One of those oh-so-domestic "what I'm up to" posts ...

... that I try not to engage in too much, and usually mock. I'm trying to keep a foot wedged in the door of this here blogosphere, but I don't much feel like posting "serious" material at the moment.

Having purchased a cheap (really: 15 bucks!) espresso machine, I am now officially a snob. Not an effete snob, though -- haven't been able to talk Tamara into a bread machine yet.

The straw that broke the camel's back on the espresso thing was a trip to MoKaBe's on Thursday night. We hadn't been there in a couple of years, mostly because our normal travels don't take us to the south side of St. Louis very often. Thursday was Dining Out For Life night, though, and there was a storytelling event at Lemp Mansion which Tamara wanted to attend (one of her high school teachers was one of the storytellers). Perfect storm of excuses to locate ourselves in the vicinity of Grand and Arsenal.

Best. Coffee. Evar. I'd forgotten how good it is. Much better than Starbucks, and obviously the old drip coffeemaker at home just won't cut it. Gotta have the real thing.

Set it up this afternoon. I started with a double-shot cappuccino, which came out so-so. Right now, I'm drinking a quadruple-shot iced vanilla latte, made with half-and-half instead of regular milk. That's the ticket, folks. Makes me wish I had an IV rig to just keep it coming.

Not that I'll avoid MoKaBe's now just because I can make my own espresso. The food's as good as the coffee (fantastic quesadillas, the best French dip sammich in the world), the prices are attractive and the atmosphere is perfect. You know you're home when the first thing you see as you walk in the door is some guy on a laptop covered with explicitly libertarian stickers. The clientele tends to be overtly left but leaning heavily libertarian, especially on issues like same-sex marriage (MoKaBe's is well-known as an LGBT-friendly hangout). Gotta make it down there more often.

So anyway, that's what I'm up to. Drinking espresso and reading John LeCarre's The Constant Gardener and listening to the Ramones. And posting to The Aulde Blogge, just because.