Cappuccino.

I hate cappuccinos.  With out a doubt: my least favorite drink to make.  Especially those effing 'bone dry' ones.

In case you're ignorant of the subtle nuances involved in caffeinated beverage options (as I was before I started working here), allow me to outline the basic coffee shop menu for ya:

1. Hot Drinks:
1. Espresso-based:
1. Espressos (shots of espresso alone, with foam, or with whip cream)
2. Americanos (espresso shots + hot water)
3. Lattes (espresso shots+steamed milk+flavor syrups of your choosing)
4. ***Cappuccinos (espresso shots + milk + a lot of foam)
1. 'Bone Dry' Cappuccinos (espresso shots + onlyyyy super thick foam - NO milk)
2. Coffee-based:
1. Drip-coffee with or without room for cream/sugar
3. Teas
2. Cold Drinks:
1. Espresso-based:
1. Espressos over ice (shots+ice)
2. Americanos (shots+cold water+ice)
3. Lattes (shots+cold milk+syrups+ice)
4. Cappuccinos (shots+cold milk+ice+foam)
2. Coffee-based:
1. Iced Coffee (with or without milk+sweetener)
3. Blended:
1. Frappuccinos (milk+coffee/or not+syrups+emulsifiers+ice+whip)
4. Teas
1. Tea (with or without lemonade+sweetener)

***If you'll refer back to the definition of 'cappuccino' in the above outline, you'll notice that this beverage contains espresso shots, mostly foam, and a little steamed milk.

In order to steam milk, you have to hold you metal pitcher of milk up to the steaming-wand; then, bring the pitcher down for a few seconds where just the surface of the milk and the wand meet so that the milk makes that distinct tearing sound, which is liquid 'aerating;' and then, bring the pitcher to rest on the ledge, with the wand just chillin' in the middle as it brings the milk up to temperature.

When you make a cappuccino, however, instead of bringing the pitcher to rest all nicely on the ledge while the wand finishes heating the milk, you have to hold the pitcher so that the wand just meets the surface of the milk for the entire time so that it creates a bunch of foam.

Those stinkin 'bone dry' cappuccino-orderers are always GIANT foam snobs, so the foam has to be super perfect and thick and NOT bubbly.  When the register passes over a cup with 'BONE DRY' written on it, I almost invariably get performance-anxiety and it takes like two pitchers of milk for me to get enough of that stupid dry foam.

Anywho.  This old Italian woman came into the shop today and ordered a small cappuccino. Blah. So I make it.  She comes back like 2 seconds later, shoves her drink in my face, and asks:

'Do you know how to make a cappuccino? This is half foam!!!'

'Ummm.........yes?' I respond cautiously...

'Cappuccinos don't have foam!'

'Wait...did you mean to order a latte, maybe?

'No. I want a cappuccino...NO FOAM!' 

Then she goes into this little rant on the Italian etymological roots of the word 'cappuccino.'  I tuned out for most of it, trying to figure out what this lady actually wanted, but I did gather that there was some sort of black cow imagery going on...who knows? After I got home, I did my own digging and found this website that explains the different Italian espresso beverages (as well as the etymology of the word 'cappuccino' - but found nothing suggesting that in Italy, cappuccinos have no foam...oh well.  If you order a cappuccino here at our shop, or at any other coffee shop in the States for that matter, you're askin for foam!)

In any case, I finally make her a small latte, which she proceeds to inform me had too much milk. 

In the end, I think that she wanted something in the vicinity of a wet espresso macchiato (the 'wet' part refers to the polar opposite of a 'dry' macchiato or cappuccino: shots + no foam - all steamed milk). 

Oh, Cappuccinos. Guh.

Fun & Games

I was a Young Life leader when I was a student at Hope College!  Anddd two of the best summers of my life were those after my sophomore and junior years, which I spent interning at a Young Life camp in MN. Holla! For those who are not familiar with Young Life, it's an international para-church organization engaging mainly college-age peeps and other awesome adults in relational ministry to high school and jr. high students: kind of like youth group, but way louder and crazier, and full of gross games, stupid skits, and singing lots of Taylor Swift songs.

Once, I ate a worm at club.  We leaders made this brilliant deal with our kids, where if they got like 50 new students to come all on one night, we'd get up there and swallow worms...

I'm a vegetarian(-ish), and basically the pickiest eater in the world.  So, the fact that I ate a worm for my Young Life kids shows you how much I love them!  Leading Young Life is one of the things I've missed most since graduating college.  While high school students can often be self-absorbed, angsty, little punks, I love all of the potential, insightfulness, and heck - even (...especially?) the angst - that kids are full of at that age.

At the coffee shop, I work with a lot of high school-age (or thereabouts) students.  They're often little punks, but it didn't take me long before they started reminding me of my awesome Young Life kids from back in MI, and for me to start treating them as such.

We talk about all kinds of things in between making beverages: friends, relationships, under-age beer pong tournaments (which I don't condone), school, and even faith.  There are a lot of stupid little Young Life leader-insider phrases that we in the 'biz' throw around (often with an ironic tinge) when referring to hanging out with our Young Life kids: 'doin life together,' 'stayin relevant,' 'gettin excited about what they're gettin excited about' (totes my excuse for loving the Twilight Saga),  etc.  Even though the coffee shop is our job, I think it's really cool that we don't let this opportunity for (pardon the expression) 'doin life together' to be wasted!

Disclaimer: anyone with a Young Life background must love icebreaker-type games.  It's kind of a prerequisite.  As are guitar-playing-skills (still workin on that one). So, sometimes (all the time) I make us play games while we work.  Some of my favs are:

- Two truths and a lie - you think of two random facts about yourself that are true, as well as one that's a lie, and everyone has to guess which isn't true (e.g., I was on Bozo Buckets as a child, I once swallowed a gold fish, and I had a pet duck - #2 is false... it was a worm!!!)
- Horse, Muffin, Bird - Looking only at a person's face, describe him/her using any combination of three of the following:  horse, muffin, bird (e.g., there's a double-horse-bird, she's a triple muffin, or that guy's a double-bird-horse).  Sounds means...but all in good fun!
- Guess the bevvy  (pretty self-intuitive: soccer mom's gonna get a skinny vanilla latte)
- Your Team - If you see someone wearing something particularly horrible and 80's-ish; or, perhaps, some dude accessorizing with superfluous amounts of spikey chains; someone dressed really tool-y in all sear-sucker plus a straw fedora, maybe?  Then ya put 'em on the other person's 'team'!  If you're not careful, by the end of the night you could have a team full of real fashion-forward winners! (Also sounds kinda mean-spirited, but once again - all in good fun).

So much fun & games and doin' that good ol' life together at the coffee shop!

Clopening

Clopening: verb. The act of working a closing shift, followed directly by an opening shift.  (Alicia couldn't keep her eyes open today because her manager is trying to kill her by scheduling her to work clopening shifts all week). 


This is what my week looked like:

Sunday- closing
Monday-opening
Tuesday-closing
Wednesday-opening; making the 2 hour commute to Lorton to teach
Thursday-closing
Friday-opening
Saturday-Sunday- OFF! Hallelujah!

I have sleep issues anyways - I think it's something I inherited from my worry-wart mom - if residual unease is left over from her day; if there's something important happening in the morning; or, back when her children were high school-age and out galavanting/stirring up who knows what kind of mischief on Saturday nights - she can't sleep.

Alarm clock anxiety is the one that really gets me.  I trace it back to the first summer interned at Castaway Club Young Life Camp back in college.  I was the morning cook! It was awesome!  I had to unlock the kitchen super early and get my amazing crews of high school- and college-age volunteers PUMPED about cooking brekky and prepping lunch for 600+ campers every morning.  In the middle of the night once, my stupid cell phone just up and died, so come 5am my trusty alarm failed me!  It wasn't a big deal (interns sleep upstairs, right above the kitchen, so someone just ran up and woke me), but every night for the remainder of the summer, I would wake up every hour on the hour thinking it was morning.  On two occasions, my body even convinced itself that it was indeed wake-up time, and I got dressed, went downstairs, started warming up the ovens - only to snap out of it an come to the horrific realization that it was only like 3am or something.

And still now, whenever I have an early-morning obligation, the traumatic after-effects of my failed alarm persist in haunting me.

All this to say: my circadian rhythm is effed after this week.

I was all set to go into my little rant with the supervisor I closed with last night, about how our manager gave me the schedule from hellz this week (because complaining's fun):

"Guh.  Want to know what my schedule looked like this week?!"

Sideways glance + smirk.  'Yes, pleaseeee tell me.'

Woops.  Oh yeah - my supervisor also works full time at a bank, drives an hour both ways to get to our shop where he puts in about 32 hours/week, and has three kids under five back at home.  Complaining just got a lot less fun.

For the most part, I'm upbeat, positive, and all that good stuff at work (not quite so much this week).  But this supervisor of mine is one of the most glass-half-full, genuinely nice, 'zen' guys I know.

One day I asked him why he's always so chill and positive all the time, and he started talking about this tattoo he has.  It's of this cross-legged guy juggling three balls of fire with a giant smile on his face.  And that's exactly how I picture this supervisor of mine.  He never really lets on that much, but I know he has a ton on his plate.  But he knows what he has to do.  And he just takes whatever is sent his way in stride. You guys should meet him - he's truly an inspiration in his calm, uncontrived, easy-going, but get 'er done kind of way!


'One morning
the fox came down the hill, all glittering and confident,
and didn't see me--and I thought:

so this is the world.
I'm not in it.
It is beautiful.'

(Mary Oliver, 'October,'  New and Selected Poems Vol. 1)

Soooooo....Apparently, I Serve Coffee to a Saudi Prince?

One of my co-workers is Syrian.

He's basically obsessed with his roots, and he loves nothing more than a good conversation in Arabic with whomever from our multitudinous Arabic-patronage happens to be buying coffee at the moment.

So, there's this big, middle-aged Saudi man who always comes into the shop with a varying assortment of college-aged Arabic guys.  Like every day.   Oh yeah, and they always pull up in a different Ferrari, Lamborghini, or otherwise ridiculously expensive car (*note: I know nothing of the value/awesomeness of cars  -  this I've simply ascertained from the freak-outs on the part of my male co-workers each time the crew rolls up).  The gang just chills there for a couple hours drinking white mochas (after they like totally load our tip jar).

Naturally, we've always been curious about what the story is with this unlikely crew - is the older guy a friend? cool uncle? some sort of mentor, perhaps?  Why in the world do they tip us double the cost of their drinks?  What's with all the sweet rides?

Finally, my co-worker who loves him some Arabic-convo, does some preliminary digging and asks the older guy what he does, only to find out that he's some kind of a hot-shot in the Saudi military, currently acting as a bodyguard.  His charge: one of the young guys who's always part of the group, who, oh - by the way - just happens to be one of the sons of the king of Saudi Arabia!?   He's going to college here in DC or something.

So, I guess we have royalty in our midst?

It kind of reminded me of all those different movies like Roman Holiday or (on a cheesier note) The Prince and Me where royal personages try to slip into 'average' life undetected.

It's weird that we all finally know the great mystery behind the generous-tipping, Ferrari-driving, multi-generational Saudi crew- like we're privy to some great big secret (the princes and princesses in the movies never want to be found out).

Well, when I got home of course I wikipedia-ed it because I just had to know more.  Apparently, our prince in question is one of the 'at least thirty-five children' fathered by King Abdullah.

I wonder where he falls in the birth order!