I finally got my dark italian roast beans to be as dark as the dark french roast + chicory I was using, but took like 2 1/2 times the amount of grounds. Think I’m gonna have to tone it down a bit, but the bottom of the teaspoon was finally unreachable by photons, which is how I adjudge my coffee to be ‘done’ pre-creamer. Yes, I use creamer, and no, that doesn’t make me less of a man, it just makes me smart enough A) to realize that black coffee tastes like aspirin was ground into it and B) to not give myself a bleeding stomach ulcer. Next month when I buy coffee I will try the cafe’s dark french roast. The first coffee I bought was canned, pre-ground Cafe du Monde coffee. Because it’s the only thing in town with chicory in it. Definitely stronger than this italian stuff.
The reason my coffee is so uber today is I have 6 hours of class back-to-back starting at 11. Need to pack my go juice and food in early, then take a snack or two with me. Hopefully we’ll have the first-day blues, or just get to go home right after the safety test.
Springtime is here. Well, in the CV anyway. My allergies have already started kicking in, and it’s warm enough during the days to have to take off my windbreaker and gloves while biking. It was actually almost 70° at 3:30 yesterday, pretty balmy for January 14th. Most people are still having weather, it’s been irritatingly sunny skies for weeks.
In unrelated news, check out this bit from 80beats:
The next big break through in surgery might not be a sophisticated new tool or imaging device; instead, it may be a simple checklist that the surgical team has to run through before making the first incision. In a pilot study, researchers found that using the checklist cut the death rate following surgery by 47 percent, while the complication rate decreased by 36 percent. The procedure is simple: Surgeons and nurses run through a series of basic safety checks before each operation, similar to those made by pilots before take-off. The checks include asking: Is this the right patient? Is this the right limb? Has the patient had the right drugs? [The Independent]
Holy shit, really? Cut the death rate by 47%? A while back I was bitching somewhere (probably in a comment on 80beats) about our current medicine looking like hacksaw and whiskey amputations in about twenty years, but this is just crazy. Christ, that means before even using the simplest microscope at school I go through more checklists on the subject than surgeons do.