Randoming on April 27, 2026 ☕️💌🦜🕊️
Random thoughts too long for a Mastodon post, but not long enough for a full-blown post.
- ☕️ Last week, I received my order of Gesha coffee, courtesy of the fine folks at Tandem Coffee in Portland (the original, not the pretender on the West Coast). After a few cups, I can say that next time I order coffee, I should make a point to try it out first! I have no issue at all with Tandem, but I don’t think Gesha and I get along too well. If you haven’t had Gesha, here’s how I would describe it: take a cup of chamomile tea, add honey and lemon to it, stir well…then dump it into an already bright and fruity coffee. I like the tea, and I like coffee, but something that tastes like two of them mixed together isn’t my cup of whatever. Additionally, it’s a type of coffee that to me tastes much worse as it cools off, so the overall drinking experience is both rushed and unfulfilling. Your mileage may vary, of course, but this bag will be a one-and-done affair for me.
- 💌 On my desk, I have a stack of cards to send out to various people: my father for his upcoming birthday; my mother-in-law for her upcoming birthday; and Mother’s Day cards for various family members. Nearly every time I buy cards, I tell myself that this has to be the last time I engage in this pointless practice. The cards are undoubtedly tossed within a day or two of receipt, so why bother with such a wasteful ritual? Surely there are better ways to communicate and recognize the recipient, right? Then I remember my collection of awesome Christmas cards sent over the years, as well as cards from relatives and friends long gone, so I reconsider my earlier thoughts and call them stupid and selfish. It’s a ritual, and often a wasteful one, but if that recipient is no more, sometimes all you have left of them is a greeting card showing how they remembered you at one time.
- 🦜 Another spring, another year of low-level fighting with our property management company over birds. Last spring, they sent out a nasty letter telling everyone to remove their bird feeders, as the seeds attracts “vermin.” Never mind that this complex does not lock their garbage bins, so their lids are wide open for rats, raccoons, and so forth. But no, apparently random bird feeders are the culprit here. Their decision really pissed me off and saddened me, as seeing the birds—and yes, occasionally squirrels—feed on the seeds brought me a lot of happiness. Fortunately, management's hatred of bird feeders did not extend to hummingbird feeders, so I hung one up on an exposed part of the grass near our window (as seen in the photo at the bottom of the 2026-03-22 Weekly Update). I thought that would be the end of it...
- 🕊️ ...But I was wrong. At the beginning of the month, I brought the hummingbird feeder out of storage and hung it up at the same location as last year. Around two weeks ago, the same creator of last year’s nasty bird letter reached out to me by phone to complain, saying that "the lawn crew can’t cut the grass” because of the hummingbird feeder, so it had to come down. Never mind that the lawn around the hummingbird feeder was cut several times last year without incident, but now this year it’s a problem? I don’t buy it one bit. The feeder is now hanging up on a tree near a birdbath, both of which are out of the way of anyone cutting the lawn. Tune in next year when this location suddenly becomes a problem!