Thursday, January 29, 2009

Starbucks is Losing a Couple Customers

I know things are tough all over, but Starbucks in their unending stupidity is now NOT going to have brewed decaf ready in the afternoon. Decaf drinkers will have to wait if they want coffee. Last summer in all their wisdom, they discontinued decaf frappuccino base, so those nice frozen coffees are denied me unless I have one by noon.

Well, they no longer have my business.

Tuesday, January 27, 2009

Not Sure Which is Worse?

So now we have a new treasury secretary who was approved with so little dissent. I find this really disturbing. I mean which is worse him saying he forgot to pay taxes or that he didn't know he had to pay them? Come on. Get serious. The senators from Tennessee split their vote on him. I really thought Corker was smarter than that. Maybe everyone should forget or claim ignorance on their taxes?

Doesn't say much for Obama's judgement does it? Not that anyone has ever questioned it, eh? Oh, right, he said he didn't know about his Illinois colleague who was a former terrorist? And attended church with a racist pastor for over 20 years, yet claimed he didn't know he was racist?

A totally different topic.

When DH and I first started scoping out Tennessee, our real estate agent, Susan Hogan, the best agent around, took us first to a home on Walton Trail, which is off Old Walton Road. Nice neighborhood, the house wasn't for us, we really were looking for a ranch. However, since that time, there has been a murder on the street - husband has been indicted - a fire; and now on Old Walton, the body of a man found at a sewer construction site inside one of the tiles - supposedly suicide. I think I' really glad we didn't even consider that house and neighborhood!

Monday, January 26, 2009

Lovin' the Small Town

One of our complaints about our little town is the lack of really good coffee available as whole bean coffee. When we first started focusing on Cookeville, there was a coffee roaster here called "Gridges" that bought raw beans and roasted them in the shop. Aaron or "Gridge" bought free market coffee beans. My favorite was the Brazilian decaf he had. It had sort of a chocolatey flavor to it. Alas, Starbucks moved in and Gridges moved out. I can't tell you how I miss going downtown to this neat little storefront and watching as they roasted the beans. If you wanted a particular kind, you'd put your order in and the following Wednesday he would roast it.

One thing we do have plenty of in Cookeville is coffee shops. Besides Starbucks, there is Poet's, La Dolce Cafe, The Daily Grind (this is a drive through), the Intrepid Traveler cafe and Perk Up! Also, the bookstore has a small coffee shop - which introduced us a few years ago to the joys of Southern Pecan coffee. I may have even missed one or two.

In Michigan, DH and I were regular customers of Joe's Produce and Westborn Market. On visits back we would stock up on whole bean coffee. Last trip to Michigan and Westborn we discovered that Westborn was once again buying Cadillac coffee. We brought back a couple pounds of Southern Pecan cream regular coffee beans. It lasted quite a while because we can only drink regular coffee in the morning.

Last week, as we started to scrape the bottom of the whole bean coffee can, we decided it was time to make an emergency call to Cadillac Coffee back in Michigan. Hallelujah, we bought a case of whole bean Southern Pecan coffee. A case is ten pounds. It was delivered today! Five pounds is in the freezer in the garage and five pounds is awaiting storage space!

The beauty of it - even though DH gave the address at least 3 times when he ordered the address was wrong on the package and the invoice that followed. UPS found us anyway and the PO had no problems finding us either.