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"Espresso! My Espresso!"
An Ongoing Internet Novelette
by Randy Glass
- Copyright 2014 - All rights reserved
E-mail me at EspressoMyEspresso@gmail.com
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142
Pay Attention to the Roast. No, the Puppy. No, the Roast Tuesday, May 13, 2014 Those who have dogs at home know. Those who have German Shepherds really know. With two German Shepherds here (a ten year old male and a ten week old puppy) the excitement rarely stops. When it does I enjoy a few quiet minutes while they last. When the puppy is awake, if there aren't any stray socks or his boredom has set in concerning the multitude of puppy toys which we have supplied, then ankles are at risk! Yesterday morning I leashed them up and took them for a walk on our property. Before walking out I put my laptop and a jar of green coffee on the workbench to prepare for a roast session. Only having been with us for two weeks, the little guy is still learning the place and gaining confidence, so there are things with which he is still not comfortable. We were gone about fifteen or twenty minutes on our walk, and when we got back to the house I put them in my little station wagon in the garage and started up the Hottop and my laptop to roast on my workbench. The back seat in my Volvo 240 is down and comforters are laid out in back for the dogs. See a 240 with the seat down and you can bet that the owner has dogs. One friend put a mattress in back of theirs for that very purpose. Rommel, the older dog, is very happy to sit in the car. Good things happen sometimes when you are in the car. Just ask him (like a drive to the park for a long walk)! He gets excited when we are on the way and he hears the turn-indicator's clicking. But Mojo, the puppy, is not to that point yet. The little guy was not happy just sitting in the car. I had all the windows down and a fan blowing through the car, and even though I was talking to him from just six feet away he got nervous and was looking like he would crawl out the window. At just ten weeks old he is tall enough to stand up in the car and have nearly half his body up over the top of the window's edge. So rather than risk his being injured from falling out of the car, I put a blanket down on the slab and let him lie behind me with his older compatriot. He came over and snuggled up with me as I tried to share my attention between him and the roaster. A half-watched roaster is just not a great idea if it is a precise profile you are attempting to achieve. It just did not go well. The dog was fine. He appreciated my attention and being close to me, and after a while, near the end of the roast he finally snuggled up with Rommel, head-to-foot and his back to Rommel's belly, using Rommel's big thigh as a pillow. I can't leave the dogs in the house alone yet (evidently, everything I own fits in his mouth and tastes good), and since I had them in the garage I wanted to get finished with the roast. It started out by me missing the drop point. I had the volume on the laptop at max but the “Add Beans” signal from Roastlogger was not audible for some reason. I finally heard the Hottop (not the laptop) beep it's late warning (386F). So instead of restarting the roaster and waiting for a second attempt, I dropped the beans in and hoped for the best.  The pastel lines are close to what I usually achieve. The dark lines are the result of the "puppy roast" I made things worse when I noticed that Roastlogger did not sense that the beans were added so I clicked on the button in the “Add Beans” state. Either Roastlogger did not immediately sense the beans were added or I double-clicked the button because the buttons next displayed state was for the “end of first.”
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