Riley's Life

This morning I woke up early and promptly broke the coffee maker.

What happened is I removed the filter wrong, in spite of the training I received, or, to put it another way, the filter was awkwardly taken out. In either case, the water reservoir filled with spent grounds and, after rinsing the chamber out a few times...nothing. In the end, I risked somehow ruining the tea kettle and poured the water over the last of the freshly milled coffee by hand. Where there's a will...

I'm sure they'll be kind and say something like it was old or needed replacing, but that would just be kind. It's an elegant machine with buttons and features that don't exist in either One pot ofThe other onemine.

After fiddling with theirs for awhile, I got it to display the correct time, but that's hardly its purpose.

I said "risked" in regards to the tea kettle because it meant I used the stove, easily the best home range I've ever seen. God knows what I could do with that if I put my mind to it.

After drinking three or four cups of coffee and completing my pet duties (including meeting a neighbor's dog who came bounding unbidden by me into the yard), I laid back down and slept some more. This home is easily the most tranquil, peaceful place I've been in years, and I'm wondering if there's something to all that "animals killed in anger" stuff.

While not precisely pastoral, I'm a few hundred feet up a steep hill, I think. The neighborhood is quiet unless police helicopters are circling the nearby reservoir and it's impossible for me to walk more than ten feet outside in any direction without destroying a spider web. I hadn't realized I was staying in the silk capital of the Western United States.

There are nearby art galleries and design centers, greasy food places, and a 7-11 where the people standing in line were explaining to each other their lack of recent film work by admitting "at the moment, I'm more into my music." Then, something about a busy producer "doing other works" at the moment.

There's a wonderful hammock here.

5 comments:

cybele said...

Oh, I've switched to the Ocadia template, it's very nice.

cybele said...

What do you mean by “animals killed in anger” stuff?

russ said...

I've heard vegetarians attempt to shame me by talking about the negative karma I bring on myself and my surroundings by my decision to eat red meat. I saw no red meat and brought none with me, and outside of my snacks everything was very healthy.

Cause and effect? You decide!

cybele said...

You make it sound as if I am a vegetarian. I just don't eat mammals. I eat plenty of chickens and turkeys and fishes.

Maybe those slaughterhouse guys shouldn't kill those cows in anger. You know, kill them with kindness or something.

Oh, and I took all the unhealthy snacks with me!

russ said...

You now have even more choices for themes!

I still need to clean them up, put the theme picker in a consistent location, that kind of thing, but I don't expect to be graded on this.

The meat eating thing was just just something I thought of while trying to account for the placidity. "Fewer animals killed in anger?" For the record, I sincerely doubt anyone working in a slaughterhouse kills in anger or with any emotion at all save for inserting tab A in slot B.