Category: Blogging

Lileks today talks about his coffee cup of the week and asks his commentors:

My favorite coffee cups have a meaning that might seem odd to someone else; my least-used has the most emotional connection; my most frequently used means nothing at all.

So share your mug stories! Worst, best, faves, etc.

C’mon, man. This is a blog. I’ve gone on about my coffee cup accumulation multiple times:

Out of My Cups (2012), wherein I talk about maybe divesting a couple of the plastic travel mugs I owned (spoiler alert: I got rid of two of the four).

I Am The Coffee Party I Was Waiting For about how many coffee cups I had back then and why I should not get rid of them (spoiler alert: I did not).

A couple of notes since the writing of the last:

• Every year, I do the library’s Winter Reading Challenge which results in a mug; I’m about halfway through this year’s (as a reminder, although the rules say you only have to read 5 books from the 15 categories, I try to get all 15 before turning the form in). I have quite a collection of mugs from years past:

  

  I actually use some of them for tea, miso soup, or anything I brew downstairs, so they see some use.
   

• In 2013, the boys would have been seven and five. I mentioned that I might get rid of some Monopoly themed cups, but I did not. And soon thereafter, my youngest, who had been exposed to the game, was delighted when he discovered them. They became his favorite cups for apple cider and hot chocolate (briefly).
   
• I’ve only gotten a couple of additional cups since then: A cup for winning a trivia night in 2014, the plain white coffee house-like cup I got for the photo on the cover of Coffee House Memories, and a couple of additional cups that were part of the gift sets, including a camoflauge cup that my brother gave me for Christmas the year before last, come to mind.

However, the number of cups that I use has dropped.

I’ve gotten back into the habit of drinking coffee from the same cup for days on end (which was basically how I did it when I worked outside the home, using the same giant Marquette University plastic mug day after day with but a rinsing in between). Since I’ve been underemployed for a couple of months and cut the K-Cups from daily expenditures when the company I worked for no longer covered them, I have been using the drip maker upstairs and have left the cup up there, generally full, as well. So I don’t finish the last cup I pour on any given day–I start the next day by slamming that (followed by any cold coffee left in the pot). So it’s rare that the cup on the counter is empty to put into the dishwasher. I tend to use a faded Washington Times mug I got when I subscribed twenty years ago or a similar large mug whose source I have forgotten. So I use those two cups and one or two of the Library Winter Reading Challenge mugs for most of my coffee/hot brew needs.

Still, I cannot really cull them because they’re personal relics.

One thing I really do want to cull, though, is the insulated tumblers. We have received a bunch as swag or for various charitable contributions, but since I work from home, I don’t need something like it for a commute (and I use a plastic insulated Green Bay Packers cup I got from my brother some years back to take coffee on the long ride home for those long trips where I want to start out with coffee). They replaced the plastic water bottle swag we got previously for chartiable contributions and in 5K gift bags, and they occupy basically the same cabinet space. But we hardly ever use them. A couple of plastic bottles fit into bicycle water holders, but that’s about it.

Ah, well, we do have the space for them, so I don’t have to make a decision now.

UPDATE: As I was writing this post, it made me want coffee. As I headed upstairs, I told my beautiful wife about the post, and she mentioned she has another insulated metal tumbler in her office that she just received. So maybe we don’t have that much room after all.

I went to bed last night in the 8 o’clock hour and was up before 2am. As I wandered around Nogglestead awake, I thought I would maybe get back to bed about 4am and get a couple more hours of sleep. As I drew a glass of water from the kitchen sink, I thought that in the olden days, people would get up in the middle of the night for a while before going back to bed.

This very morning, Neo posted a video about the Medieval Two Sleeps:

But, Brian J., did you read any portion of the long books you have selected for the 2025 Winter Reading Challenge? Oh, but no. Mostly I sat in the darkness and worried. Because I did not want to spoil my night vision for when I did want to sneak back to bed.

In a post entitled Report: Most Counties Have Little or No Local News Sources, Wirecutter admits:

We’ve got the Macon County Chronicle, published on Wednesday or Thursday. I enjoy it, it gives me a chance to catch up on all the local gossip and happenings.

I mean, he’s not doing as much to keep print alive as I am, but it’s something.

The current count of local papers I take from around Missouri is:

1. The Greene County Commonwealth
2. Mound City News, which is where my “cousin”‘s death notice appeared
3. The Licking News
4. Houston Herald
5. Douglas County Herald
6. Wright County Journal
7. Branson Tri-Lakes News
8. Phelps County Focus
9. Marshfield Mail
10. Stone County Republican
11. Ozark County Times
12. Benton County Enterprise

I think that’s it. I’d have to go rifle through the stack again.

Unfortunately, we’re cutting expenses, so I’ve had to let The Current Local lapse for the nonce and have not been able to subscribe to the two weeklies we picked up in northeast Missouri on our trip to Iowa. Also, it’s fortunate that the subscription bills have not come due at the same time or I’d realize how much I’d been spending on newspapers I only page through, read a column by a local person, and use to light fires.

One thing about the local papers, though, is non-local newspaper conglomerates are starting to buy them up. The Branson Tri-Lakes News bought the Stone County Republican, and the papers share a lot of content, so it might not be worthwhile to keep them both. The Douglas County Herald got bought by a network in Illannoy, and its letters to the editor tend to be a little more media-traditional, if you know what I mean. A nationwide concern just bought the Phelps County Focus, so we’ll see if that thins it out some–given that the Focus is published in a college town, it already had views out of step with its readers. I guess the Greene County Commonwealth long ago joined a group owned by a publisher whose columns have also been out-of-step with his readers. As the new owners “trim” their budgets, they might be tempted to trim the local columnists which make the papers interesting. Or, heaven forfend, they’ll all pick up Jim Hamilton whom I already see in several papers and Ozarks Farm & Neighbor (where he replaced Jerry Crownover, who unfortunately retired).

So in addition to the belt-tightening, we might have otherwise pruned the list.

Which is unfortunate, because I do really like reading about my adopted hometowns across the state.

Patrice Lewis writes An Issue of Contentment and quotes a book:

For some reason that phrase – she was happy then and didn’t know it – stayed with me. And it made me wonder: how many of us are happy but don’t appreciate it, know it, or realize it?

“Happiness” is such a loaded and multi-faceted word that no one can really define what it means for them. It’s different for everyone. Happiness can be found even in places and circumstances you may not like; but it’s often there, buried among the less enjoyable parts. Facets of happiness (contentment, satisfaction, pride of achievement, etc.) can all contribute to the overall qualities of the emotion.

I think what haunts me about the notion of being happy and not realizing it, is how many of us let overall happiness slide through our fingers because we’re too concerned with little things we don’t like. Anyone who takes their health for granted and then loses it, for example, will appreciate how much happier they were when their health was good.

That’s why this moment of contentment was so powerful.

This little bit of John Hughes’ best movie, She’s Having a Baby, has stuck with me over the years:

As you know, gentle reader, I struggle with feeling contentment. I have given it plenty of thought this summer. I’ve made a habit the last two years to step into the pool in the evenings if only for a couple of minutes, because I have a pool. And I’ve watched the sunset and have really, really tried to be content, enumerating things that I have, including the things I would never have dreamed of in my youth.

I suppose it’s because I don’t know if I’ve earned what I have, nor that I have much control over whether I can keep it. Maybe the next book on mindfulness will cure me, but perhaps not. Perhaps my efforts in something will yield the intended result (aside from a cleaner house after the weekend or trimmed weeds in the summer or even a freshly painted room sometime when I get around to it). Most likely, I’ll bet on the book.

Well, I guess he couldn’t steal it since I didn’t publish it on the blog, but our air conditioner failed us on Saturday. When I came in from cutting and screwing some record shelves, I found the A/C was blowing warm air. As it was going to be a mildish weekend, I didn’t call the HVAC company on an emergency basis, so we trotted out some extra fans. And I joked that we were on only fans this weekend.

Today, Wilder included the joke in a post:

AOC: “In this house, we’re environmentally conscious – no air conditioner. Instead? Only Fans®.”

Except I think the registered trademark is OnlyFans. Or so I’ve heard.

Well, he got there on the Internet first. And if someone beat him to it, I’m not researching it by searching for Only Fans on the Internet, thanks.

In his “Have I Got A Line For You” column from April 17, Benton County Enterprise publisher James Mahlon White mentions the The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám:

Ran across a special on the Titanic last night. It sank 110 years ago on April 14, 1912. Part of the cargo was a jeweled copy of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. The only verse I can recall is from the middle of that poem. It started out with, “Up to the 7th Gate I Rose.”

Unlike when I ran across a rubāʿiyāt in After Worlds Collide and recognized the source, I don’t recollect the quattrain that begins “Up to the 7th gate I rose” even though I likely read it three times recently.

Oh, and in unrelated news, Chuck P. included a clip from the movie version of When Worlds Collide last weekend. It was top-of-mind, of course, because I’d just read the sequel several decades after reading When Worlds Collide. I’ve never seen the film before, though.

To be honest, I am not sure about the hype about the solar eclipse this year and the cicado broods coming out.

I was a little arch this morning when I said I’d seen this movie before, but I have seen solar eclipses and cicadas before 2024.

I mean, we had a solar eclipse only seven years ago (another curmudgeon remembers). We had another once-in-a-lifetime concurrence of cicada broods emerging in 2015.

I hate to be all old manny about it, but I’ve been at Nogglestead for coming up on fifteen years, so I’ve been here to compare things year-to-year in the same place. And I am coming to learn how much of the noise in the news and on the Internet are written by young people or vagabonds who lack that experience, so every experience in their new location is the first, best, superlativest thing ever.