neurotwitch

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

jeopardy is wrong & cold-brewed coffee

Interesting, on Jeopardy tonight, the returning champ, a doctor, got the second daily double. It was a question about bradycardia, like the heartbeat rate for it. Stanley and I both knew the answer to that one, as did the doctor. She said “What is 50 beats per minute?” But, according to Jeopardy, she and we are wrong—they said it’s 60 beats per minute. Cost her $3,000, but she won anyway. Jeopardy blew this one. According to the Mayo Clinic: “Bradycardia describes a heart rate that drops below 50 beats per minute, compared to a normal heartbeat rate of about 72.” And that’s what I remembered from Stanley’s journey through Funky Valveland. (Oh, yes ... this was one of the Bad Things that might happen. AKA the “heartbeat of a zombie.”)

Wonder if they’ll admit wrongness and give the woman her three grand?

Independence Day was kind of a dud. I did work—for about 30 minutes, answering emails and working on updating a calendar of events. That was all, I swear.

Since it was so crappy out, I slept in (I would’ve even if it had been perfect out—only when it’s crappy, I don’t feel guilty about it), read a bunch of stuff, and spent working on version 4 of our website. I’ve been working on infopulsellc.com v.4 for about, oh, a year now. Not that much different from v.3, but built on ExpressionEngine. It’s like the shoemaker’s kids who have no shoes kinda thing—very busy building other websites so I rarely have the time to work on our own. We also watched Burn Notice, which we recorded because we had company last Thursday. Only we just recorded an hour of it, not thinking that the pilot would last longer (it was 90 minutes). Quite frustrating as it turned out we like it a lot and unlike most of the series on TV these days, we could not view it on the USA website or buy it on iTunes. So we’ll just have to watch the last half hour on Saturday, or record it again.

On Monday, we went to see Dr. Robinson. When Dr. R. entered the exam room, he said to Stanley, “Why am I seeing you?” My answer would have been, “Because you told him to see you in two weeks ... ” but Stanley just said, “To say goodbye.” The heart part is done—it’s still amazing to me how fast Stanley healed and recovered this time (though he still tires easily, but not as easily as last week and so on). And Stanley can quit the coumadin on Thursday (though I could tell Dr. R. was reluctant to let him, but did because Stanley is supposed to have surgery next Tuesday.) Stanley is supposed to see his cardiologist next week, though I’m not sure why. Oh, and though they never definitely identified the bacteria that caused the infection, the docs remain convinced it was Bartonella.

We stopped at the Dairy Queen in Fairfield to get Blizzards to celebrate. Stanley got the chocolate cherry concoction, and I got a Snickers Blizzard. We splurged on large ones, but discovered that large is too much. And, finally, a three-year craving is done.

Oh, please, let Oxford approve the operation, so Stanley can get the calf clots removed and we can put this nightmare almost completely behind us. (Not totally—it’s going to take us a long time to recover financially and there is still the damaged kidney that is forever.)

Ginger had a very bad series of nights—she finally stopped shaking. Norwalk’s fireworks on Saturday were particularly long and loud and Westport’s were really bad on Tuesday night, plus there are all the neighborhood pyros who clearly didn’t get the wimp fireworks sold by Stew Leonard’s. I hope they’re done. Thursday it’s supposed to storm though, so the thunder will probably send her down to the cellar again. Jello dog.

COLD-BREWED COFFEE
The New York Times mentioned it. Cold-brewed ice coffee is supposed to be superior to hot-brewed coffee on ice. Well, that’s easy enough to test. The recipe is 1/3 cup of coarsely ground coffee beans to 1.5 cups of water, mix the coffee into the water let sit for 12 hours or longer and then strain it. Dilute it with water 1:1 and add milk or cream to taste. Easy enough.

Guess what? It IS superior. Tastes more like good coffee beans smell and isn’t acidy or bitter. I tried diluting with water and adding half and half, which was good, then a 1:1 coffee to half and half, which was even better but not enough better to justify the calories. My most recent version is 1:1 coffee to 1% milk with a bit of half and half added—now THAT is the mix for me. Yum. The half and half is just enough to add the mouth-feel I like. Tastes like a smooth and rich iced latte with a very nice, almost chocolate aftertaste. I used Green Mountain Harvard blend beans ground in a burr grinder. I’m out of those beans, but have a great French vanilla coffee bean from Coffee & Tea Warehouse (the best vanilla coffee I’ve ever had—I’m a vanilla-flavored coffee fanatic) that I’m going to use next.

Try it, it’s easy, and let me know what you think.

posted by lee on 07/04/07 at 09:42 PM
miscellaneous everything • (0) comments • permalink

Page 1 of 1 pages

neurotwitch

Other Sites

Said

Search Titles

Good Reads & People

Categories

Monthly Archives

Syndicate

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

jeopardy is wrong & cold-brewed coffee

Site Statistics