here's the special @ red rock's single origin bar today with jmo: a red eye (definition: espresso dropped into a drip coffee) made with our Guatemala Antigua Cadejo.

single origin espresso shot + handcrafted cup of cadejo made with the aerobie aeropress +a hint of dark chocolate.

all I can say is WOW!

come by and get one, and then call me at 2am ;-)

while the proprietor if this downtown MV show repair store neither rode with paul revere not competed his work in a minute, he nevertheless did a great job preparing this pair of kenneth cole shoes that I love for another 50,000 miles.

the search for a descent cappuccino in reno has been an elusive one over the years. in fact, after last summer's complete disaster at an indie place called java jungle (read: a literally undrinkable capp), i'd all but given up-- until josh banko encouraged me to try a place he discovered called the hub.

the hub is everything you want in a serious espresso place, including being nearly impossible to find. it's TINY, and actually has more patio seating than indoor seating. i went on a saturday morning at 10am, and the place was bustling. the work space is incredibly compact, but the drinks are all executed with great precision.

there were two coffees on the espresso bar: slow roller from barefoot and perfume V from de la pas coffee roasters in SF. after listening to the barista's descriptions (she was super knowledgeable and super friendly), i decided to roll with the slow roller for the cappuccino and the perfume V (80% ethiopia yirgacheffe, 20% naturally processed brazil) for espresso.

the cappuccino was fantastic. perfectly executed milk provided some additional sweetness to the dark chocolate and spice notes of the slow roller. so good, my mom had a second one.

and the espresso was terrific as well. it was definitely a west coast espresso, very bright in flavor and light in body. it was smooth, with no hints of bitterness, and the brazil provided a bit of fruit to the mix on the finish. and it was served with a glass of water, just like i like it.

the hub is also doing a bit of their own roasting as well on a franciscan, and are planning to open a second cafe / roaster near the home of the AAA reno aces in the next couple of months. the owner said he's trying to bring the coffee scene from places like portland and SF to reno. finally! thank goodness for this place. i hope to hit it one more time before i leave.

steve and I disagree about the identity of this person on a mural promoting sportline america in the san pedro sula airport. please weigh in to settle the score...

after a long day of travel-- emphasis on long-- we're in roatan. we're staying in the coxen hole area, just outside of the poorest area on the island, el swampo.

it's been great to meet steve, who runs the kairos soccer program here. we went to the field yesterday, and will be playing some football with them today as well. the program reaches out to street kids in el swampo, and, in addition to soccer, helps them go to school and stay away from drugs.

attached are a number of photos from the trip, including a shot of the flight to roatan on a 19 passenger plane. sitting next to steve joh, who is ripped, I had half a seat only. fortunately the flight was only 30 minutes....

tomorrow we'll head to the mainland to visit the orphanage in santa barbara.

since red rock's partnership with four barrel coffee over the past year, the ever changing menu of delicious coffee has vastly reduced my home roasting. but, every once in awhile, there'll be an offering or 2 from sweet maria's that sounds too interesting to pass up.

one of those is a microlot from hernan arias' farm in the tolima region of columbia. I roasted the coffee sunday night, and prepared it on the clever coffee brewer. it's an immensely sweet coffee, that starts wonderfully clean and then finishes with a more full mouthfeel that catches you a bit by surprise. mmm mmm good!

sad news yesterday-- leslie nielsen passed away at age 84. nielsen had that unique ability to deliver hilarious lines in total seriousness. my fondest memories of nielsen will alway be from airplane! and police squad! i still vividly remember, as a sixth grader in the spring of 1982, running home from my school's production of "the mikada" to watch the first "police squad!" episode on tv. the show -- with leslie nielsen as lt. frank drebin-- was hilarious, but abc cancelled it after only 6 episodes. later, the show would serve as the inspiration for the wildly successful naked gun movies.

in memory of mr. nielsen, a clip from that very first episode of police squad! that encapsulates precisely how funny and brilliant leslie nielsen was. and don't call me shirley.

it's been a long time since this song from rockwell has crossed my mind. but in that past week i've become acutely aware that this is happening online in the social media universe. while it's probably true that up to this point i've been blithely naive, i do think that spy marketing in these arenas is becoming increasingly aggressive. two cases in point:

first, last week i wrote a facebook status about pretzel m&ms. not 30 seconds later when i returned to the page with my news stream, there was a sponsored ad in the right side bar for pretzel m&ms, asking me to "like" them along with the other 1.2 million FB users who do. the presence of that ad, in such quick proximity to my post, was startling, but impressive. touche.

then this week i tweeted about some technical issues i had trying to load boxee onto my apple tv. i posted on the boxee user forums and have had 60 views but no help restoring my now blank-screened ATV. about a day later, i received a message telling me that "glide tv" was following me? who is glide tv? why are they following me on twitter? because it crawled twitter for "boxee," or "apple tv," or both? i think that's exactly it. why else would the world's first couch mouse be interested in following me?

disconcerting.