LIFE CHANGES I bought a car! Lil bb 5dr Impreza (WanderingEng) and I love it so far. It's going to be very nice for getting me to/from work, and to/from mountains and a bit more rugged areas. To help subsidize this, and to deal with the fact that I will be gone for large chunks of the summer, I'm moving to a less desirable area, but with two people I know, for very little money each month. Planning on this for the next 9-ish months, and then revisiting at that point. Likely to move into a studio after this endeavor. THE THING I REALLY WANTED TO TALK ABOUT This past Friday for work I ended up going to the Global Specialty Coffee Expo, and had an amazing time. Went up to the convention center in Seattle, and entered this crazy busy and high-flying world of the coffee industry. One lecture on Agroforestry, one on Roasting Automation, and probably 60 ounces of coffee were drank from various roasters and companies. Got some great knowledge out of it from talking to some of our equipment manufacturers, as well. The more fun part, though, was the after-parties. If you're good enough at talking to people you get to go to after-parties. Which means I spent my evening drinking with the Arbor Day Foundation at Speakeasy, and then in this crazy industrial art studio near the Starbucks Reserve Roastery, and now have an open invite to Papau New Guinea. So that's kind of cool. Giving me a lot of thoughts about the Coffee Industry and what kind of role I actually want to have in it in the future. Yikes.
A dear friend of mine has begun her own roastery - Counterbalance - and she was showing her first roastings at that expo! Apparently got good compliments from people there, and from her coffee shop, Ghost Alley Espresso. Small world...
Very nice! Mine's the same color! It hasn't been to the mountains but was solid all winter. I pulled in a couple snowy trailheads here this winter and it was perfect. I liked my old Civic, but the AWD performance was great.