It's the little things...
I had a run-in with the biggest jackass of all time this morning.
Not literally, fortunately, as I was on a bike on Riverside Drive, and said jackass was in a car, going the same direction, and a run-in would not have turned out well for yours truly.
Riverside Drive happens to be the main route out of New York for all the cyclists in the boroughs (or at least Brooklyn and Manhattan). So on weekends, if you sit on a park bench on the sidewalk, you'll see packs of people in the most ridiulous outfits zooming past at some pretty impressive speeds. It's a great place to ride - there's 2 lanes going in each direction; the road generally doesn't have too much traffic; and the few drivers usually know to stay in the left lane and more or less leave the right lane to the cyclists.
Except for this guy who was driving a gold Taurus this morning. (Unfortunately I can't remember his license plate number.) For some reason he decided that hanging out in the right lane, tailgating me and honking, would be lots more fun that driving like a sane person in the completely empty left lane!
I was actually a little scared. When people do stuff like that, you never know if they're drunk, or high, or simply road raging; and like I said, if it came down to my bike vs a Taurus, I'll pick the Taurus to win any day.
Fortunately after a minute or two of this, he decided that enough was enough, and zoomed off, well over the speed limit, of course. And I went home, and ran errands, and sulked.
The good news is that my espresso maker is working again! A couple of weeks ago, I'd bought the cutest cups one day at a store in the Lower East Side (appropriately called Tiny), and was so bummed to get home and discover that water wasn't going through the machine. Fortunately, the nice people at the company figured out the problem: calcium deposits. Get a descaler, they said. So I went to Zabar's and picked up a box of "Cafeclean." The stuff is scary: it's a white powder that you dissolve in water, where it turns a lovely shade of environmental-toxin-blue. Then you dump it into the machine, hit the "on" button, and the solution eats right through all the calcium deposits in the espresso machine's guts. Voila! Caffeine!
This Cafeclean stuff, though, comes with warnings on the box that are a little disconcerting. Like "Warning: Poison. Do not ingest. Avoid contact with eyes. Avoid inhaling dust. If any of the above should happen, flush with or drink water, and call a physician."
This is going in my coffee?
Yeah, yeah, you're supposed to run clean water through several times to flush out the chemicals, but still... no way I'm using this every week, like the package recommends.
I've already brewed myself a double shot of espresso, and it made me inordinately happy to sit with my tiny new cup in hand, sipping away like I was in a European sidewalk cafe. So far, I'm happy to report, no adverse effects from the Cafeclean.
And the espresso more than made up for the Taurus.
Not literally, fortunately, as I was on a bike on Riverside Drive, and said jackass was in a car, going the same direction, and a run-in would not have turned out well for yours truly.
Riverside Drive happens to be the main route out of New York for all the cyclists in the boroughs (or at least Brooklyn and Manhattan). So on weekends, if you sit on a park bench on the sidewalk, you'll see packs of people in the most ridiulous outfits zooming past at some pretty impressive speeds. It's a great place to ride - there's 2 lanes going in each direction; the road generally doesn't have too much traffic; and the few drivers usually know to stay in the left lane and more or less leave the right lane to the cyclists.
Except for this guy who was driving a gold Taurus this morning. (Unfortunately I can't remember his license plate number.) For some reason he decided that hanging out in the right lane, tailgating me and honking, would be lots more fun that driving like a sane person in the completely empty left lane!
I was actually a little scared. When people do stuff like that, you never know if they're drunk, or high, or simply road raging; and like I said, if it came down to my bike vs a Taurus, I'll pick the Taurus to win any day.
Fortunately after a minute or two of this, he decided that enough was enough, and zoomed off, well over the speed limit, of course. And I went home, and ran errands, and sulked.
The good news is that my espresso maker is working again! A couple of weeks ago, I'd bought the cutest cups one day at a store in the Lower East Side (appropriately called Tiny), and was so bummed to get home and discover that water wasn't going through the machine. Fortunately, the nice people at the company figured out the problem: calcium deposits. Get a descaler, they said. So I went to Zabar's and picked up a box of "Cafeclean." The stuff is scary: it's a white powder that you dissolve in water, where it turns a lovely shade of environmental-toxin-blue. Then you dump it into the machine, hit the "on" button, and the solution eats right through all the calcium deposits in the espresso machine's guts. Voila! Caffeine!
This Cafeclean stuff, though, comes with warnings on the box that are a little disconcerting. Like "Warning: Poison. Do not ingest. Avoid contact with eyes. Avoid inhaling dust. If any of the above should happen, flush with or drink water, and call a physician."
This is going in my coffee?
Yeah, yeah, you're supposed to run clean water through several times to flush out the chemicals, but still... no way I'm using this every week, like the package recommends.
I've already brewed myself a double shot of espresso, and it made me inordinately happy to sit with my tiny new cup in hand, sipping away like I was in a European sidewalk cafe. So far, I'm happy to report, no adverse effects from the Cafeclean.
And the espresso more than made up for the Taurus.