GinohnNews

G: Last Thursday John, Amethyst, and I went to Franklin's to celebrate Sev's 19th birthday with her. Margit and a couple other people were there. Sev gave out glow stick jewelry and we all put some on. There were lots of different colors; it was pretty neat. We hung out a long time and Rich and Izolda showed up when we were all done eating so we hung out even longer. Then we went to the Looneys' and impressed everyone with our glowing jewelry.

Saturday night Renee and Alex and Izolda came over to hang out and play games. I had bought some of the stuff for mojitos and fuzzy navels, Izolda brought mead, and RnA brought Benjamin Franklin's Orange Shrub, plus Cranberry Shrub.

We did some DDR and the ladies drank fuzzy navels while the men drank Irish Coffee that John made. Then we settled in for a game of Wheel of Intoxication. I made myself many mojitos, and some for Izolda, and there was mead too, and we all got pretty intoxicated. We have the photos to prove it, too. Rich showed up in the middle and did his best to catch up with us.

By the time that game was over we ventured into some other silly games like Truth or Dare and I Never. We all had a really good time! We were up till 2:30! Can't do that too often though. Bad for my reflux. I also read somewhere that alcohol depletes your omega-3's. Good thing I take lots every day now.

For some reason it wasn't that hard to get up for 10:15 a.m. yoga. And the yoga felt good. I've been slowly working up to getting up earlier (I had been getting up around 11 a.m.) and have kept it up most of the week. If I get behind on my sleep, though, and I don't have to get up for something, I will easily sleep for a long time.

Went to dance night that night and had a nice time. Dances that used to wear me out were more like good workouts rather than marathons. I'm definitely getting healthier and building stamina.

Started an after school ceramics class at University Park Elementary School on Monday, and had my second set of pottery classes at UM Art and Learning Center, but all my other classes have been canceled this week, so I've been hanging around the house more. I've also been attending some of the classes at the new Yoga Center in Greenbelt, Greenbelt Om. Unfortunately they are too expensive for me but all their classes are free this first opening week. So I am taking advantage of that.

Wednesday I decided to relax at home and try to do little jobs around the house that I'd been meaning to get to. After I did DDR for exercise, I scooped the litter box (it's used very infrequently as Mango goes outside, but with the weather all snowy and icy I thought she might be using it), I glued some broken pottery, and cleaned off and rearranged my plant table - mostly because I bought some new lanterns and wanted to fit them on there, plus it was filthy and messy and had extra junk piled on it. It looks great now.

In the evening Rich and Izolda came by to hang out. I'd inherited a Bernina sewing machine from John's grandmother, and I'd never used it and it didn't have it's manual. I can buy and download a manual online, but I needed to print it somewhere besides home since it is like 80 pages. Izolda figured she could figure out the sewing machine and get me started. So I asked them over and she did, and it's great. But neither of us could figure out how to turn on zig zag, or any of the fancy stitches it can do, and we tried everything. So I really need the manual and maybe the machine needs service.

I had a little piece of red furry fabric in a scrap bag, and I sewed it up and stuffed catnip inside and sewed a red string that Mango likes to play with to it. Then I took it to her and she loved it and played like a kitten. I haven't seen her play like that in a long time. Lori says that when she came downstairs this morning, Mango was lying with it between her paws.

Today has been another hang around the house day, free yoga (Izolda came too), and I dug out one of our cars from the road. Then I hung around with Joey while he cleaned out his space. Then Lori came home from having lunch with Janet and we all dug out her car. Now all of our cars are FREE!

We are still waiting for Katyana (not her real name, still tbd) to be finished with her heat, and then we'll be bringing her home and taking care of getting her spayed. But we learned something this week that put a bit of a damper on our enthusiasm. While researching the heat cycle to figure out when it was good to get her spayed, I learned that one in four female dogs that do not get spayed before or during their first heat develop mammary tumors.

Since she is 2 or 3 years old, she's probably had 3 to 5 heats. The earlier you spay the better, I guess, but after loosing Booda to cancer we kind of felt like we might be signing up for that experience again. It's scary. With most rescue dogs you don't really know too much about what you are getting in to, health-wise, and ignorance can be bliss. On the other hand, knowing this, I can watch out for it. Half of the tumors are usually benign. Half of the malignant ones are treatable. We just hope we are in the healthy 75% range instead. But we figure we will love her and take care of her and no matter what happens she will have a good home with us.

Of course, like with Booda, I want her to be as healthy as possible, so I am trying to figure out what to feed her. I want the healthiest diet I can devise and manage. But one web site I read suggested that a natural commercial food might be a better bet than a raw food diet (like I was feeding Booda). I think I might do a combination of different things, part raw, part natural healthy commercial food.

J: Over a month ago I bought my usual medium morning coffee at Starbucks, and went to work. At work I drank most of it and then went to the restroom for about two minutes. The hallway was mostly empty; it was pretty early. Some cleaning staff were at work. When I got back to my desk I took a few last sips of my coffee and got a big slimy loogey from the cup.

I was naturally disgusted and distraught.

In a state of denial, I took a fork out of my desk and poked around in the coffee, eventually pulling up a gob of slime, with brown highlights of cinnamon. Yuck.

I took the cup immediately back to the Starbucks and showed the manager. He also appeared disgusted and distraught, as did the guy who had served me. They didn't know how it happened. The manager asked if I was sure it was spit. I said it sure had the consistency of mucous. He asked if I had added cream or anything; I only recalled adding cinnamon, and didn't even add sugar. The shift manager gave me about five free coffee coupons along with the phone number for the store manager. Later when I called that number, the same shift manager answered. He said the store manager was not in yet, then he wrote up an "incident report" and said that someone from "corporate" would probably call me later. I assured him that I liked the workers there and that I was just giving Starbucks the information in case this had happened before or in case it happened again.

Later  someone from higher up the Starbucks ladder did call me, apologized for what I went through, and went over what had happened. By then all sorts of alternate scenarios were going through my mind. I said maybe a gob of glue from the cup came loose, or something from the coffee machine had dripped into the cup, but deep down, I knew it was a big goober that had gotten into my mouth. The lady who spoke to me and the undoubtedly half-dozen lawyers listening in were probably relieved when I mentioned leaving my coffee at my desk for a couple minutes. She offered me more coupons for free drinks but I said no thanks, I would probably take a vacation from coffee for a while.

As it turned out, my vacation only lasted a little over a week. This shows the extent of my coffee addiction. When I finally ventured back to the cafe, I got some strange, knowing stares from the Starbucks staff. The manager, Dan, started greeting me by name, and the staff often had my coffee all prepared and ready to go when I arrived. This was no doubt so they could get the weird "spit man" out of the door quickly, but it served a double purpose of making me a little more suspicious of my drink.

I was doubly suspicious at work, and every time I left my coffee or tea in my office I would hide it in a cabinet. I began fantasizing imaginative modus operandi for various coworkers that either involved actual targeted hate or random acts of slime-ness.

This morning I went into Starbucks for another coffee. The cup was constantly within my reach; I didn't go to the restroom so I didn't have to hide it.

When I was finishing it up, a familiar phlegmy taste crept in, followed by the familiar slime. This time I had no accusing thoughts. A different person had served me this coffee - what were the chances that two employees spat in my drink on two separate occasions?

Then it hit me. The common link between these two coffees was that I added powdered flavors to them, unlike most of my coffees which I drink black, nothing added. In fact, as I further recalled, I had added the same two ingredients: cinnamon and vanilla powders, just a few shakes from each.

Once I realized the source of the slime, I felt incredible relief and some embarrassment. I took my dregs along with my newfound information back to the Starbucks and elatedly—with some embarrassment—told two managers of my chemical discovery. I also apologized for any trouble I may have put them through—e.g. extra food safety training—and warned them again of the magical mucous ingredients in case some other patron comes in later with a similar complaint.

If you are so bold, next time you order a plain coffee from Starbucks shake some vanilla and cinnamon in there while it's still hot. Stir it up, then as the coffee cools admire how similar to phlegm the gooey mass that collects at the bottom becomes. It's really gross. Someone could probably write a scientific paper on this, one that perhaps becomes a contender for the Ig Nobel prize. At the very least the vanilla-cinnamon transmogrification experiments could earn you a couple free coffees.

Just kidding about the free coffees, of course. :)