Of all the things that drive men to sea, the most common disaster, I've come to learn, is women.
-- Charles Johnson, Middle Passage

Tag: coffee

Thirteen Geeky Knitting Projects, 20th

(I was going to write this last night while watching an hour of Friends reruns but a bizarre issue with the Bad Behavior Wordpress plugin and some blacklisting site kept me from uploading and then accessing my own account from my own computer. But it took me 4½ hours to figure out that because the error said that my computer had been sending out spam mail and that was why I was blacklisted and that if I had any questions I could email the web admin and gave my own email address to contact. So, I updated my McAffee and installed Google’s free Spy Doctor and ran both and came up clean, which I knew I would because I am an IT geek who obsesses about that sort of thing. Finally at 11:30pm a new link showed up in my Google search for answers. Someone had just posted an hour before on the Wordpress.org forum that they also couldn’t get into their site with the same error and someone had replied with a link to the Bad Behavior Blog which explained what happened. Grrrrrrrrr! Wasted my whole Wednesday night.

And then today after I spent forever writing this up, my server went down and I couldn’t save it…for over an hour.)

Whenever I start a new hobby, I go a little overboard searching for future possible projects. The nice thing about knitting as opposed to counted cross-stitch, which I did through my 20’s, is that there are a lot of free patterns out there on the Internet and a lot of people who are willing to share their ideas. Plus, as it turns out, there are also a lot of geeky guys and gals just like me who have merged the hobby with their eccentric personalities. Some of these made me laugh out loud. Some of them are just too fun to resist.

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Published:
05 Dec 2007 / 09:22 PM
Category:
Knitting, Thursday Thirteen
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Thirteen Facts About Caffiene, 17th

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Thirteen Things about J. Lynne

  1. Coffee beans are actually the seeds of the berries of the coffee plant. It’s a fruit, not a vegetable. (Coffee Bean)
  2. According to Chinese myth, in 2737 BCE, Emperor Shen Nung of China discovered tea while sitting under a wild tea tree with a cup of hot water. A leaf from the tree fell into his water, creating the first tea. Then in 900 B.C., Homer makes reference to a mysterious black and bitter beverage with the power to ward off sleep … a reference repeated in several Arabian legends from the same period. (Caffeine Timeline)
  3. A major study has found fewer suicides among coffee drinkers than those who abstained from the hot black brew. (Studies on the Side Effects of Caffeine)
  4. Although it’s important to note that coffee is the most popular drug in the world. Ninety percent of Americans consume it in some form every day and over 450,000,000 cups of coffee are consumed in the United States every day. (Fast Facts About Caffeine)
  5. According to a study at the University of Georgia in Athens, Women who had the caffeine equivalent of two cups of coffee the day after their quadriceps were stimulated (as if they’d done squats) felt 48% less leg pain within an hour. Apparently, caffeine may block the body’s receptors for the pain-causing chemical adenosine. (Self Magazine, May 2007)
  6. Decaffeinated coffee does not mean caffeine-free. Decaf coffee may contain enough caffeine to affect people sensitive to the stimulant, especially after a few cups. (Self Magazine, May 2007)
  7. A moderate amount of caffeine may make you more agreeable to persuasive arguments according to a study in the European Journal of Social Psychology. Apparently Caffeine enhances not only alertness but also reasoning abilities. (Health Magazine, December 2006)
  8. Despite the fact that coffee has been described as a contributor to hypertension in the past, a study in the Journal of American Medical Association found that drinking coffee isn’t associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure after all; however, soda may be. Women who drank 3 cans or more of caffeinated regular or diet soda increased their chances of developing the condition by 16 to 44 percent, compared to those who had none. (Fitness Magazine, March 2006)
  9. Young women drinking 4 or more cups of caffeinated coffee daily reduced their breast cancer risk by 40 percent compared with nondrinkers according to a study in the Journal of Nutrition. (Self Magazine, June 2006)
  10. People who drank more metabolism-firing caffeine gained less weight over 12 years than those who cut back on caffeine according to researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health in Boston. The best choice for a healthy buzz? Black, lightly sweetened tea. (Self Magazine, August 2006)
  11. According to a study of more than 27,000 women by the University of Minnesota at Minneapolis, daily coffee drinkers of 1 to 3 cups had a 4% lower risk of dying from heart disease and other inflammatory conditions. (Self Magazine, October 2006)
  12. During the Civil War, coffee was as commonplace on the battlefields as it is in office buildings and shopping malls today. In fact, the Union army was so fueled by the need for caffeine, if there was no time to boil water, the Boys in Blue would chew on whole beans as they marched. Apparently they hadn’t discovered chocolate-covered coffee beans yet. The Confederates however were pretty much cut off from a good caffeine buzz by the Union naval blockade. While a pound of coffee in the Northern states cost about 20¢, after the pre-war supplies ran out, a pound of coffee beans in the South ran about $60. And people complained when Starbucks raised their prices a few cents this year! (How Coffee Played A Role In The Civil War)
  13. The world’s first coffee house, Kiva Han, opened in Constantinople in 1475, 496 years before the first Starbucks opened in Seattle. (Caffeine Timeline)

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Published:
08 Nov 2007 / 12:31 AM
Category:
Facts of Life, Health, Thursday Thirteen
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