Winter in the Valley

So, now that the Holidays are over, usually the weather kicks it up a notch around here.  We usually get a overnight dusting of snow sometime during January or February.  Well this year, thanks to La Nina, we got a little more than a dusting of snow.  We got three days of very wet snow, then 3 days of rain, all in one week.  We woke up Sunday morning to snow on the ground.  The weather prediction had told us it would happen, but there was a few inches on the ground.  

The coffee shop I manage, Coffee Culture Annex, and our Subaru on the far right.

 I ended up having to work that afternoon because one of the girls got stuck in Roseburg and wasn't going to make it back.  Before I had to go in, Dave and I drove up to Fitton Green to see how well the Subie handled the deep-ish snow.  By the way, it is KICK ASS to have a Subaru in weather like this... it was like she was made to play in the snow.

The parking lot and trail head at Fitton Green.  The butt of Subie in bottom right corner, the only other car there was also a Subaru!

Monday and Tuesday we got some nasty snow, then rain, then snow mixed with rain.  Snow by it self: that's fine.  Rain by itself: that's cool too... but both of them together makes for a dangerous time.

The path to our front door from the drive.  So pretty!

 Then, on Wednesday afternoon, the rain came.  And it didn't want to go away.  It rained hard all night.  Usually when it rains, the temperature goes up too... so all that snow melted at the same time at the torrential downpour came down, causing MAJOR flooding all over.  A family in Albany got swept away in their car in a grocery parking lot.  The dad and the older child got away, the mother and baby, not so much.  It took them a day or so to find the bodies... so scary!  Well, for those of you who don't know the coffee shop well, we have a creek right next to us.  In the winter, there is maybe a foot or so of water at the bottom of a ditch about 7 or 8 feet deep.  But on Thursday morning it looked like this...

Sequoia Creek 

 It got about 6 inches from the top of the ditch.  Those of us that were working, were keeping a very close eye on it.  (Barista moment: Customers coming through the drive-thru would look over and panic "Ohmigosh that water is really high!  Did you see the water over here?!"  Yes, of course we did.... Oh and my favorite by far was getting yelled at by a grown man in a pick-up truck because our menu board where our customers order over the speaker doesn't have an awning and he was "getting rained on!"  It was as though he was being exposed to acid rain.  News flash friend: we live in Oregon.  We get an average of 40 inches of rain a year... it's going to be raining and you will get wet.)

We had sandbags bought and placed strategically so that if the creek did crest, we were ready.  Many of the creeks and rivers in the area were flooding streets, homes and schools.  I even heard about kids boogie boarding down Conifer Drive, which was under about 3 feet of water.  (Note to readers: one of the things we learned in the College of Public Health is that flood brings disease.  There is poopy in that water!!!!  Not just that, but parasites.  Ew!  That water is not treated or safe by any means.)  OSU and the Corvallis School district canceled classes on Friday for precautionary reasons. (Lucky for Dave!)

But then, the rain eased, and the city of Corvallis guys came out and did something (I heard something about drilling a hole somewhere... I'm not really sure.)  The creek dropped a few feet by noon.  But we are still keeping a close eye out, because it is still raining, just not as hard.

The Creek from the drive-thru window at the shop.

Anyway, I feel lucky to be living in a nice, warm home up on a hill.  Hopefully all this rain means that spring will be less wet...

A girl can dream right?!

Stress is bad for you: A rant of sorts

Days left until the wedding: 97 (double digits baby!)

The last to weeks have been very high stress for me. The biggest reason is work (I'm working 6 days this week, which comes to about 46 hours of work). I know what you might be thinking out there in blogger land... "How could managing a coffee shop be stressful?! What could possibly go wrong?!" The answers... yes very stressful and everything can go wrong.

Last week I had to "let go" of an employee for the first time. This person had been causing me some small headaches here and there, and was difficult to train. They did this weird thing two weeks ago of going over my head and putting in their two weeks notice to MY boss, the owner of the company, just a few days after I had written them up for being late. This person never mentioned to me that they had been hired for another job and was planning on leaving, even though I knew about it from my boss. Long story short... last week during finals week this person didn't show up to their assigned shift, no phone call, no nothing. When they called to apologize to me about it, I explained that I knew about them leaving and I already had their shifts covered for the rest of the week. "It was meeting you..."

So, this week I had to change the schedule up a bit because of this person no longer working for us... and come to find out my newest hire has two other part time jobs that limits them being able to work when I need them to work. When I had hired her, she had one other job... but this second is a surprise. But now, not only that... she seems to know everything already and doesn't like being told what to do (It is my job as her manager and trainer to tell her what to do, and how to do it... this is a problem...) So we shall see...

But I ALSO have a girl leaving at the end of the month to have her kidney removed and put into her father, for which she is a match. He is very sick and needed a new kidney. She is so brave. And it's too bad she is leaving because she is an AMAZING barista (never known someone with rosetta making skills like that girl).

In the mean time, no one told me that Food Services of America (our food supplier) is no longer carrying Monin caramel syrup, which is our second most popular flavor. So the last two weeks I have ordered it, and it never comes... all four bottles I have ordered each time. I finally started to demand answers, and found out that they no longer carry it. Ugh.

And the last thing sitting on my shoulders like a 1,000 pound parrot is the wedding. Again, don't get me wrong, I LOVE LOVE LOVE my Dave and cannot imagine the rest of my life without him, and I cannot WAIT to call him "hubby"... but it is the event itself that is stressful. First up, a week from today is our bridal shower. It's going to be great fun! But all of our friends and both of our families will be there. I just want everything to go just right. And hopefully it will :) But... you never know... And I need to go purchase our invitations and start putting them together, before I forget or loose track of time.

But it is times like these that make you appreciate what you DO have. Like AWESOME employees. Gina and Sara rock my socks off. They are amazingly hard workers with their heads on straight. They love the shop as much as I do, and it shows. And my loving fiance, who listens to me rant when he gets home from work, and always offers helpful advice. And then gives me good hugs and kisses.

As I keep telling myself, everything will work out in the end. It always does. I think my two most recent hires will be amazing baristas and hard workers. And three months and one week from now our wedding will go off without a hitch! It will be fun and amazing and beautiful. Oh I can't wait!

Coffee Fest

So, being the crazy busy person that I am, I actually didn't take many pictures while at Coffee Fest because we were so busy the whole time. I did get just a few though.

At the entrance to the main show floor. Behind me while I took this picture was the sky bridge to the main building of the Washington State Convention Center, and to my left was were the latte art competitions went down.

Here are a few of the entries for the latte art competition on day 2. Desiree and I are convinced that we should compete next year. We could do this!

On our first night, Portland Roasting and Ghiradelli invited us to a "function" at the Seattle Center and Jimmy Hendrix museum. We walked down there from our hotel, and I got this shot when we got to the Seattle Center. We had the entire Music Experience to ourselves (there were about 30 of us), plus free drinks at the bar compliments of Ghiradelli.

I took this from outside our hotel.

On our last day we went down to the Public Market. It was Sunday, so there were TONS of people around, and lots to look at. Below is a picture of me, Garrett the manager of the cafe and awesome dude, and Des my assistant manager, friend, and little dog lover.

It was so fun! We had so much to look at and learn. It was a great experience!

Lack of blogging skills

Wow. I am really slacking on this blog thing. The point of this whole thing is to give my family and friends a place to see what I'm up to (and who knows if anyone really reads this thing). Anywho, I said I would update with all the pictures from Adam and Jamie's wedding... but since the first blog took so long... forget it. All I can say is, I bought waterproof mascara for that weekend for a reason, and I put it to good use. I cried every 2 minutes during that ceremony, I made TONS of new friends, and we all had the time of our lives.

Moving on...

Since August many things have changed in my life. Dave is working three jobs now (that's right... three). He is still delivering bread for Big River 5 mornings a week. He is also now hosting lunch Monday/ Wednesday/ Friday at Big River. And to add to that, he is now working at the Corvallis Cyclery a few afternoons a week. He's a busy boy. And that's a good thing. Because I'm just as busy.

I was recently promoted to the manager position at my coffee shop in Corvallis (might I add that was my second promotion in under 4 months. Go me). As soon as I was told that I would be stepping in as manager, I was busier than a bumble bee. My first week of manager I worked seven days, caught a mild case of strep throat, and worked over 43 hours. Yeah. Killer. Since that first week things have gotten a little easier. I am now recovering from another cold, but things are running more smoothly. There were a few mishaps those first few weeks (like the week that Food Services of America delivered us a case of Grey Popon mustard instead of our usual 30 lb. box of Ghiradelli white chocolate. I threw a fit. We still have that box sitting in the back room... we did get our chocolate 2 days late.... after I yelled (politely) at a few people on the phone.)

The last weekend of October we are going to Coffee Fest though, a perk of being manager now. A trip to Seattle with my boss, Paul, fellow manager of the cafe, Garrett, and my assistant manager, Desiree. In honor of this upcoming trip, I would like to share with you a video I found on the Barista Guild of America blog. It makes fun of how dramatic and ridiculous competing professional baristas can be.

Hope all is well with everyone! I'm really looking forward to my trip and to the holidays. I miss my family! Got to get going... Dave should be home from work soon!

Walk for Water 2010

On March 21st, a few of my co-workers and myself drove up to Portland for World Water Day and for Portland Roasting's event, Walk for Water. We had two teams of ten, with all three locations of Coffee Culture represented. It was really fun! Here is the video of footage from the event that Portland Roasting put together.... gives you something to think about... :)

Portland Roasting and beyond...

As mentioned earlier, a few of my fellow baristas (and one baristo haha) went up to Portland Roasting Company to take a tour and brush up on our skills. We started the afternoon off with a delicious lunch at a bar and grill place that was delish! (I must find the name....). Then off to PDX roasting we went. We toured their warehouse with all the Monin syrups, Mighty Leaf teas, Dr. Smoothie containers, and, of course, bags and bags of green coffee beans waiting for their turn to be roasted. We learned how the Swiss Water decaffination process works, and where the beans come from (many people who are employed or involved at Portland Roasting have been to the farms, met the farmers and even purchased land in far off countries so that it may be used for growing coffee). We then proceeded to the roasting room and saw their whole process from roasting to bagging.



This is one of two of their roasters. This is the smaller of the two, and roasts 150 pounds of coffee at a time. It is the newer of the two, and was designed to be fully automated, but they found it was much better to just have a person operate it. To give you some perspective on the size of it, the round drum just in front of the roaster itself comes up to my waist.

Then, shortly after a potty break, we moved into the cupping room and began talking technique. Steve, our tour guide and all around coffee bad ass, made us "drip" coffee with a device called a Chemex. BEST CUP OF COFFEE I HAVE EVER HAD. I intend to have one in my house someday... but the Chemex deserves its' own blog post.



We then dove right into latte art. My fave. Steve gave us some great pointers and helped us to brush up on our skills. I feel that I have become a lot more consistent at it at work... but have yet to take any photos. Here are a few that I have taken since leaning the great art of the latte:







It was so fun, and got me all excited about my job ,and how to improve myself. I learned a lot! I'll get a post up about Chemex... but first I gotta do my research... ;)

P.S. The picture at the top of this post is of Portland Roasting's Bike delivery unit. Since the company itself is right SE of downtown, they prefer to have all of their downtown Portland deliveries be made by bike. No exceptions. (They take pride in being a very sustainable company... :) ) Even better was yesterday, when moving Sarah into her dorms at Linfield campus in NW Portland for nursing school (which starts on Monday) we saw mister bike delivery guy hauling ass past us. I think that is SO awesome!

Looking back. Looking forward.

Over the last year, there has been many struggles for not only me, but also for many of the important people in my life. There have been triumphs too. A year ago I graduated from OSU, with no job and news that my family probably wouldn't be able to help keep me on my feet. I was depressed for some time, and it seemed quite hopeless in our current economic state, until I received a phone call for a job interview at Coffee Culture. I had no idea then what I was getting myself into (more on that later). Once I had a job, the challenge was to stay afloat, without boring myself to death. I eventually had to move into cheaper housing, and really cut back on many things in life. Today, I completely support myself (except for my car insurance, but that is the next thing on my list), although it is no easy task.

In June, Dave left to go on a fishing trip in Alaska. At first, three months wtih my best friend being gone was torture. I learned to be alone, like really alone, something I had a fear of. Again, another part of me that I had an opportunity to improve upon, and I become more self-reliant. When Dave came home two months early, I was here to help him get back on his feet. He moved in with me, and we found that we couldn't be without each other like that again. :)

Working at the coffee shop can be challenging at times. I have made lots of new friends, girls that I spend LOTS of time with. I have also learned a lot about people in general. We get a wide spectrum of people coming to our shop (as reflective of Corvallis itself... we have hippies, cowboys, intellectuals, and people on welfare. You name it, I've seen it). But the time and effort that we put in as a coffee shop to be the best in town, pays off. Most of us are able to do latte art (being able to make shapes and pictures with the steamed milk). We use top of the line syrups and chocolates to ensure the best taste with our espresso roast. We use fair trade coffees and teas. And, most importantly, we keep it classy. No bikinis, no cleavage. Just fast, friendly service. I can say that having a coffee shop of my own someday would be fantastic, but also a lot of hard work. It's never easy though. I have learned a great patience and understanding of others, and I have found that it has paid off. This month, we are actually going to Portland Roasting, who provides us with our coffees, for a cupping and barista training. It's always good for us to be furthering our coffee education, so that we can still be the premier coffee shop of Corvallis. Should be good!

Now, coming into 2010, Dave has graduated from OSU too, and has begun the rough process of trying to find a "real" job. If he lands one, I plan on going with him wherever he goes. Jackie will be graduating from her high school and moving on to college. We have yet to know where she will go to college, but I'm sure she will be offered academic scholarships from multiple places. I am happy with the job I am at now, although the pay is not something I am totally happy with. Hopefully Dave can land a sweet job somewhere, so that I have a chance to search for a new job in a new city. For now, I am putting my life in e hands of the fates, and waiting to see what 2010 has in store for me, Dave and my family. In the meantime, I'll try to keep up on my blogs. :)

Hope everyone has a great 2010!

The World of Coffee (yum!)

Since beginning my job at Coffee Culture, I have been learning about all the different elements of the coffee world from where the beans are grown and how they are roasted, to latte art and barista competitions. I have been "geek-ing out" on YouTube watching how to make latte art well, how to steam milk well so that good latte art can be made, and just today, I found a video on International barista competitions (on CNN.com of all places).



What I found most interesting about this video is the end when they mention that there is no big prize money, but that there are a few prizes put up my sponsors of the competition. These people do it for the sake of making really good tasting (and good looking) coffee drinks! I think I'm becoming one of them :)


These are some drinks I made at work a few weeks ago. The one above was a latte and the one below was a mocha. I'm getting better! Next time I get the chance I'll have my phone with me to take any pictures of masterpieces :)

Settling into the groove...

So work is keeping me busy. I am finally adjusted to my crazy schedule, so I now have time to play and get things done without missing my bed too bad.

We went on a trip to Sisters and Bend two weekends ago with a big group of our closest friends. We all got dressed up for a themed party we threw called rednecks vs. ski yuppies. Let's just say that we are way better at being rednecks than yuppies in our group of friends.

Valentine's day was on Saturday. Dave made me breakfast (it was sooooo good!), and then we went on a fun bike race together called an Ally Cat. It's like a scavenger hunt, only on bikes at night. It was way fun! One of the things we had to complete was "getting married" at the courthouse. We had to take off our front wheels of our bikes and exchange them when we exchanged our vows. We even got an unofficial marriage license. Haha. After that we met up with a group of our friends and went to one of our favorite bars, called the Crowbar.

I work about 35 hours this week. Yay! Hopefully it won't wear me out too much.

February?!

Time flies by now that I'm so busy keeping my work schedule straight. I'm either up really really early to open or up around 9 am to get ready for my closing shift. It leaves me little time to get other things done. And I have been really tired all the time, but it's getting better. When I first started doing opening shifts, I would come home around 1 or 2 in the afternoon and sleep until 4 or 5. It was like I was a vampire or something, only being up and out when it was dark. I am able to stay awake now, until about 8, then I crash hard.

Speaking of vampires, just this morning I finished reading the third of four books in the Twilight series. My friend Emma asked me to go see the movie with her, so Alissa and I went. Neither Lissa or I had read any of the books, but Emma had been reading the fourth at the time. We were so intrigued by the movie that both of us wanted to read the books. Since then they have been consuming what little free time I have had. I don't know what it is, but they are really hard to put down!! If you love getting lost in a good book, you may want to try Twilight out.

When I'm not making delicious coffee, sleeping, or reading about vampires, I do get out and about! I cut my hair really short about a month ago. I love it, and I might go even shorter next time! I also got my nose pierced. I figured, "why not?!" I can take it out if I ever wanted to get rid of it, and I think it looks good on me. Most people who know me really well didn't even notice at first. haha.

The Culture of Coffee, and other True Stories

Yes, the job is fun. Yes, I do really like it. I assumed that there would be regulars at the drive-thru every morning, but SERIOUSLY PEOPLE?! This proves to me that coffee really is a drug. I'm working tomorrow morning at the 9th street location, if anyone needs their fix. Still going strong on training, and my manager said that I am doing very well for someone with no experience in the professional espresso field.

On the bad side of life, we had a close family friend pass away this week. My Nana's good friend, Joel, found out he had cancer at the end of the summer. Nana convinced him to do chemo, so he did. Dad and I had no clue that he was even close to passing, but alas... Dave and I are driving down to Medford for the funeral Sunday afternoon when I get off of work. We will be back Monday night.

What was weird was another family that is closewith our also lost a grandparent this week. Jackie found a fish floating in the fish tank at my Dad's house. Dave found a dead rat last night in the basement of the house while doing laundry. Emma, one of my best friends, her grandmother is also not doing well, and might have to go to Ohio again soon. Death all over! I'm not sure if this is a good thing or not. We will have to wait and see. Tell your friends and family that you love them, and make sure that they know they are loved. Appreciate those in your life because they might not be around forever.

GOT THE JOB!

On Friday, I interviewed with a local coffee chain called Coffee Culture. Since I'm good at customer service, and I am obsessed with coffee, I figured it would be a perfect job for me. Yesterday we went shopping down in Eugene, and I got a call while we were in Buckle. I didn't recognize the number, but I (very awkwardly) answered the phone, and it was Garrett, from Coffee Culture, offering me the job (even after making an idiot of myself). I start tomorrow morning at 6:30 am (eep!) and I am really excited. So if you live in Corvallis, and are craving coffee between 6:30 and 11am, stop by the drive thru Coffee Culture on Kings.

I'm not sure yet, but hopefully they will give me full-time and decent pay. I've got experience in everything but espresso machines, so hopefully they will.

Hope all is well with everyone else! I'm really excited for this week to start, and I will let you know how it goes!