First of all, let me put out a disclaimer. I love my wife, my kids, my job, my church, my parents, my friends, and all kinds of other things that are important to my life. this blog entry is by no means an attempt to downgrade them. This is just a fun way to share a few other things that make my life easier - in no particular order.

1 - Coffee
My morning, almost every day, begins with coffee. I usually drink about 4-5 cups a day and in the winter I just keep on going into the evening with the coffee drinking. I have never really been affected by caffeine, so I don't think its that. I just really like coffee.

Get this....coffee is second in value, only to oil, as a commodity on the world markets. Over 20,000,000 people have jobs in the coffee business around the world. Pretty sweet.

There is a science to coffee - to good coffee atleast. There are only certain parts of the world where true arabica beans can be harvested, at certains altitudes, and at certain climates. Then there are different ways to process the beans. (wet or dry procesing) All in all, sets suffice it to say that if your best coffee experience is Starbucks, you are missing out on a world of yummy!

Most of what we are getting at Starbucks, Caribou, McDonalds, and in the containers at Wal-Mart are called "blends." Coffee companies take beans from several different countries and regions and blend them together to give us the basic "American" taste of coffee that most of us know. But if you want to take a little dive into coffee heaven, try some single-origin coffee from Guatemala, Kenya, or Honduras. It will rock your little coffee world.

Lucky for those of us that live in Northeast Ohio, we have some folks doing it right in Tallmadge. Top of the Mountain Coffee has a great story and great coffee. Try them out and you will soon understand why you can take Folgers and put it back on the shelf.


2 - ipod Touch
So, many of you know that I am a bit of a tech geek. this is true, but my reasoning for the ipod touch far outweighs the tech geek need for cool stuff. Lets see if I can convince you.

First of all, why not the iphone...why the touch? Well, because my friends, AT&T sucks and therefor the iphone sucks in its use as a phone. I am sorry, but the reason for a phone is to make calls. If I don't have service, I can't make calls, and therefore I keep my Verizone Wireless Droid (which is coming later) and rock the Touch for everything else.

So...whats the big deal about the ipod touch. Here are a few things.
- I can carry my itunes library, pictures, video, audiobooks, sermons, podcasts, and just about anything else that is recorded, with me all the time.

- Efficiency - My ipod syncs with my outlook exchange server to always keep my contacts, calendar, and email up to date. I like this. There are also several apps that I use to keep on top of things. Evernote is a great note taking program that syncs with my web account. If you use Franklin Covey, there is a greast tasks app for that. I kep storage of files, can read files, and can download from my online storage sites. It keeps me moving.

- Sweet games - angry birds - enough said. No really though, ipod touch has some incredible games no matter what you like and it runs almost everything super efficiently.

3 - Moleskin
Notes, schedules, dates, thoughts, ideas, brainstorming, poems, drawing, songwriting, etc. Moleskin has you covered - and they are way cool looking too. http://www.moleskineus.com/

More to come...