During the dark winter months when the nights are long and we hardly ever see the sun, when we’re stuck inside for days at a time, it’s important to find ways to keep our spirits up. Writing and blogging helps me stay sane during the long winter.
I also like making humour memes for fun. At least, I try to be humorous, but that’s for you to decide. Here is a selection of some graphics I’ve made up over the last few years, usually when I’m up early in the morning with my first coffee and don’t feel like doing any serious work yet.
I made these memes using images I purchased or found for free on the internet. This first one is one of my favorites. I found this image of the coffee cup beaming up a coffee bean on Depositphotos, and I think it beautifully captures what my ‘aliens and coffee’ novels are all about, so I bought it and used Canva to add my own words to it.
A day without coffee is terrifying to contemplate…
Not much can happen in the morning until after I’ve had a cup or two. I made this when I found the image of the screaming woman, and thought, “Yup, that’s what it would feel like if I was forced to go a day without my favorite beverage.”
Save the Earth!
The earth is worth saving for many reasons, but, let’s face it, it’s the only planet we know of with coffee, and that makes it pretty special.
Why do they only abduct crazy people?
I got the idea for this next meme while browsing a general store in a small town in northern Ontario. I think it succinctly captures why I’m highly suspicious of so-called alien visitor stories. It seems we only hear such stories from people who are nutcases. Why don’t the aliens ever visit high-ranking political and social leaders and real scientists? NASA astronauts even? Serious people with real credibility that if they were to say, ‘Hey, an alien just visited me and gave me a plan for world peace’, we’d be inclined to listen. Instead, aliens seem to only be interested in sharing their solutions for our world problems with unbalanced fruitcakes no one could possibly take seriously. Not very smart of the aliens. If these stories really are true, than it can only mean the aliens are really pretty stupid.
This about sums it up…
…When you get up in the morning and find there’s no coffee in the house…
A silent cry for help…
This next one is not very original. I’ve seen the meme on signs in a few different shops. But I like it and made my own sign.
The days are short and the nights long and dark this time of year. To compound the dreariness, we haven’t seen the sun for two weeks. In my part of the country it’s been continuously wet and cloudy, with lots of rain and dark grey clouds. It can be a struggle sometimes to keep one’s mood upbeat.
So to help lift our moods, in today’s blog I thought I’d share some fun facts and happy thoughts related to the world’s most awesome beverage.
Today’s Happy Thought
We’ve always known that coffee drinkers are generally much more interesting and intelligent people, especially when compared to tea drinkers. I think we can all agree that’s just a simple fact.
Today’s good mood brought to you by coffee
But there’s more! The really great news is that coffee drinkers also live longer!
It’s true. There is now scientific evidence that drinking coffee improves your chances for a longer life than the non-coffee drinking crowd. According to researchers at the Baker Heart and Diabetes Institute, drinking 2-3 cups of coffee a day lowers the risk of cardiovascular disease and early death.
According to Peter Kistler, head researcher at the Institute, “moderate intake of ground, instant and caffeinated coffee should be considered part of a healthy lifestyle…”
While on vacation in Owen Sound last week I wandered into Birgit’s Bakery & Café in search of coffee, and this looked like the kind of cute, funky little café that might know how to brew a good cup.
I wasn’t disappointed.
A coffee roaster with a sense of whimsy and humour
I found their coffee absolutely lovely, smooth and fruity. I asked the barista behind the counter who her roaster was, and that’s when the day’s coffee adventure got even better. She pointed to some shelves along the wall lined with bags of whole bean coffee. “That’s them,” she said. “The Believer Coffee Company.”
When I went over to look and saw the picture on their bags, for me it was love at first sight. I just had to buy a bag and take it home.
The logo, as you can see from the photo above, features a UFO beaming it’s light down on a Sasquatch. In their own words, “at Believer Coffee we believe in the possibility of bigfoot & aliens, but most of all we believe in fresh roasted coffee for our consumer.”
They were singing from the same hymn book and I couldn’t resist
How could I resist, considering what I do – write sci-fi about coffee loving aliens? So I bought a bag of their medium/dark Ethiopian and took it home. I found it full of flavour, smooth and fruity with a hint of blueberry.
Now here is a coffee roaster that gets it! And they clearly have a sense of humour as well. You can order from them online and have your bag of coffee delivered right to your door.
Next, in addition to great coffee from a company that ‘believes’ in aliens, you may also want to check out Aliens, Spaceships and the Occasional Latte, – a sci-fi adventure in space with coffee smuggling aliens.
C.S. Lewis once said that, “You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me.”
With all due respect for C.S. Lewis, tea is for amateurs. Professionals like myself drink coffee. But the tea vs coffee controversy aside, I am in full agreement with Lewis’ general sentiment. What’s better than coffee and books?
What could be better than spending a rainy day with a good book and a cup of coffee?
It’s a cool and rainy day where I live, and I’ve been sitting on my couch giving a lot of thought to what makes for a good day. Being in the business of writing escapist fluff, I’m somewhat of an expert in the field and in my humble opinion I think it’s pretty simple really.
Happiness is a good book and a cup of great coffee. Click on this image to check out more great coffee quotes from BookGlow!
Bake cookies. Feeling down in the dumps? The news got you freaked out? Turn off the TV, brew some coffee and spend the afternoon baking cookies. Once Upon a Chef is one of my favorite cooking websites. Check out the great recipes on her website.
Now settle down into your comfy couch with a book, a plate of cookies and a cup of coffee, and spend the rest of the day immersed in it.
That’s it. It doesn’t have to get complicated folks. One of the best things you can do if your feeling down is get up and do something positive. Spending an afternoon or evening baking cookies and reading a good book is a much better than obsessing over CNN or Fox News.
This is how I feel if I get up in the morning and there’s no coffee…
In today’s blog I thought I’d share a humour meme I created this morning. The idea came to me when I found this retro photo of a screaming woman on the internet and thought – that’s how I’d feel if I got up in the morning and there was no coffee. Any true coffee lover will easily relate to the humour in this image.
The first thing I do when I get out of bed is head downstairs into the kitchen and start the coffee. And then I stand there and wait for enough coffee to appear in the carafe to pour a cup. Fortunately my coffee maker has a ‘pause ‘n pour’ feature, otherwise it would get rather messy.
In nice weather I’ll take my coffee and laptop outside to the back deck and listen to the birds while writing or reading the news. Unfortunately in Canada the weather is crap 9 months of the year, in which case I go into the living room, turn on the gas fireplace, and sit next to the fire.
I can’t imagine starting the day without coffee. I’m not sure how non-coffee drinkers do it, but I think the government should fund a research program to study them. We need to find the answer to how they function, if not to confirm they’re human.
I find it very relaxing to make humorous memes, especially if they are coffee related. Kind of goes with the territory when your ‘thing’ is escapist adventures featuring coffee loving alien smugglers.
It’s 6:30 AM, and I am just finishing a 3rd cup of coffee I brewed with a Honduran roast from Oddfellow Coffee Roasters. Oddfellow is a local roaster in Brantford Ontario that I ‘discovered’ last winter at the Brantford farmers market, and I’ve been hooked ever since. What I like about Oddfellow is not just the amazing flavour of his roasts, but that the owner, Ryan Wlodarek, buys direct from just a handful of small growers in Honduras, El Salvador and Brazil.
Today I am going to talk about his Honduran roast, because Honduras holds a special place in my heart – especially when it comes to coffee. But I’ll get to that momentarily, after I rave a bit on Oddfellow’s coffee.
Ryan at the Brantford Farmer’s Market
Oddfellow’s Honduran Roast is semi-sweet and fruity, with a hint of toffee and citrus and easy on the stomach. He buys the beans directly from Finca La Fortuna farm in central Honduras.
Finca La Fortuna is run by Delmy Regalado, a 2nd generation farmer who inherited the land from her father. Originally it was a sugar plantation. Perched 5000 feet above sea level, this farm receives amazing tropical heat, sun and rain fortified by cool nights. Perfect conditions to produce some of the most sought after beans on planet earth. The beans must work harder at higher elevations to develop and ripen, lending to unique fruity and sharp sweet characteristics. The blend is made up of Pacas, a natural mutation in the Bourbon bean and Typica, one of the main varieties of Arabica coffee.
I love this coffee from Oddfellows, not only for its incredible flavour, but because, as mentioned, I have a soft spot for the country it comes from.
Coffee has been part of my morning ritual for my entire adult life, so it is safe to say that I’ve enjoyed thousands of cups of coffee over the years, yet there is one cup I had more than 3 decades ago that I still remember with vivid clarity.
I was in Honduras for a short visit, not as a tourist but to help an organization setup a computer system. The family I stayed with in La Ceiba knew a local farmer, and one afternoon they took me out into the countryside for a visit. The family was very hospitable, and we spent a very pleasant afternoon visiting under the shade of a palm tree. It was not long before they served coffee, with cream and sugar.
The coffee, of course, was excellent, but I soon learned that the most amazing thing about the coffee was that the family produced absolutely everything that went into it. They roasted the beans from coffee plants they grew on their own small farm. They also grew their own sugar cane and made the sugar that went into the coffee. And the cream came from their own cow.
Later, the farmer asked me if I would like a cup of water. I said yes, and he motioned to his young son and pointed to the palm tree we were sitting under. The young boy scampered up the tree, picked a coconut, and came back down with it. He gave it to his father, who used a machete to slice off the top and handed it to me. I drank from it, feeling like I was a supporting caste member in The Jungle Book movie.
That afternoon was three decades ago, a coffee experience I have never forgotten. Oddfellow’s Honduran roast transports me back to that afternoon every time a brew a fresh cup using the beans from Delmy’s farm, Finca La Fortuna.
Oddfellow Coffee Roasters has some of the best roast I’ve ever experienced. Their website is still under construction and Ryan tells me it will be ready shortly. When it is, I will add the link to my List of Best Coffee Blogs. In the meantime, you can reach him by email at oddfellowroaster@gmail.com.
** This post has been updated a few times since it was originally published in July 2020 during the dark days of covid and quarantines.
As one might suspect, with novels such as “Aliens, Spaceships and the Occasional Latte”, and “Coffee to Go, With a Spaceship”, I rather like coffee. I don’t think that should come as too much of a surprise.
In today’s post I thought I’d share links to some of my favorite coffee related blogs. Sometimes it’s just really nice to ignore the news, Facebook, Twitter and anything else on the internet that can get too serious, and go to a website to relax and read about something you enjoy without having to hear anything about wars, pandemics, Donald Trump, or American election cycles that never seem to end and are always in crisis mode.
Sometimes we need a mental break. So here are some good coffee blogs and links to other interesting and fun stuff. I’ll be updating this list from time to time.
Yes! It’s going to be a good day!
By the way, I’ve recently discovered this new social mediasensation called Instagram. Maybe you’ve heard of it? Apparently it’s all the rage. I’m not much for social media. I do have a FB account but don’t go on it much, but I decided to give this Instagram thingy a try. So now you can follow me on Instagram. Lucky you!
Roasting Coffee Beans at Home for Beginners. This article explains how to roast beans at home without special equipment, using a pan on the stove top, or in the oven, or using a popcorn machine. An excellent all-around article for the beginner who wants to try roasting without making a big investment in equipment.
The Bean Ground Coffee gear buying guide and reviews. If you’re shopping for anything related to your favorite addiction, this is a good place to start. Also, good indepth info on coffee beans.
The Coffee Channel. A great all-round website for coffee lovers, with reviews, blogs, buying guides and recipes all about coffee. They also have a list of what they consider the best coffee blogs.
Brewed Coffee. As they say in their About Us – “We are All about Coffee, including coffee news, tips, recipes, and more!”
Believer Coffee Company. This is a craft roaster in Ontario, who – in their own words “believe in the possibility of bigfoot & aliens, but most of all we believe in fresh roasted coffee for our consumer.” These guys get it!
Once Upon A Chef. You’re going to need cookies and other snacks while drinking coffee and reading great fiction. I like to cook (and eat snacks), and this site by a classically trained chef is my favorite recipe website.
Keep Food Safe. This is an excellent site about food safety. In their own words, “We support individuals who have fallen ill due to contaminated food. Recognizing that foodborne illnesses can lead to severe consequences, including hospitalization, we are committed to educating the public on current food outbreaks and promoting safe practices for both food service companies and consumers.”
Some other interesting stuff to pass the time
Custom handmade knives for the kitchen. Good cooking goes with great coffee (see above), so if you need some new kitchen knives check out this website (and a few more below).
BookGlow. This is a fun website about books, that also appreciates a good cup of coffee.
Fadir Knives in Ukraine. A blacksmith shop in Ukraine making high quality axes and bushcraft knives.
It’s a fact! Coffee drinkers live longer!
A fun fact that coffee lovers will appreciate! Studies show that coffee drinkers live longer. See this article from CNN:
Something beautiful to look at. While you’re relaxing with a coffee, check out these amazing watercolours by Jacquie Herron. Jacquie’s paintings have a vibrant originality and freshness I find absolutely delightful.
Wordle word game answer history: for all you Wordle nerds. Check your guesses for the day’s Wordle puzzle against previous answer history. I consider this good strategy, not cheating! There’s no point in wasting guesses on words that have already been used, after all.
Featured blogs
I like to keep track of some of my favorite blogs here, so that they don’t get entirely lost in the ‘Archives’ as time goes on…
Canuckle. Have you tried this 5-letter word game yet? I’m a Canuckle nerd and have probably spent far too much time researching possible starting words – constantly going for the thrill of getting the puzzle in one guess. But it has happened a couple of times!
