Sunday mornings are my favorite. It's a day that has no real plans. It starts off quietly, me getting up early because well, I always get up early, everyone else is asleep so I get to make myself coffee and have some time to do things for myself. The first thing I always do of course is make a cup of coffee. I'll talk about my coffee set up another time, but know that usually I make some sort of pour over, or French press. Today is no different, and I used my new MIIR Chemex style carafe that I supported last year on Kickstarter. I use it when I want to make a larger amount of coffee that I can drink on all morning, in other words, it's perfect for a Sunday. The coffee I used, I just received in the mail from Texas Roaster Greater Goods. They are based out of Dripping Springs, and roast some amazing single origins and blends that I have been a big fan of for many years. Today's particular brew is a blend that celebrates the Year of the Dragon. It seems everyone is releasing something special (this is never truer than in the watch industry where everyone seems to have a dragon related watch out). But I digress, back to the coffee. This particular blend, called Prosperity Blend is made with beans from Kenya and Mexico. It's medium roasted and I used a ratio of 15:1 which is my standard. It makes a beautiful cup with chocolatey and plum notes, maybe slightly sweet, with a nicely balanced level of acidity. Well balanced for a long morning of drinking.
In addition to sitting down with a nice cup of coffee, Sunday's are for musing, so join me while I express some thoughts on a couple of things near and dear to me. First up is Liverpool F.C. my favorite football club in the world. I've been a LFC fan for almost 20 years dating back to 2006 when I had the opportunity to live over in Europe and became infatuated with European football. LFC has one of the best managers in the world in Jurgen Clop who surprisingly announced that this year will be his last with the club. Shortly after the announcement the Reds played some inspired matches, charged up to make Klopp proud, but the last few matches they've had to eke out wins or even ties. That won't be good enough if they want to stay atop the table. So it was with that in my mind that I sat down to watch their match yesterday agains the lowly club from Burnley. On the positive side of things before the match it was announced that Mo Salah would be back in the lineup after a month away playing for his national team and being injured. On the negative side it was announced that their starting keeper Allison would be out. Liverpool doesn't have great depth between the poles so I was a tad worried, but hoped that because we were playing Burnley we would be OK. Luckily I was right. The Reds (even though they were playing in their atrocious lavender inspired third kits, they are always the Reds) dominated. Salah played like he had never been gone, making some tremendous assists and getting his own goal as he helped lead the team to a 4-1 win. In other good news Man City tied, allowing the Reds to stay 4 points ahead at the top, and 3 points ahead of Arsenal. I am hopeful that the Reds can stave off the gunners and city and allow Klopp to ride off into the sunset with another Premiere League title. You can't write a better ending to his stay than that.
Speaking of endings, that leads to me to my next topic. I'm an unabashed petrol head. While I have never had the pleasure of owning a performance car, I love them. I love watching racing, particularly Formula 1, and I love the engineering behind high performance vehicles. As a petrol head, my leaders have always been that British Trio of Clarkson, May, and Hammond. The crazy, imbecilic, moronic, hilarious and yes educational group behind Top Gear and then Amazon Prime's Grand Tour. I've been watching them diligently for over 20 years. Yes sometimes they make me grimace with the comments, but they also make me laugh out loud and cry because I am laughing so much. A few weeks ago they announced that the Grand Tour would be ending and they would be breaking up the band so to speak, which honestly doesn't come as to much of a surprise. Yes they are getting older, but they do have their own shows, Clarkson with his farm show, May with his travel shows, and Hammond with his own business and show on Discovery. But with this announcement came the release this past Friday of their penultimate episode Sand Job. The idea of the show is for them to build a high end Dakar Rally vehicle for cheap, so they modify a Jaaaaag Type F (called the F-off of course), and Aston Martin DB8, and a Maserati. Their usual hijinks ensue and while I felt this show wasn't quite up to par with some of their other excursions it was a lot of fun and it is always nice to see these three back behind the wheel. They honestly do hide some smart and intelligent insights in between the bickering, insults, and pranks. I look forward to their last show together (for now) coming out later this year. With a trip through Zimbabwe it should make for good TV at least.
Enough musing, I need more coffee.
No comments:
Post a Comment