Archive for July 2007
Thumbs Up: Diesel Cafe
My interest in coffee is moderate. I’m not a coffee snob, debating the relative merits of Arabica versus Robusta, or why the coffee in Italy is so good compared to the coffee in France. (According to my friend Glodsmith, it’s because Italy gets its coffee beans from former Italian colony Ethiopia, while France gets its coffee from some former French colony with inferior coffee. I find this interesting, but not interesting enough to organize my life around. I liked the coffee in France just fine, though I must say that Montréal has better café au lait.)
On the other hand, I can’t drink just any coffee – I have been known to describe the method of coffee preparation favored by my mother as “dipping a brown crayon in lukewarm water.” (I borrowed that line from someone, I think Charles Schultz, though if I recall correctly he was talking about bad hot chocolate instead of bad coffee.)
So I care about my coffee, but I don’t obsess over it.
I gave up on Dunkin’ Donuts decaf when I started to notice that it tasted like soap. I first attributed this to a failure to rinse the coffee maker properly. However, when cup after cup, at shop after shop, had the same soapy taste, I concluded that they had changed their decaffeination process, and what I was tasting was some residual chemical residue. Yuck. I will admit to never having given Starbucks much of a chance, because they burn their beans nearly to a crisp, making for coffee that tastes like it’s been stored in a smokehouse. Yuck. And Au Bon Pain’s coffee is nearly as acidic as balsamic vinegar, but without the sweetness. It gives me acid reflux. Yuck. Borders bookstores had good coffee, extremely good coffee, even, until they made their deal with the devil with Seattle’s Best. Now – yuck: ’nuff said. (The Borders in my hometown used to be the only place to get a decent cup coffee, most local places favoring my mother’s method of preparation. Wherever will I turn now?)
The chains are certainly consistent, but each is consistently bad in its own unique way. Local was the way to go. I used to get my coffee at the Someday.
So, when the Someday closed about a year ago (and was replaced, I wish I were making this up, with a crêperie for pete’s sake. How’s that for a dumb business decision? Estimated Amercian intake of coffee: 2 cups a day. Estimated American intake of crêpes: 1 crêpe every 2 years. Yeah, I’d say a crêperie is a winning business model. I hear they’re not doing well. Who is surprised by this?), I had to find a small local place.
Enter Diesel. I tried their coffee, and it was love at first sip: robust without being bitter or burnt, smooth without being insipid or flat, hot enough to telegraph the aroma compounds to your nostrils, but not too hot to enjoy right away. The decaf tastes like coffee, not solvents. If you order anything with steamed milk, it comes with a very pretty design on top of the milk. I’ve never had a bad cup of coffee there (and the pumpkin muffins are to die for). And the staff are just right for an urban cafe – friendly and hip, but not too hip.
I can’t believe I’d lived in this neighborhood for two and a half years without trying Diesel. And I will be sorry to leave next week! But I’ll be back, if not as often – the coffee is worth going out of my way for.
1 comment July 27, 2007
Thumbs Down: RCN
If you tried to call me last night, you were probably very confused. If you dial our phone number, you get a message indicating that the number has been disconnected and you should call the following new number: 617-555-xxxx.
If you dialed that number, you got a message that it is not in service.
This is because RCN is staffed solely by dumbasses.
Because we’re moving to a different town, we had to get a different phone number. And because RCN doesn’t provide service in Cambridge, we had to sign up with Comcast, in spite of the fact that we are moving less than a mile. In the long run, this must be a blessing, because Comcast can’t possibly be as incompetent as RCN. (And I’m not talking about just yesterday’s incident – I have not had a good customer service experience with RCN in the last 3 years. I’ve kept them solely so I wouldn’t have to change e-mail addresses, and in fact I will continue to keep my RCN address for a month or two until I have a chance to notify everyone.)
In the short run, it’s a recipe for frustration, as every transaction with RCN has been.
So what happened is, the Red-Haired Boy called up RCN yesterday and said, “We know our new phone number now. When you cut off our service on 8/1, could you please include our new number in the outgoing message?”
Last night at 8:30, I picked up the phone. No dial tone. I thought the phone was broken. Picked up another phone. No dial tone. Picked up my cell phone and dialed our home phone number – got the “disconnected” message. Oops. Apparently their calendar is 8 days fast.
RHB spent at least a half hour on my cell phone last night with a rather lovely but clueless woman in tech support who was convinced that there was an equipment failure, in spite of RHB’s repeated assurances that no, we’d requested that our service be shut off, but that someone had made a mistake and done it a week early. (You know that a tech support call is not going well when, in 2007, a rep can seriously ask you, “If your phone isn’t working, how are you able to call me?” It is left as an exercise to the reader to come up with at least four ways to call the phone company without a working home phone. Hint: don’t overthink this – two of those ways were available to my grandmother.) Then I spent a half hour on the phone with the same person, and I was sure we’d reached a breakthrough when she said, “Oh, now I understand the problem. [picture me smiling, giving RHB a thumbs up here] You want your service forwarded to another number. [picture me, smile crumpling, banging my head against the nearest box].”
She wanted us to stay home to meet a technician today. We explained that they hadn’t needed us to stay home to shut off the service, so we didn’t understand why they had to come to our house to turn it back on. I asked her at least twice if I could speak with someone else, thinking that someone with a fresh mind, or maybe just a mind, might have a better time grasping what was essentially a very simple situation – we asked you to do x on 8/1, you did x on 7/25, please undo x today and redo x on 8/1.
Finally, she put us on hold for a long time, and since I spent so many years in tech support, I know what that means. It means she hated us, she needed to vent to her coworkers, the clock was ticking, she was not meeting her call quota, and she needed someone to advise her on how to get rid of us. Finally she came back and said that she’d sent an e-mail to the “Switching Department” (there’s a whole department! to turn things on and off! I want that job! click! it’s on! click! it’s off! the gratification of immediate results!) and our service should be back on tomorrow. Which is, now, today.
We don’t believe her. I hope that RHB is on hold with someone right now.
Oddly, our internet works fine, and though we didn’t turn the TV on, I bet the cable is working, too. Why RCN turned off only our phone service is a mystery to me.
1 comment July 26, 2007
Thumbs Down: Sallie Mae
About two months ago, Sallie Mae bought my student loan. Ever since then, I’ve been subjected to a non-stop stream of e-mail and postal solicitations from them.
I started out merely kind of frustrated by this, because the previous owner of the loan did not spam me every two or three days with solicitations to buy a mortgage, consolidate my loans, or try brand new Sallie Mae brand animal crackers (now with more leopards!). But that initial frustration was nothing compared to what followed.
I clicked on the link in the e-mail saying I didn’t want solicitations. Two days later, they offered me a mortgage. I clicked on that link, and three days later, they offered me a loan consolidation. A week later, a solicitation arrived by mail, followed soon after by another e-mail. I went online and sent an e-mail to their customer service department, and got back some canned response saying that they couldn’t help me because they couldn’t find my account information.
After about 4 rounds of e-mail in which I asked them why my e-mail address was not enough to get me off an e-mail list, and they sent back the same canned response, I gave up.
Then I got home Monday night and found another solicitation in my mail slot.
I called them and got an oral version of the same canned response, that I’m not showing up in their system. I asked several times how it could be that I’m not showing up in their system, yet they manage to find me two to three times a week to spam me, but the customer service rep had no answers. Finally, she put me on hold and came back a few minutes later saying she could in fact take me off the list. She also told me it would take effect immediately.
Today I got an e-mail offering me a loan consolidation.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGHHH!
Today I ended up speaking with two customer service reps, the first of whom was clueless, the second of whom went through the same process of not finding me, not finding me, not finding me, (with the added twist of asking me at least three times if I was receiving phone solicitations … no, thank God, no, thank God, no, thank God), putting me on hold … whoops! here you are! She claimed to be removing me from all solicitation lists, assuring me that this should take immediate effect for e-mails, although unlike her counterpart Monday night, she did clarify that I might receive another postal mail if anything had already been sent.
We shall see, we shall see.
Truthfully, though, the thing that pisses me off the most is not that they couldn’t find me in their system, though that does bother me a bit. I mean, maybe they have separate databases, and I need to talk to Those Other People, you know, the ones who manage that database. But if that’s the case, why can’t they just tell me that? Or even transfer me to Those Other People?
I once applied for a job at Sallie Mae, working on their backend data management systems. If this is how they handle their data, I’m very, very glad I didn’t get that job.
But the thing that really grates my cheese is the fact that they even bothered me in the first place. I have been paying off my loan for nearly a decade, it’s been owned by two or three companies now, and until Sallie Mae bought it two months ago, I never ever received a solicitation. I might occasionally get an offer to consolidate slipped into the envelope with my bill, but I have never gotten a separate mail or e-mail trying to sell me a product.
Usually when I’m unhappy with a company, I refuse to do further business with them. But the Student Loan People have me over a barrel. Unless I want to borrow money at a higher rate to pay off my loan, there’s no way I can dump Sallie. But I can call her every time she spams me, or if necessary I can report her to the FTC.
Add comment July 25, 2007
Quoting without attribution
Today I searched on “Eddie Bauer hemming” because I was wondering why my Eddie Bauer rant hasn’t gotten very many hits; I wondered if it was showing up on Google. I found this, dated July 16, 2007:
http://www.scumbagclothing.com/clothes/local-woman-screwed-again-and-again-by-clothing-industry/
It looks an awful lot like my rant, dated July 15, 2007. Exactly like it, in fact. Word for word, including my italics and my hyperlinks. The scumbagclothing site has copied my original work, word for word, without attribution.
As near as I can tell, the site uses some kind of RSS bot to troll the web. Hey, that’s cool, I’d be happy for the publicity, if they’d just attribute it to me. I posted a polite comment, but apparently the blog has comment moderation, which seems bizarre for a blog that doesn’t seem to be the work of a human being. At least, not the original work of a single human being.
The real slap in the face is that, when you google “Eddie Bauer hemming,” you get scumbag’s copy of my work, not my blog.
That’s why I’m not getting any hits. I went through the first ten pages of google results, and didn’t find my blog at all. Scumbag is sucking them away from me.
Bastards.
Without a lot of effort and expense, I probably have no legal recourse against the scumbag people, and it’s probably not that important to me, but it does cheese me off a bit. I rather liked that rant, and I sort of hoped it would get some attention.
2 comments July 24, 2007
Art and Desire
I have this nearly irresistible desire to shut down my computer, close my office door, go home, and make some art.
It’s only 3:10. I have almost two hours to go, then I’ll go home and pack, pack, pack in preparation for the move. Maybe I’ll try to be a super-efficient packer, so I can have the last hour or two of the evening to play with this elaborate doodle I started in my sketch book a week or so ago.
Or maybe I’ll try the spiritual exercise of throwing myself as deeply into the (somewhat dull) task at hand as I would into my artwork.
Six days until the closing!
Mood: excited, anxious, happy.
Add comment July 24, 2007
O.M.G.
http://www.amazon.com/Tuscan-Whole-Milk-Gallon-128/dp/B00032G1S0
I guess it’s true that the Internet is like New York City – if you can’t get it there, it doesn’t exist.
1 comment July 18, 2007
This Week’s Search Terms
These are search strings that people have used recently to get to my blog:
uses for unripe peaches
pinat butter brownies
best brownies recipe
brownies made with cocoa
best way to celebrate a 38th birthday
social security
… and my personal favorite …
eggplant as a contraceptive
Sure enough, if you plug that into Google, my blog is the second hit. Yikes! I am not sure what that person was after, but they didn’t find it here.
Add comment July 17, 2007
The Farm (Shares) Report, 07/12/07 – Basil
This week we got (let me see if I remember) chiogga beets, baby carrots, chard, cucumbers, onions, and a big handful of purple basil. Oh, and I’m sure I’m forgetting something. Oh, yes, new Yukon gold potatoes.
I’ll confess to not being so happy to get bundles of herbs. Partly this is because I already grow so many herbs of my own, and partly it’s because, what, oh, what do you do with a bunch of herbs the size of a grapefruit? (This, in fact, is why I stopped buying them from the store and started growing them. Now, when I need a tablespoon of parsley, I’m not stuck with enough to feed an entire small New England town.) If it’s green basil, you can make pesto, but purple basil makes a pesto that looks like mud. You can sometimes make a fairly passable pesto of cilantro, too. But pesto is messy and time-consuming to make, and basil is quite perishable, so often, if I don’t get to it the night we pick up the produce, it’s just wasted.
However, the Red-Haired Boy seems to have solved the basil problem this week. We were unable to celebrate my birthday on Wednesday, so tonight he made me a delicious dinner, complete with chocolate cake. The entree he made, a Thai-inspired stir fry, calls for a whole cup of Thai basil. I don’t know if Steve’s basil was Thai basil, but I believe Thai basil is purple, so let’s just pretend. And miraculously, the basil had survived in the fridge since Thursday night.
Here’s the recipe, and by the way, if you believe that nonsense about saturated fat causing heart disease, this recipe might give you pause, with its entire can of coconut milk. The amounts and technique are even looser than my usual Farm Shares Reports recipes, since it was prepared by RHB instead of me, (although the lime juice was my suggestion).
This recipe assumes you know the basics of stir frying.
THAI-INSPIRED STIR FRY
1 lb protein (fish, chicken, beef, tofu, whatever)
splash each soy sauce, red wine vinegar, and Asian fish sauce
3 cups (+/-) assorted stir fry veggies
1 medium onion
1 to 2 tablespoons coconut or peanut oil, for frying
1 can coconut milk
1 cup Thai basil (whole leaves)
1 – 3 teaspoons Thai curry paste, to taste
1 large clove garlic
1 or 2 limes
Marinate your protein ingredient in a combination of soy sauce, vinegar, and fish sauce for 10 minutes to 1 hour (more time for beef, less for fish). Drain and pat dry.
In a large skillet or wok, stir fry the garlic for 30 seconds or so. Add the onion, meat or tofu, and assorted veggies and stir fry until done. (RHB used beef, green peppers, mushrooms, and canned bamboo shoots.)
When the stir fry is almost done, combine coconut milk, basil, and curry paste and heat for 5 minutes or so. Be careful with the curry paste, as it is brutally hot. Add small amounts until you reach the desired heat. Add to the stir fry with a generous squeeze of lime juice and let sit for another minute to let flavors meld.
Serve with lime wedges.
Serves two people without rice or four people with.
NOTES on ingredients.
We like Thai Kitchen green curry paste, mostly because it’s available at your local Star Market and doesn’t have any bizarre artificial ingredients. This stuff is hot as hell, so be cautious.
We always use Grace Coconut milk, which Star Market stocks with the Caribbean foods. There are other, better known, brands, but they all have stabilizers and thickeners added. I don’t object to guar gum on principle, and in fact I have some in my own kitchen, but I think it’s completely extraneous in coconut milk.
Add comment July 15, 2007
Local Woman Screwed – Again and Again – by Clothing Industry
Excuses, excuses!
Since I first started buying my own clothes, I thought I’d heard all the excuses for the clothing industry discriminating against women.
First it was clothing designers who failed to put pockets in dresses or jackets because it “ruined the line.” This has always irritated me – an empty pocket doesn’t “ruin the line,” so please design your clothes with a damn pocket and let me decide whether to ruin the line by putting anything in it. Once I buy the garment from you, it’s mine, not yours, so stop acting like it’s some sacred work of art instead of my personal property.
Then it was dry cleaners who charged $10.00 to clean a woman’s shirt but only 99 cents for a comparable man’s shirt because “women’s shirts have more details that make them harder to clean.” This phenomenon has been commented on sufficiently elsewhere; suffice it to say, it is unfair to penalize all women because some women have a thing for ruffles. Why not charge everyone ten times more and say it’s because some shirts are hard to clean? It makes an identical amount of sense.
So I though I’d heard them all, but today Eddie Bauer sprung a new one on me. They will hem men’s pants but not women’s!
Background here: several months ago I bought two great pairs of jeans from an Eddie Bauer retail store and loved everything about them except the length. The inseam on a pair of petite EB natural fit jeans is 29″, and I need about a 27 1/2.”
Since it is rare for me to find a pair of jeans that fits my relatively small waist and my relatively huge thighs and ass, I decided to suck it up and walk on my hems, even though that made me look like a teenager. Then I heard that Eddie Bauer offers hemming on online orders! It was like my dream come true.
Because of the aforementioned huge thighs, I wear through a pair of jeans pretty quickly – they always develop holes and tears in embarrassing places from my thighs rubbing together. So today, I decided it was time to try out a new pair of custom hemmed Eddie Bauer jeans.
Here’s what I found on their website:
Sorry, we don’t offer hemming on women’s pants.The reason why we can offer custom hemming on men’s pants and not on women’s pants is simple. Most men’s pants have the same measurement at the calf, knee and bottom opening. Women’s pants tend to be tapered closer to the ankle. Men’s pants are usually lined only in the front, women’s are usually fully lined. Knowing your inseam is also very important, and few women do because it usually isn’t necessary.
So, depending on the amount of hemming, it is unlikely that the fit would be consistent with the pant’s [sic] original silhouette. That would cause us to deliver products that would fail to meet your expectations. We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.
In other words, Eddie Bauer won’t hem women’s pants because it will “ruin the line.” Note also the suggestion of female incompetence conveyed by the notion that women don’t know their inseam length. Maybe not, but I do own a tape measure, which is not something I can say about most men I know.
So let me thumb my nose back at Eddie Bauer:
Sorry, I do not do business with companies that do not offer the same level of service to women as they do to men.
The reason why is because I’m sick of paying more for less from the garment industry. Most women need an inseam other than the 29″, 32″ or 35″ that you offer, because our heights vary, just the way men’s do. Women over the age of 22 generally don’t want to walk around on their hems. I don’t give a rat’s ass about pants linings or any other design details that make women’s pants harder to hem; you designed the pants, morons, so figuring out how to hem them is your problem. Any woman with a tape measure and a third grade education is capable of determining her inseam.
As for the original silhouette, once you have charged my credit card, they are mine, not yours, so I don’t care what you think the silhouette should be. I don’t really care about what they look like at the bottom, as long as they fit my waist, butt, and thighs and don’t trip me when I walk.
In short, fuck you, Eddie Bauer. I’m going to Land’s End now. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause you.
1 comment July 15, 2007
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