Very fridgid this week. The few times I ventured out were painful. Waking up and seeing the temperature of -7 was scary.
Been making greek coffee in the apartment, but was introduced to cold press coffee. Instead of brewing, coarse ground coffee is soaked for a day to make a concentrate then mixed with boiling, or cold water. Smoother tasting (no acid). A chemical engineer from Cornell came up with the idea and started a company that sells a pitcher, filters and parts called “Toddy”. It goes for around $35 on Amazon. Not sure if it’s just something different and a novelty that will wear off for me, or if it’s allot better than normal brewed coffee. The coffee/bike shop by the office sells it for $3 cup.
I made it to the comment board on the backgammon club web site:
2008 Week Two – A great turnout with 18 players this week, including two new players, Mitch and Pete. Both won their first round matches with Mitch defeating Steve Binenstock and Pete defeating Dave Wetzel then Jesse Eaton who really hates to lose… Pete then defeated Ralph Stowell and lost in the semi’s to Shu Lee.
Did well playing again this week. One match was against Gary, he was very talkative. This was very different than the other games that were very serious. Gary had lots of stories. He was once a blackjack dealer, a highly ranked foosball player and some big $$ backgammon tournaments. Did a quick search on some of the players I’ve met, and many were highly ranked players (lookup Fred Kalantari as an example). I know I’m out of my league with many of them, but it’s sort of like playing poker against a pro. If you lose it’s expected, if you win, it’s a good feeling. No downside for me. One bad thing about the tournament, is that it’s competative. It would be nice to get pointers on things like cube play, but that doesn’t happen. Either way it’s fun, and I’ve started to dabble into some side bets/games, but am smart enough not to play for any real money.
Made it back to Jersey for the long weekend. Only issue was that I left the light on the inside of the car, and the battery went dead. I made the mistake of trying to push the car out of the garage by myself. Had the door open and rolled it back half way. I thought I was stuck in the car, and couldn’t close the door, or go forward, or backward. No blackberry, iphone, or anybody around….. Luckily, I was able to squeeze out, and call roadside assistance to get a jump start. Might be time to get rid of shuffle bowling and get some space back…..
Sunday went quick. Dad brought Anthony down, and we played games, had dinner and then watched the Giants game. Great game!!