you! I feel the same way about several jewelry artists I have bookmarked (I blame them for this whole soldering business). I love talking jewelry with people and looking at what they're doing - I hope you'll post more of your pieces as you make them. :D

[aka-paloma.livejournal.com]

Mmmm...I love huehuetenango, and it's so much fun to say! A coffee shop close to where I worked years ago used to brew up a pot every so often. It was brilliant. I seem to prefer Central American beans, as well some from Indonesia. I don't roast my own, but I do enjoy a good cup of coffee. How civilisations got as far along as they did without caffeine, I'll never understand. ;)

And the necklace is gorgeous! So summery. I can't imagine anyone not loving it. *covets*

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

Oh, how DO you say huehuetenango? I stumbled across it in a sampler pack of some of the very first green beans I ever roasted, and I just keep buying/roasting it ever since. But I never know how to pronounce it when chatting it up to friends.

I do like the Central American beans myself Though I recently purchased some actual Kona green beans that I'm anxious to roast up and give a try.

[aka-paloma.livejournal.com]

It's just the "huehue" part that's tricky as the "tenango" is phonetic. I was told it's pronounced waywaytenango.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

Very pretty L will look lovely.

Loves

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

I know, by now you must be wondering why we subject ourselves to it every two weeks. The simple answer is, because the guy running it is our friend. Also, he has run good games in the past, and hope springs eternal.

:(

Take the game back... get together with the other players and conspire to jazz it up a notch. Sometimes the author/creator needs external inspiration too ;P

[rhienelleth.livejournal.com]

No, see, we've tried that, really! Really really really tried. And occasionally we even succeed...a little. But Bill has this amazing gift for neverending games of doom - there was the Vampire game where we spent weeks traveling the various levels of Hell. Weeks, I tell you, with nothing happening despite endless random combat and, um, traveling, I guess. And then the Werewolf game where we ended up fighting an army of wyrm-tainted bad guys for endless game sessions - actually, our characters are still there. We refuse to go back and play it.

And then the D&D campaign where we spent months traveling with a stupid golden statue that every monster in the realms wanted, could sense, and track us by, yet we couldn't teleport, bag of holding, shrink, or otherwise move or change or hide it in any way, and when we tried to leave the f---ing thing behind, it just showed back up to hang like a freaking albatross around our necks. And it was a statue of GOOD and we were playing EVIL characters who really couldn't have cared less. And yet, the DM got upset when we didn't much care that the statue of doom was basically wreaking destruction upon every town or village we passed, due to the unending armies of giants, trolls, and orcs following us. It was his idea to play evil characters that time, btw.

I totally shouldn't have gotten started with this rant. Anyway, my husband and I have tried, between the two of us, to make something happen. We even tried with two of our good RPGer friends once, thinking maybe Bill just needed more good players. (The other two regular players in the game are his wife and son, who literally sit and do nothing - NOTHING - despite Bill's repeated attempts to bring them into the game and make them do stuff, which are abysmal and just slow us down more.) Er, so, these two friends we harassed begged to come play with us one weekend - by the time dinner was going, Doug was in the kitchen helping me. When Mark (the husband) came in and found Doug chopping things, he looked at him like "Dude, why did you abandon me in there?" and Doug looked back and said "I'm chopping basil," with this manic smile pasted on his face.

And Doug is a stellar player. No, these games are really that bad. Bill actively fights any attempts to make anything of substance (ie, anything beyond his "plan") happen.

[kistha.livejournal.com]

We so need to live closer together.

[neutronjockey.livejournal.com]

Bill actively fights any attempts to make anything of substance (ie, anything beyond his "plan") happen.

Yeah. Bad DM.

Sorry to get you on a rant. I didn't think it was that bad. Good DMs cater to the players. The best campaigns that I've ran (and they often run for at least a year ...and several beyond two) were the ones where the players were engaged enough into the story line to introduce plot elements themselves...and I listened, and they loved it! Because that's what RP is about for a lot of folks: being personally involved in something more fantastic than RL.

:(