Yesterday I found a dirt-cheap "3 cup" model--in this case, "cups" refer to demitasse cups, slightly under two ounces! You use slightly more ground coffee than you'd use to make a 12-ounce mug of normal coffee, though. After fiddling around with it for a while last night, this morning I made a good con leche: a "full" pot of the espresso using some of the Costa Rican coffee I roasted a couple days ago, and while it's heating, six ounces of milk in the microwave. Whip the milk a bit with a fork to get some froth. Then add a little too much sugar to a mug (which for me is about 2-3 teaspoons, as I'm not much of a sweet tooth), pour in the espresso and the milk.
Now, off to shower and possibly to head out north to visit the "Mountain Play" in Marin County, which I'm going to be bidding on a website design for (apparently with dozens of other people). I decided to blow off MacWorld completely this year; between a floor pass and either rail transport up the peninsula or parking charges if I drive, it'd be around $50, and that's $50 I don't have. (That's a lot more than I paid for the stovetop espresso maker, and I get to keep it for years.) I'm sorry to have missed Tacit and to have missed trying to connive the Bare Bones Software people out of a T-shirt, but I've been using my time to apply for various jobs and to contemplate--as yet with few ideas--how better to promote my consulting business. I suspect the real answer is to get comfortable doing what I'm traditionally quite uncomfortable doing--figuring out who to cold call and contacting them directly. But that's a topic for another time.
