Oct 10, 1998, 2:20pm

I'm in a really kind of fucked up mood tonight. It's really hard for me to describe what it's like. But I get into them once in a while.

By "fucked up" I don't describe the mood right - I'm not angry or pissed or in trouble or mentally disturbed or anything like that. I'm just reflective I guess.

Let me try to explain it. I get into these moods where I sort of imagine my own utopia. Songs usually trigger the effect in me. The current tune that's doing it is Crazy Mary by Pearl Jam. You won't find it on any of their releases - it is from a soundtrack I think. I dunno how I got the song, but it's on a mixed CD I have.

My own personal utopia isn't something I can describe because the feelings I get are beyond any total description. The best way to put it into words is that I get these urges, these wants to be in a place that is a melange of many of my favorite places to be. Does that make any sense? Like for instance, I see myself sitting in Le Trope, a café that is in Paris, but in my utopia, it's in Mykonos (one of the Cyclade islands in Greece - I think I screwed up the spelling again...), with Vancouver's north shore mountains in the background, and I'm sitting back playing mind read with some of the dearest friends in my life, mostly from the past. Heather is there, Jeff is there, Matt Lee is there, Jason is there, Elyned is there, and Jeanette is there too. She isn't thinking about Xena or Babalon 5 :-) Everything is cosy, and I feel totally immersed in all of them.

I guess its my own fetal position - you know, that place you can go to to be totally secure, totally removed from reality and responsibility?

So that's the mood I'm in tonight. It's screwy, but it makes feel pretty good overall. It's a real letdown to come back to the real world from this place.

Oh by the way, this place isn't always Le Trope in Greece etc etc. Sometimes it's the Pavilion in Rockliffe Park, sometimes it's the hostel café at Lake Louise... the actual place doesn't matter as much as it's effect on me. I felt damned fine at these places and they hold a lot of extremely cool memories for me.

As for why I get in these moods, well as I said music usually triggers them, but I think I have to be in a sort of depressive type mood to go to this place too. Lately I've been bummed about work a bit (chasing too many cheques, dealing with a lot of kiss ass), and the move to Richmond is not something I'm looking forward to. So I have my own personal fetal position to go to once in a while... the other night it was Chantal Kreviazuk's rendition of Leaving on a Jet Plane that did it.

OK, enough of that stuff you couldn't care less about! :-) Let's move on to the final installment of everybody's favourite Ultimate Catcher if the Mysterious Rye Adventure. If you've missed the other three installments, here is part one, there is part two, and somewhere around here is part three.

So okay. I'm here in my homeroom. I got to tell you, this was the first year in my whole life that I actually wanted to go back to school. I was so juiced about it, I was thinkin' about it all over the Labour Day weekend. I was really lookin' forward to actually goin' to school!

So I'm sitting in my first homeroom of the year, and I'm lookin' at my class assignments. I purposely planned it out so's I'd be in a lot of classes with Elyned, but it didn't work out that way. Man was I pissed. I betcha that bastard Conners purposely put me in classes I didn't ask for. I wanted to chew him out. Didn't the bastard realize I was plannin' to do something with my schoolin' for once? I guess not - I should really tell him.

And that's what I did.

Our school rules changed again. It used to be that you could drop in on your guidance councillor when you wanted. Not anymore. You had to be all civilized and make an appointment. So I did that. The next afternoon, after I started attendin' all my screwed up classes, I went to see Conners.

"Look Mr. Conners. I want to do well this year, I really do. I picked certain classes because I wanted to be in the same classes as Elyned..."

"Elyned McIntosh?"

"Yeah, Elyned. She's my girlfriend, see..."

"Let me get this straight young man..." Chrissakes. I hate that crap. I hate bein' called 'young man'. I'm not young, you bastard! "... you want me to put you into certain classes so you can be close to your girlfriend? I think not!"

"No no no! you don't understand sir! It's not like that at all. I swear. I want to get better grades and stuff, and Len and I were talkin' about it..."

Conners was lookin' over my record and noddin' away as I explained stuff to him. It was quite obvious that it was goin' in one ear and out the other. This goof never believed a word I said.

"I just don't see it happening Mark. We simply don't transfer students so they can be closer to their girlfriends. In fact, we prefer it when you are further away from them for a lot of the day - causes less distractions, y'see." Blah blah blah.

I was getting nowhere with Conners. I wasn't stupid enough that I could tell he thought I was lyin'. But it pissed me off to no end, lemme tell ya. I hate it when these old farts think they knows better than me. I hate that crap, I'm tellin' ya.

I got so pissed off at the guy I walked out on him. Just like that! He was in the middle of his lecture and I picked up and got the hell outta there. His jaw was dropped. Old Conners was not the type to have students up and leave him. It should happen more often, I'm tellin' ya.

I am so pissed at this point. I hate it when they don't listen to me. But what can I do? I wanted to punch a great big hole in the wall outside Conners' office, but I didn't. I really wanted to, I tell you. Maybe I should just say screw all this shit, and forget about it. No one cares. No one listens to me. Well, that's not entirely true. Len listens to me. She believes in me.

Wait a sec. Maybe even Peterson believes in me. The old guy really surprised me last year when he listened to me. And he is the Veep, isn't he?

Right now, I'm starin' through Ms. Johnson's class door window. Starin' right at Elyned. I need to talk to her now. Right now. I don't know how I got here. While thinkin' about her and Peterson I guess.

I figured knocking was the polite thing to do, especially since I was about to do something us lowly students don't do...

"Ms. Johnson, can I see Elyned for a moment? It will only be a second, I promise."

Ms. Johnson was easily the coolest teacher in the school. She taught history, which I freely admit is one of my favourite subjects. I think I enjoyed myself more in her class than I did in any class. She made it fun. She had this way of presentin' the stale old facts in a neat way. She could take some of the most boring history on the planet - the history of Canada, and make it sound like some grand adventure. I had her last year for Canadian History 11, an' she made me think of Dollard Des Armaux as some kinda swashbucklin' hero.

Well, not really. She always found a way to emphasise the facts while makin' them interesting. Dollard was kinda boring at times, and she didn't glorify the guy or anything, but she kinda put us into the time this French guy was paddlin' up and down the Ottawa river, fendin' off Indians in some cases, but makin' deals with them in most cases. She gave us a feel for the kinda shit he would get into. It was like we was all there in that canoe with old Dollard. She was pretty cool for a teacher.

So she looked me over for a while, and then she said "okay Mark, only for a short time, okay? We're teaching a class here." She was pretty cool, I'm tellin' ya.

Len came out and asked me what was up. I told her about old fart Conners as we were walkin' down the hall to the front offices.

"What are you doing Mark? What do you want to do?" She was kinda pissed at me. She didn't like leavin' Johnson's class, I suppose.

The truth was, I didn't know what I was gonna do. I wanted to see Peterson. I was still pissed, but not as pissed when I left Conners. I burst into the front office with Len in tow, and I asked to see the Veep. Normally you need an appointment, what with these new rules and all, but I guess Mrs. Franks could tell I was in a hurry. She went to check if he was in, and told us we could go in.

"What seems to be the problem Mr. Prince?" Old Peterson said, as he pointed to his chairs.

Len and I sat down in the chairs - those really low ones that Peterson loves having so students can look up at the guy. I was out of breath, and didn't quite figure what I was gonna say. Then it just came out.

"Look sir, I figured out this summer I want to go to University. I want to get into writing, or art or history... I dunno what exactly I wanna get into, but I wanna do it anyway. I wanna go to University so I can do something with my future. Len an' I talked it all over this summer. She's the one who actually got it into me, but only 'cause I needed someone to point out the thing that was in front of me."

Peterson nodded away... he loved doin' that.

"See, Len here gets awfully good marks, you know, and she's goin' to help me this year with studyin' and research stuff, and writin' and stuff. We worked it out all this past summer, you see, and we got this plan, you see. We worked out doing stuff color coded, y'see. We figured out how I would use the margins in my binders. Its stuff I never did before y'see. I'll be makin' the crib sheets every weekend, 'cept now I won't need 'em to che... "

I kinda stopped there because I was tellin' him more than I wanted to. I'm pretty excited right now, an' I always shoot off my mouth way too much when I get excited. I took a breath, and a really cool thing happened. Len took my hand and gave me a good squeeze. That really meant a lot, I'm tellin' ya. At that moment, I got an awful lot of strength from her, somethin' I didn't think was possible before.

Petterson was noddin' away and a crooked smile stretched on his face when I almost said the word cheat.

"Sir, the problem now is, Len and I picked certain courses so we could be in the same class. Not all of them of course - Len is very smart in science and math, and I suck, I mean I'm really bad in them, of course you know that..."

Nod nod nod...

"...an' the problem is sir is that when I got my class assignments yesterday I wasn't in any of Len's classes. We worked out the thing where we could study together, work on projects together and stuff and now we can't. I went down to see Mr. Conners like I'm supposed to about class assignments and, well sir, he thought I was lyin' to him. He thought all I wanted to do was be in classes with Len so I could be near her. It ain't like that sir... well, I haveta admit I wanna be close to her, sure, but the fact is Sir..."

Len squeezed my hand again and took over. "The fact is sir," she said, "is that Mark and I will be really working hard to bring Mark's grades up and help him learn to be a good student."

We didn't say anymore. Peterson stared at us during one of his famous day-long stares, nodding once in a while. Then he finally spoke up.

"Mark, I'm really impressed. I have to admit it's not often that students with rather poor records show this kind of initiative. I'm not very happy with you bursting in here and skipping out of your classes, but I can understand the frustration you feel."

"I have a question for you though. What do you mean by color coding?" He said that with that goofy grin.

Len just laughed and explained to him her system of takin' notes.

"Okay Mark. This is very unusual, but I'm willing to do it for this semester. If your grades show improvement, we'll let it continue, but if they don't, we won't. And Elyned, if your grades falter, we're going to put an end to this PDQ!" The guy liked expressions like PDQ and stuff. Some of them I still don't know what they mean.

But I didn't care about that stuff! The old guy really surprised me again! I think I misjudged him a bit... he was listenin' to me again, and even more importantly, he believed me! I was set. All the stuff Len and I talked about this summer was set. I was on my way to actually doing something with my life!

Two years later. I'm sittin' in the crowd in the auditorium, listen' to Jim Andrews give his little validictorian thing. I'm not listenin' to him very much, because my mind's somewhere else. I'm thinkin' about how I went from bein' a guy considered for "general" level clases to a guy who scored in the low 90s in all my courses. I'm thinkin' about Len, who's sittin' beside me and how she did so much for me. I'm thinkin' about Peterson and his 'takin' a chance on me' thing that he never failed to remind me about.

Just yesterday the guy was stoppin' me in the hall and once again sayin' stuff about how he's so glad he took the chance on me, how he's proud of me, how he thinks I'll be doin' all right with my future, at least where school came in. He's so full of it.

Hey don't get me wrong. I am grateful that Peterson did what he did. I really am. I'm grateful to Len too, because she really changed me without actually trying to change me... know what I mean?

But the guy who did this all was me. I didn't think I had it in me, but I guess I did. Someone believed in me, and I started believin' in myself. Not that I had a problem with that in the past, y'see. I always felt confident about some things. I felt good about playin' first base, for example. I went to the city championships, and I batted over .500 for the playoffs. But this ain't baseball. This is learning.

This is learning how to actually write stuff down. This is about learning to express things in a creative style that is your own, in proper grammar, spelling and structure, or in whatever forms y'think might be necessary t'get the point across, even if ya have to break a few established rules. This is about learning how to properly research subjects to be able to know all about them. And even more important, it's about how to research things adequately enough so you can draw your own conclusions. I never was able to do that before, at least on a scholastic level.

I did all of this. I had help, but it was me who actually did it. It was me who got the highest grade on a history research report in the entire school this year - 100% for a paper that was worth half a term's total mark. It was me who won the J.Franklin award for essay writing in Ms. Closkey's English comp class. I got $50 for that! To do all of this stuff, one person was crucial. Me.

For the first time in my life, I was actually proud of myself. I didn't have this feeling much before when it came to using my brain. I sure hope I have it in the future.

Phew! C'est over, mon amis! And that is that. That's how it happened - how I got here. Maybe. Maybe not. I ain't telling. But I will talk some more about this next time. Thanks for stopping by!

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Mixelania

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Around The Bend by Pearl Jam

Here With Me (Rollo's Chillin' With the Family Mix) by Dido

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Burundi and Beyond - NY Times
Great article by Peter Meehan - provided some background.

St. Petersburg Times
Side mention in an article about good machines

AP Story on Espresso
Background and information provided

NY Times - Grinders Article
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Globe and Mail
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The Olympian, WA
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Seattle Times - Clover
Interviewed for comments on the Clover brewer

NY Times - How it Works
Background and information for various espresso machines

Time Mag Article
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NY Times
Front page article about consumers getting into specialty coffee.

Washington Monthly
Quoted reference to what I wrote in an article at CoffeeGeek.

USA Today - Barista Jam
Intereviewed for my thoughts on what the epitome of espresso is.

WSJ Article
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Reuters Interview
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CoffeeGeek
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CoffeeKid Website
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enGadget
Great gadget site run by the guy who used to do Gizmodo.

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MoCo Loco
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Riddla on Flickr
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Canon EF 24-105 f4 L Lens
The best lens I've ever owned. Super sharp and quick.

Canon 5D
A full frame dSLR, with luscious colour reproduction.

Alzo Digital Lights
Some amazing florescent cold lights for product photography

Canon Xsi dSLR
Amazing technology and image quality in a tiny package.

Canon 40D
Latest prosumer camera from Canon - a much better upgrade than the 30D

Fujitsu P1610
Great 2.2lb computer that does most of my travel / writing needs

28mm f1.8 Lens
A great lens for closeup work and full picture photography

Foodsaver Advanced
Finally got the right tools for freezing green coffee.

Canon 50mm 1.4
Most amazing lens I've ever owned. Produces stellar photos.

Canon 10-22mm
Super wide angle (full frame fisheye) zoom for my Canon 20D