Got My Coffee and iTunes

Yes, a long week, but making some progress at lowering the corporate blood pressure. Now working on mine. It's 3:30 pm, someone just made a Starbucks run (Tall coffee, black, thank you) and I've got String Quartet In G Major, Op. 153 Allegro Animato by Camille Saint-Saens playing in the background. I started with Tom Waits, but it ain't that kind of afternoon.

Speaking of black coffee, here's a little bit of Murray family history. My father was one of four sons, raised not an 1/8th of a mile from where I grew up (actually, my childhood home was my great-grandfather's house and his father was the Irishman himself, who came from County Cork in the early 1860s. His brother joined the Union Army. Just like a scene out of "The Gangs of New York".) Anyhoo, my father is a big coffee drinker. He can drink it all day and all night long. And he drinks it black. My grandmother, though ill and in a nursing home, drinks it black as well. I've always said that she'd disinherit me if I put anything in my coffee. The rule around the Murray house is that anyone of any age can drink coffee, but you better not put anything in it.

Diane, not being a Murray by birth, ignores me and takes cream with her coffee. I can't stand it that way. I will, on occasion, have a fancy drink or cappuccino, but that's not really coffee, now is it?

I've also discovered my father's secret - he drinks his coffee weak, see-through. A cup of the way I drink it would straighten his hair.

And speaking of hair, he still has most of his, while I do not and have not for some time. My Grampa Murray was the same way. I recently saw a picture of him and my Uncle Jim - they were kneeling by what appears to be a bobcat they've shot - don't know where it was taken. Grampa passed away when I was seven or eight and I remember him well, but I was surprised at the physical resemblance. Shave my beard and I don't think you could tell us apart.

There's a man I would have benefited from knowing better.