Category: General

Tuesday night, I went to the GatheringNW, a campus ministry sponsored by my DC area church on the campus of American University in their cool looking Kay Spiritual Life Center. After the service, I went into southwest DC and took some night time shots of the city. These pictures were taken between 11 and midnight, long after southwest DC retires for the night. Here are some of my favorites.

Crystal City over the Potomac with Willow

Washington Monument and Jefferson Memorial across Tidal Basin

Night Washington Monument

(click an image to enlarge)

Instructions: Use the picture you like best from the first (no clicking around for 44 pages) page of the search results on Google Image, and then answer the following questions.

1. The city and state of the town you grew up, no quotation marks.

2. The town where you currently reside.

3. You name, first and last, but again, no quotes.

4. Your grandmother’s name.

5. Your favorite food.

6. Your favorite drink.

7. Your favorite smell.

8. Your favorite song.

Hat tip to JR

Just a quick update to let you all know that I’m in a busy stretch.  I’ve already had a test this week, I have another one tomorrow, I have a project with formal report to do, and also a third test next week.  I’m also going to Ohio State over the weekend.  I have a post started that I hope to publish next week, but I will likely be silent until then.

I’ve been getting requests for RSS feeds for the site.  I already have them.  Check the links at the bottom of the page.  You can use these feeds with services like bloglines.

It’s been a while since I did a three things post, so here you go for your random Wednesday morning enjoyment.

Three things you may not have known about me:

1. I’m ambidextrous.
2. I am an INTJ.
3. My high school issued me an official fake ID card.

Busy weekend here. Friday evening was the annual homegroup guys make the girls dinner and affirm that they’re good people, even though largely single people night. Cory (grad student cory, not roommate Cory) cooked spaghetti with meat sauce, chocolate covered strawberries, angel’s food cake toppings, and attempted to cook fried ice cream.

The fried ice cream was classic. By classic, I mean it set off the Slusher fire alarm. Cory burnt one serving of fried ice cream when his plastic spoon he was using melted in the boiling oil. We got the ice cream out, and didn’t notice much smoke, but we opened all the windows. A few minutes later, the oil was still smoking a little, so we gave up and took it outside. We propped the doors open and fanned the smoke detectors. The smoke was mostly gone and we were breathing easy that we hadn’t set off the alarm when it went off. Now, this was more than five minutes after the oil had been outside. Makes me feel real good about the quality of the dorm fire alarms. Thankfully, the poiice weren’t mad at us and we can call this valentine’s Dinner “unforgettable”.

I took Saturday and Sunday off from work. It snowed most of that time, and I enjoyed a quiet day around the house and a lot of fun boarding and sledding on the golf course. Throw some movies, staying in bed until afternoon, and other fun in there and you have a relaxing weekend. I’m enjoying not having that much work this semester! The only downside to the weekend was that my car is going to need a new tailight cover.

Best to worst, judged based on the quality of their espresso and their standard drip coffee:

1. Mill Mountain Coffee and Tea
2. Easy Chair Coffee
3. Starbucks
4. Bollo’s
5. Deet’s Place

Mill Mountain
Easily the best coffee shop in Blacksburg. All the coffee they brew is roasted fresh in the store, and then brewed the next day. They offer several blends of coffee in the shop each day, lots of espresso drinks, sandwiches, and ice cream. The Mill Mountain Blend, which they always have brewed, is easily my all time favorite coffee. I buy fresh roasted coffee from Mill Mountain for home brewing, and will continue to order from them once I move out of the area. Their cappuccinos and mochas are spectacular, and their sandwiches are good, if a bit pricey. If coffee isn’t your thing, they also brew and sell loose leaf tea. I’ve enjoyed brewing their loose leaf teas at home, especially the slightly minty herbal Monk’s Prayer for reflective times and their Oolong for with Chinese food. Note that the shop in Blacksburg isn’t fully affiliated with the shops near Roanoke, but the menus are very similar and I highly recommend any of their locations that I’ve been to.

Easy Chair Coffee
Located in University Mall outside the Math Emporium, this coffee shop gets a strong business from VT students dreading their looming Math Emporium assignments. Easy Chair Coffee has great drinks that have made my time in the Math Empo much less painful. I don’t frequent this shop, because it is not convenient to my house, but if Mill Mountain were to pull out of Blacksburg, I might have to become a regular here.

Starbucks
I know that I’m going to get flamed for this comment, but their coffee isn’t that bad. When the only Starbucks in town was across the street from Easy Chair, I only went to Starbucks before going to the adjacent Five Guys to pick up something cold to make up for the lack of milkshakes at the otherwise amazing Five Guys. Starbucks doesn’t have amazing coffee, but they helped raise the bar of what people expect in a coffee cup. They were also the first chain to refuse to use the horrible tasting robusta beans. That said, Starbucks has switched their locations to automatic espresso machines. The decrease in the quality of their cappuccinos and (more importantly) their peppermint mochas around Christmas has caused me to avoid them if I’m looking for espresso. I’ve yet to visit their newest Blacksburg location, even though it’s now the closest coffee shop to my house. One major downside to going to Starbucks: I always feel like a corporate whore or a sellout when I go there.

Bollo’s
I know a lot of people who like to frequent Bollo’s. It’s the local artsy-type coffee shop. I enjoy their atmosphere, but their coffee is horrendous. I got a medium cappuccino there the other day (which is 12 oz there – yuck!) on my way back from campus and thought to myself after several sips “I wish I had walked the extra block to the Starbucks.” Coming from me, that’s saying a lot. If you must go to Bollo’s, be warned of the small sizes and know that I’ve found the iced latte to be tolerable on a hot summer day. Unlike their coffee, Bollo’s has amazing baked goods. I think their small bakery is probably the best one in town. I highly recommend the oat fudge bars, although they tend to be small and expensive in the shop.

Deet’s Place
The on campus coffee shop and ice cream parlor. I intended to make Deet’s fourth on my list and Bollo’s fifth, but I had a cup of coffee in Deet’s this afternoon that was so foul tasting, I couldn’t finish it. The help is clueless about coffee, the coffee is very bitter, the espresso machine is automatic, and the help still manages to screw the drinks up. The baked goods here are usually good, and they have a nice selection of loose leaf teas. If you must go here, I recommend trying their herbal peppermint tea. Actually, try any tea before you even consider a cup of coffee. Also note that the giant roasting machine in the front of the main room is there for decoration purposes only.

Not reviewed:
Java Junction
Daily Grind
Cinnabon – I haven’t had coffee here in several years, but I remember them making my drinks wrong on several occasions. I don’t feel a need to go back.
More Than Coffee – I love the calzones here, but I’ve never actually had coffee and don’t really think of them as a coffee shop

Out of the area:
Caribou Coffee – I’ve started going here for espresso when I’m back home. Most locations use automatic machines, but the quality of their brews seems better than Starbucks (plus, I don’t feel like a sellout going here).
Greenberry’s – Excellent coffee with several locations around the DC area. Too bad there’s not one near my parents.
Probably would be second on the above list if they were in the Blacksburg area.

It was over 60 degrees here today, so Justin, Jason, Tim, and myself jumped in the car and went up to Wind Rock for sunset. We were coming back for a game night, so we didn’t have time to have a campfire and make s’mores, but it was still a great trip, even though the sunset wasn’t perfect.

Homegroup game night was fun–I played Cranium, and learned a new game called Kims that’s good for a crowd.

It’s been an interesting last few days. Wednesday, I drove up to Lexington, VA for traffic court. A reckless driving ticket, which I initially thought was a criminal charge, ended up becoming a plain speeding ticket during the trial. I was very thankful–I got a fine, and it looks like my license will only have four points total on it. I’m very glad about that, and I’ve driven 3500+ miles with much more caution since then.

One of the amusing things about the hearing was that the judge didn’t seem to like the cop. The cop was not at all polite to me when he stopped me. Even with two hearing aids, I had to repeat everything I said at least twice to him as well. The judge seemed to be purposely picking on the judge’s bad hearing. He spoke very softly, and on several occasions made comments that made the cop look like an idiot–especially during the first case, which was criminal reckless driving (trucker hit eight cars). I also think part of my ticket reduction may have been to spite the cop. Works for me.

On my way home from Lexington, I stopped off in Roanoke for a little shopping, since I had already missed all my classes for the day. I discovered that Dick’s Sporting Goods is more like a Cabella’s, and less like a Sports Authority. In other words, they didn’t have a single ski rack, let alone a pair of skis or a snowboard in the store. Lots of golf clubs and hunting gear, though. I also peeked in Circuit City, Lifeway, and the Valley View mall. I was wearing a suit, so I didn’t do as much shopping as I would have liked to, but at least I got a good soft pretzel from Auntie Anne’s. I hadn’t had one in at least 3 years! Mmmmm!

I got some work done Wednesday afternoon, experienced the second homegroup of the year, and went on the lifegroup tour. Speaking of lifegroups, I know where I’m going now. Only thing that could change it is if one of the other lifegroups is only threeish people.

I also had several long online conversations Wednesday night. At one point, I had five active conversations going, which is more than I like to have going. The only ones that were at all memorable though were with Tim, Michael, and Zack. Okay, I admit the Zack conversation was seven messages total, but it caused a more than two hour phone call on Thursday. I got in bed around 4am, which was not ideal, but given all the things that were going on last night, it was easily the right choice to stay up.

Thursday was not what I was expecting. I had my alarm set for 9:30, since my first class was at 11. However, I woke up around 8:30, and after several minutes, decided trying to go back to sleep would not work. The first thing that I felt when I woke up was that I should be praying on my knees. I rarely kneel when I’m praying. I got up and used the close to an hour remaining before the alarm went off to pray. I had three things that I just kept thinking of, and I prayed about all of them.

Thursday afternoon, I called Zack. I had a list of several questions for him and several things I wanted him to know. Every time I talk to Zack, I learn of something that I’ve been blessed to see happen here that had been prayed about for years in the past. I’m extremely thankful for the seeds planted on this campus by past leaders, and I hope that I’m able to plant spiritual seeds that will sprout in the future. It sounds like Zack has some amazing seminary courses this semester, and fortunately, seminary is not what he feared it could be. Some of his professors are well known–I read a report last week that one of then had written!

Other things worth an honorable mention over the past few days: getting beat down while wrestling Justin several times over, using Michael as a body shield against Justin, and duct tape!

Just a quick post to say that I had an awesome weekend. I had no homework to do, and I had plenty of time for relaxation and catching up with several friends. Friday, I was able to visit one of the campus ministries that sponsors vtONE that I had never personally visited before, which was cool. I also got my new headphones, which will keep me entertained while the amplifiers for my studio monitors are in for service. Hopefully, I will not pick up WuVT any more when I get the amplifiers back. As much as I enjoy listening to WuVT, I’d rather not hear it on top of my iTunes library. Speaking of which, I am nearly complete getting my iTunes library in shape (reripping CDs or adding ID3 tags as appropriate). My data files are also backed up, and I’m ready to tackle the new week.