New Widgets

Good news, I've finally decided to bring myself into the 21st century! Considering that I basically stopped updating my "Currently Reading" and "Recently Read" book lists after moving over to Goodreads.com, I gave in and added the bookshelf widget to my blog so that it automatically updates the blog bookshelf when I update my Goodreads.com page. Fancy, I know. Now people can finally keep up with what I'm reading and also get an insight into my opinion of the book via the rating system and, if one clicks on the book, presumably also, my review (if I wrote one).

Luxury

Here are two features at my hotel in Seattle that I am so grateful to have at my service:

A bottle opener for getting sauced in the tub:


And just in case I fall in, it is good to know help is always right at hand:



Now all I need is an French press on my nightstand... I guess I'll have to make do with what I have.

Seattle Coffee Quest

Synonymous, right? Everywhere you go in Seattle, practically, there is a cafe of some sort staring you in the face, tempting you to enter and sample it's wondrous elixir. Most of these cafes are owned by the big giants, Seattle's Best and Starbucks, and are not too much different from the everyday version of these places you find in most every moderately large town. However, sometimes you come across smaller cafes or coffee companies that you rarely, if ever, see outside of Seattle. Now, I tend to gravitate towards these smaller places for one reason: I don't particularly care for Seattle's Best or Starbucks coffee. Sure, they make delicious specialty beverages, but when it comes to a good 'ole cup of joe, they fall way short of delicious. The coffee always has that acrid, burnt coffee taste and is never palatable for more than a few minutes before your brain finally realizes that it's stupid to continue on pretending to like it. So I have a quest to find a good tasting cup of coffee in this city that isn't a specialty beverage... trust me, I already accidentally stumbled upon the "best cafe latte in Seattle", and trust me again, it was the best of my life. More on that another time.

It begs the question, then, "where is the best cup of coffee to be had in Seattle?" Thus far, I have no answer for you. The place that serves the best latte serves a drip coffee that contains a bit of flavor, but mostly just a pungent taste of grossness. Oh, and then there's the place in the Convention Center. Crap. I could barely palate the dirt that was put in my cup. Served scalding hot so that you first burn your taste buds off before you actually taste the coffee. Too bad for them I wait for my coffee to cool to a reasonable temperature; sickening. Absolutely the worst cup of coffee I've ever had in my life. No joke.

So I raise my coffee mug to you, readers of this post, as I venture forth to try and find a good cup of coffee in this coffee mad city; a task most would think simple. Think again.

UPDATE: I have not found anything spectacular (nothing close to a Dirt Cowboy quality cafe, but Seattle Coffee Works "wins" so far. Maybe at future AAS meetings in Seattle I will have to work a little more vigorously to get a superb cup of coffee.