09 August 2000
One of the highlights of my visit to the homeland was that I got to see my friend Anne. Anne's a friend of mine from high school, and the person who initially "converted" me to veganism. She's much more of a hardcore activist (her pet cause is animal rights) than I'll ever be, so, to get kind of cheesy, she's an inspiration to me as well as a friend.
She studied in Nepal all of last school year, and she spent the June and July in Hawaii living with her sister, so I hadn't seen her in at least a year. As luck would have it, she flew into Milwaukee just a few days before I left to come back to Saint Paul.
We only managed to get together once, and even then I had to "share" her with a few other friends, but it was still amazing to see her. I realized a few days before I saw her that she had become kind of an abstraction to me, this mysterious entity from which I received frantic email from time to time. Having her there in the flesh moved her from abstraction back into the real-live-friend category, which is great.
Anne goes to NYU, which means I don't get to see her all that often, but I'm happy just to have her back on the same side of the planet as me. I'm thinking about visiting her over fall break and looking at some grad schools in New York, so we should have more time to catch up with each other soon.
And for a dramatically different highlight from the visit home, we have the newly purchased Bodum french press coffee maker.
I've been wanting one of these things for years, ever since I had my first taste of the amazing elixer they produce at Bridgette's house back in high school. Since then, I've used french presses owned by various roommates, but I've never plunked down the cash to get one myself.
It's actually kind of rediculous that I never bought one, since a low end model can be had for as little as 15 bucks. I often have difficulty justifying indulgent purchases like this (indulgent in that I already own 3 or 4 other coffee making apparati), but let's face it, I've spent $15 on things much stupider than a kitchen device.
Needless to say, I'm in love with mine. I'd better be, after the way I agonized over it. Jenna was peeved with me for making her wait around while I stared at the Bodum shelf at Lechter's, but I figured she owed me after I helped her secure just the right pair of flared jeans by cruising every teenybopper store in a 3 mile radius.
I settled on one style, a basic 16 oz. glass one with a cork base. After we had left the mall and started home, I changed my mind about the one I had purchased-- I had realized that the cork would probably deteriorate quickly, not to mention the fact that 16 oz. isn't quite big enough if I'm making coffee for any more than one person. So, you guessed it, I made Jenna turn the car around and go back so I could exchange it for a larger model I had seen.
It was definitely worth it-- I've now entered the realm of totally amazing coffee. All I need is to teach myself how to roast green coffee beans at home and I'll have completed my transformation to "insane coffee freak."