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Full city roast: It's a medium roast. Coffee beans are like popcorn, with some water trapped inside that makes them expand, only they "pop" twice. Full city is after all of the beans have "popped" the first time, and are about to start the second "pop" (called a "crack" in coffee roasting lingo). Second crack gets into dark and espresso roasts, and the flavor of the beans becomes overpowered by the flavor of the roast. I'm not disrespected by anything anyone drinks. My coffee taste evolved over time, in tiny steps. Well, buying a home coffee roaster was kind of a bigger step. But over decades of drinking coffee with breakfast, I've found my favorite kind of beans, my favorite roast, my favorite brew method, etc., and it's not too time consuming or expensive. About twenty five cents per cup (green beans are cheaper than roasted beans), and about thirty minutes of time each week monitoring the roast, which I can do while I read a book). Coffee beans are the seed or pit of a fruit, called a coffee cherry. The cherry flesh has to be removed from the bean. Most coffee is made with a "wet process", where the cherry is soaked in water, then crushed between rollers to split the cherry from the bean. Ethiopian coffee uses the dry process. They spread the cherries on a rack and leave them in the sun to dry. While drying, the juices of the cherry soak into the bean, giving it tart flavors like lemon, cherry, strawberry and blueberry. They aren't overpowering or artificial, just hints on top of the base coffee notes. It was a revelation the first time I experienced a medium roast, natural process Ethiopian coffee. Sir Richard Francis Burton, the legendary 19th century British explorer, wrote about the wonders of coffee from Harrar in Ethiopia. It's where coffee was first domesticated, so they know what they're doing. Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

I got new docs today with this new address for Adventure of the Seas on 11/14: Texas Pier Terminal Texas Cruise Ship Terminal of Galveston Island - Pier 10 1402 Harborside Drive Galveston, Texas 77550

And that's why I only swim in my own pool.

My daily coffee is either Sidamo Guji or Ethiopian Harrar, both natural process, bought as whole, green beans. I roast them in batches of 12 ounces (just to full city roast, just as first crack dies down) so the roasted beans are always between 2 and 12 days old, stored in special containers that allow them to outgas CO2. I grind them immediately before brewing. My water is a consistent 212F, and my drip brewer simulates a pour-over. It's the best coffee in the world. I fully expect to hate the coffee on my first cruise, much as I hate coffee almost everywhere except my house.

I'm sailing on Adventure of the Seas out of Galveston on 11/14/2022. I got my documents today, and they say we are boarding at terminal 2, which seems to be the old terminal. I was hoping we were using the new one.

None can deny it.

An island is land that is surrounded by water. That makes all the land on earth “islands”. A peninsula of an island is still part of an island.

At 1 point per $5 bet, with a payout of 85% (found via a Google search), it would cost an average of $150 to get 200 points via slot machines.

I'm sailing on Adventure in 56 days. If the worst that happens is a stray shrimp tail, moldy display food, and staff who don't seem phased by that, I'm OK.

If you're properly camouflaged, how can they even tell you are there?

That's all true, but I bet they make more from slots players. They may not want to encourage table play.

Do you not get free drinks while gambling in the casino anyway?

I just got back from a trip to Las Vegas and discovered the same thing about desert air.

And Starbucks coffee beans are not something to get excited about. They are notorious for roasting all the flavor out of them.

This is fascinating. I love reading health inspection reports for local restaurants. Does anyone know why there aren't any RCI reports on that site after the pandemic? February 2020 is the most recent one I can find.

It depends on when you are going, Lyft and Uber raise prices when demand is high. Right now (10:30 on a Sunday morning), Lyft charges between $50-$200 to get to Hobby. $50 is standby, $200 is premium deluxe. Lots of options around $100.

Guilt, the emotional response, may not be logical. It's true, we are all potential vectors all the time. But going on a multi-day cruise is different from other activities. The evidence right now suggests omicron BA.4 and BA.5 are eluding some of the antibodies produced by the current vaccines, so just being up to date on your shots may not mean much right now. Given that, I want to know if I'm carrying Covid before I get on a cruise. I don't want to infect other people, and would feel very bad if I did.

For a November Adventure of the Seas five night cruise, I bought the DBP plus VOOM for $89/guest/day during the July 4th sale. I just checked and that's still the price, after the July 4th sale ended.

https://www.medpagetoday.com/special-reports/exclusives/98632

If I decided not to test, not knowing would be my fault. I would definitely feel guilty.

About 60% of the spread of Covid-19 comes from people without any symptoms. Maybe you didn't know that. Now that you do, you know that a 15 minute test can let you know if you're infected, and the US government is making a lot of those tests available for free. So there's no reason to go by how you feel.

So you would roll the dice and maybe infect other people just so you could go on vacation? You wouldn’t feel horribly guilty if you found out later that you may have been the vector?

That depends. If we're in the middle of a big outbreak, like we are with omicrom BA.5 right now, and I'm going to be indoors, close to a lot of people, then yes, I will test myself. I don't know if I'm contagious without a test, since Covid-19 can be asymptomatic. I don't want to harm other people. Because it's a pandemic on a scale not seen since 1918 and has killed over 6 million people.

This is the bit I don't understand. Regardless of the cruise line policy, wouldn't you cancel if you were contagious? And wouldn't you want to know if you were contagious?

If sailing out of Galveston, I would feel safe if this viral load percent was below 5% and steady. Right now it’s 843% and rising. Houston Wastewater Viral Load