2022, hello.

Happy New Year! Fingers crossed for 2022.

I'm not really into resolutions per se, but I do like to target bad habits and minimize them if I can't eliminate them.

Here and there, I've been able to evolve bad habits into a ritual. In this way, coffee is a victory.

I don't think I even had my first cup of coffee until I was 23. I somehow survived university without it, but I couldn't escape it in Saint Louis. Even still, it was a social drink for me. It took me another six years to actually buy a coffee-maker for my apartment.

From there, a few cups turned into a pot, with extra fill-ups within an hour or two after I arrived at the office.

At some point I was given a single-cup maker, and though fresher, it didn't make a good cup of coffee. I avoided the packaged K-cups, using the refillable thingie. At least I wasn't adding to landfills.

I tried a French press, but never really took to it.

Enter the mocha pot.

I was in Glasgow with my French friend Xavier Lancel, editor of Scarce Magazine and two American comic creators--Greg Lockard, living in Spain at the time, and Monica Gallagher. And in our AirBnB was a mocha pot, a stove-top espresso maker. I fell in love!

On my return home, in my building's free room was a used mocha pot. I grabbed it. I was a full convert, and when the handle broke off, I broke down and bought a new pot. 

It takes enough effort that I never make a second pot. So I've made a ritual of preparing the coffee, as well as boiling some hot water for a tiny teapot I picked up somewhere, so I can make myself Americanos.

Perhaps I should have converted from a trip to Italy rather than Scotland, but one can't choose these things.