Saturday, October 11, 2008

Kleen Kanteen Adventure


UPDATE: After posting this, I followed through to Kleen Kanteen's website and actually looked around. Apparently they sell an insulated sleeve (with a handle) for $12. Even though I paid $14 for the bottle itself, I might be inclined to get this thing if it'll keep me from boiling my hand off.


As I mentioned in the previous post, I bought a Kleen Kanteen at REI today. I think I did this only because they were $14 for 27 oz. Oh well. I got a nice green one. Click the picture for the important info:


 


So when I got back to the hood, I was making me some mate for to drink. I guess I figured that my shiny new Kleen Kanteen would allow me to transport my hot magic drink to campus and work and such. To test my hypothesis, as the mate brewed I boiled a bunch of water and poured it into the Kleen Kanteen. I think I was expecting it to...I don't really know.


You know that feeling you get where you suddenly have NO IDEA what you're doing, and you know it's STUPID but you JUST CAN'T STOP? Yeah, well I filled my Kleen Kanteen with boiling-as-hell water. It took about .8 seconds for the single-wall stainless steel of the bottle to also reach 200-odd degrees. I shouted an expletive and dropped the bottle into the sink. OUCH.


Suffice it to say, the Kleen Kanteen ROCKS for cool drinks. It has a wide mouth so it can even fit ice cubes. But hot stuff...stay away.


Our Young Republic

In class this morning, I peered over at the computer screen of one of my adjacent colleagues. He was surfing a website called SAVEUR, and was looking at a recipe for rib-eye steaks with chimichurri sauce. The steaks, not so much, but I was surprised that the site wasn't familiar to me, given my Foodie proclivities.

After class, I rolled up to REI and got some cold-weather biking gloves, a front fender, and a Kleen Kanteen (refer to the above post for more info/horror). Oh, and there was some world-class thrifting to be had at the local Goodwill and ARC Thrift. I got some killer sweaters!

But as I was saying, upon my return home, I visited this SAVEUR.com and found a great many wondrous things. One of them was an article detailing the breakfast habits of many of our Washington elites. It was pretty neat to see what all of these people eat, but one of them in particular caught my eye, not so much for his meal, but for his thoughts:
John Nichols, political writer, The Nation: " Wherever I wake up on the campaign trail, I look for a local independent coffee shop. I prefer wood floors, regional newspapers, and conversations about the Constitution. (I've found that everyone in America has an amendment to propose.) In my hometown of Madison, Wisconsin, I start at Ancora Coffee Roasters, on King Street. I know some people get all excited about eggs and bacon, croissants and fresh fruit, but I'm not so inclined. I love my mocha, a chair near the window, and discussing an amendment that might yet perfect our young republic."
The italics are mine. "Our young republic," he says. This nation has 28 years to go before we reach the half-way point of the half-way point of a millennium of existence. We are still young, and there is still a lot of work to do.