My husband, Paul  asked me a while back if I wanted to review the book “Prophecy.”  I was a little hesitant at first because I am not a big reader.  He forwarded me the synopsis and I thought why not?  I’m a Catholic and this book seemed to play on a story from the Bible.  I should put my 13 years of Catholic school to good use, right?   In all honesty, I am not exactly the best Catholic going.  I’m more of what you call a “C&E” Catholic – that is, I go to Church on Christmas and Easter.  I really have no excuse aside from laziness.  Hopefully, one day I’ll get that motivation to get back in gear.  But enough about me and on to this book.

When I started reading it, while it didn’t exactly spell out that it was going to play on the story of Mary and Joseph, that’s basically what jumped out at me as I read.  The book’s idea was interesting.  It seemed to bring the ancient Bible story to more modern times.  It was definitely intriguing for me to imagine this happening in a future Nashville and I can totally envision that the scenarios that were described in the book would probably happen should this actually come to light.  I would say that the book as a whole was a light read, although I would have liked a little more substance toward the end of the book.  It had a good storyline through about 75% of the book and then the end seemed a bit rushed for me.  I wanted to read more about their journey and I would have liked there to be a little more elaboration on the state of affairs in Nashville at the end of the book rather than just having that rushed in the Epilogue.

Using a 5 Star Method, I would give this 3 out of 5 stars.  An entertaining read, but I was left wanting a little more details in the story.

*Full disclosure: I was sent the Book Prophecy by Deborah Jaeger, at no cost for the purpose of review. The Book was provided without any assurance of given rating or reception.

Today I had the pleasure of trying out the new offering from Bai Brands the Bai5 Congo Pear. Bai means pure in Chinese, and the Founder of the Company Ben Weiss has worked to craft a set of beverages that leverage the long unused fruit from the Coffea Arabica plant, better know to you as coffee. Bai’s mission is to create good tasting all natural healthy beverages. the Bai5 line specifically is the low-calorie line from Bai Beverages.

The Fruit of the Coffee plant is extremely perishable and for years has been regulated to being the byproduct of my favorite habit. The Coffee Cherry is usually discarded as the bean is harvested, roasted and sent to my stomach. According to the information provided the fruit of the coffee cherry is apparently extremely high in antioxidants. And these beverages were designed as a good tasting all natural delivery system for this new form of antioxidants

The Bai5 product line uses an all natural sugar substitute called Stevia, which is touted as being sweeter than sugar. It allows for the beverage to still be sweet while only containing 5 calories as opposed to the regular version which contains around 70. Either way these beverages are well below the equivalent amount of fruit juice in terms of caloric impact.

As per usual all products submitted are run through the same process. And with non coffee beverages I like to enlist an elite team of tasters. Specifically the focus group this time consists of my wife, myself, our good friends Marianne and Dave. Marianne and My Wife Jen are both non coffee drinkers, Jen being an expert in diet foods I figured this would be a good group to try these beverages out. Specifically we strive for honesty when we taste things at the Caffination, and these are some of the most honest and direct people I know.

The Journey

• Smell: If it doesn’t smell good How can you drink it?
• Taste: Obvious and penultimate
• Aftertaste: Beverage is done, but is the flavor?
• Notes: Anything I might notice or want to share

Read the rest of this entry »

With all the new video games coming out, I figured I should try out some demos, an let you know how I felt about them. So instead of you finding out it was a waste of time, let me take that pain away from you. This week I tried out two games recently released, Bulletstorm and Stacked.

With the release of Bulletstorm, I had a chance to play a demo of the game before the release. To be honest, I was not satisfied with the outcome of the game. I was getting bored with it after about 15 minutes.. This game is developed by Epic Games, who is well-known for the Locust stomping Gears of War franchise. Epic wanted this game to be completely different from Gears, and they achieved it by a long shot.

The storyline in basic terms is that you are a space pirate hunting down your-ex commander on a planet of mutants and monsters, with a side of criminals. The reason for the big hype for this game is the “skillshot.” This gives the player the opportunity to kill an enemy in many different combinations, and earn points for doing so. Now these points are added up and used at a “dropkit”, which is basically a pit stop to spend points and check on achievements. Another jolt to the game is, of course, the vulgar behavior and obscene language. If you have played Gears of War, this should be old news to you.

In the end, Bulletstorm turned out to be flop, at least for me. The graphics turned out fantastic, even though there wasn’t much of an interesting storyline. However, trying to find out all the  different kill combinations was getting pretty boring. Personally, I would save my money and wait for Epic’s next game to be released.

Another demo I decided to try out was a game called Stacking. This is an adventure/puzzle game which the characters are nothing but Russian matryoshka dolls. The whole point of the game is to solve different puzzles by stacking up all sorts of russian dolls.

The story takes place during industrial times. The Baron is forcing the Blackmore family children to work as slaves to pay off debt, and it is up to Charlie to save his family. Although that is the main objective, there are other tasks and puzzles that can be solved in the game. What got me interested was the fact that each doll had a certain ability. Charlie is the smallest of all the dolls. So when he would hop into a doll one size bigger, he takes on the power of that doll.So with each doll in the game having a different ability, all the puzzles could be solved in different ways.

I think the best part of the game, at least for me, were the cutscenes. They are shown in the same fashion as silent films. So when the cutsecenes start up, it looks like it is all on stage. Although the main stage of the whole game is at a train station, you have the freedom to wander off to other places in the game. In the end, Stacking gave me more than what I was expecting.

So in the spirit of Coffee, I feel obligated to keep you caffeinated, even with the ratings. Instead of Stars, how about we use Coffee beans.

I would have to rate Bulletstorm 2 out of 5 coffee beans. Even though the graphics were well produced, the storyline as well as the “skillshot” just couldn’t bring interest to the game.

For Stacking, I would have to rate it 4 out of 5 coffee beans. Although the graphics were not as good as Bulletstorm, the storyline as well as the whole concept of the game brought a great amount of enjoyment to the table. I had a great time playing the demo, and I am definitely considering getting the full version.

Today I had the pleasure of trying out the new offering from Bai Brands the Jamaican Blue Berry. Bai means pure in Chinese, and the Founder of the Company Ben Weiss has worked to craft a set of beverages that leverage the long unused fruit from the Coffea Arabica plant, better know to you as coffee. Bai’s mission is to create good tasting all natural healthy beverages.

The Fruit of the Coffee plant is extremely perishable and for years has been regulated to being the byproduct of my favorite habit. The Coffee Cherry is usually discarded as the bean is harvested, roasted and sent to my stomach. According to the information provided the fruit of the coffee cherry is apparently extremely high in antioxidants. And these beverages were designed as a good tasting all natural delivery system for this new form of antioxidants

As per usual all products submitted are run through the same process. And with non coffee beverages I like to enlist an elite team of tasters. Specifically the focus group this time consists of My Wife and Myself, and our good friends Marianne and Dave. Marianne and My Wife Jen are both non coffee drinkers, Jen being an expert in diet foods I figured this would be a good group to try these beverages out. Specifically we strive for honesty when we taste things at the Caffination, and these are some of the most honest and direct people I know.

The Journey

• Smell: If it doesn’t smell good How can you drink it?
• Taste: Obvious and penultimate
• Aftertaste: Beverage is done, but is the flavor?
• Notes: Anything I might notice or want to share

Read the rest of this entry »

There is nothing better than getting to sample a new coffee. Well there is one thing, getting to sample a new coffee and share it with others. Today I had the pleasure of trying out the new offering from Weaver’s Coffee., The Astral Blend. This coffee is special for a couple of reasons. first off it is Fair Trade Certified, Organic and has a conscience. 5 % of all sales from the Weaver’s Coffee will go to Breast Cancer Research. As per their own website…

“By purchasing this product, you are supporting breast cancer research, funding for local hospitals and community organizations that provide breast health education, breast cancer screening and treatment. This special coffee also supports a better life for farming families through fair prices, community development, and environmental stewardship.”

You Can’t argue with that type of commitment to changing the world a little bit with each cup of coffee you drink. But all of that doesn’t mean any extra warm fuzzies when it comes to taste,. If a coffee doesn’t taste good, it won’t have too much of a chance to make a difference.

As per usual all coffee’s submitted are run through the same process a nice coarse grind and a 4 minute steep in the trust french press, this time however my first experience is via drip brew in my office. The French Press came later, and only served to reinforce my experiences. Sometimes necessity demands that i bring large samples into work to share with other coffee lovers and this was one such time.

The Journey

• Smell: The Start of your journey
• Taste: Obvious and penultimate
• Mouthfeel: Besides the taste how does it feel while drinking
• Notes: Anything I might notice or want to share

Read the rest of this entry »

The wrong settings can ruin a cup for french press, destroy an espresso machine or make your autodrip nice and weak. Enter the latest item to cross my desk. The wondrous Breville Smart Grinder, BCG800XL. Breville was nice enough to send me the unit to review. I wanted to put the machine through a real world test, and that meant drinking a lot of coffee. I tried them all from French press to cold brew, espresso to Greek coffee.

Quick single serving coffee? How good can it be? Turns out quite good, at least with a Tassimo

I work alone, so as a coffee addict I lack certain opportunities that other people who work in a communal setting have. no talking around the water cooler, no chatting over coffee… But the real problem is that I make all the coffee and I drink all the coffee. I also have the clean the coffee pot. There is a lot more work involved both in consuming and upkeep when you are the only one responsible. First off let me state that I keep all of my coffee equipment at home in pristine shape. Things are always clean and the water fresh. But in the office were quantity weighs out over quality… standard for what is acceptable slip a bit. So my office coffee pot is a bit dirty… I a lot dirty in fact. I clean it roughly once a month, and even then it looks bad.

I was given the opportunity to try out a Product from Urnex, called Cleancaf. The fine folks at Urnex sent me a sample at no cost to review. The idea behind this product is that it cleans your coffee machine and carafe with minimal fuss. I blocked off a lunch time period where I could both clean the machine and take some pictures of the product in action. Read the rest of this entry »

To properly prepare coffee you need to have a quality grinder. The problem with quality grinders is that they are a pain to clean. Disassembling pieces and laying washers, rings, nuts, bolts and grommets aside in the correct order, and then attempting to wash the bits of Coffee Oil off each one can be tedious to say the least. Enter a Product from Urnex, call Grindz, which is a single use packet you drop into the hopper run through the machine and it takes the old coffee out with it, cleaning and absorbing the oils along the way.

I was recently sent a sample of Grindz to test on my venerable Capresso Conical Burr grinder, From powder to chunky this grinder does it all, and my only complaint i have every had about it is the difficulty in cleaning. Enter the Grindz, which sounds a bit like a skater product. Read the rest of this entry »

The latest in the NBA2K lineup, NBA2K11 brings a whole lot of content to the table, setting itself apart among the other bland yearly additions to sports games everywhere.

Michael Jordan, No name in sports brings any more cache with it then MJ. He did more than define an era of basketball. He broke the mold within popular culture for how athletes were treated and portrayed. So Any game that puts him on the cover has a lot to live up to wouldn’t you say? Especially since the man last played a game in 2003, April 16th… in Philadelphia. Well I have a small confession to make. I’m a casual basketball fan, If the 76′ers are doing well I might watch a game, if its the Playoffs then I definitely will. I do love sports games overall though.

Lets cut to the goods, then I’ll fill you in on the details afterwards. This game is quite possibly one of the best sports games I have ever played… of Any Sport. After saying that it seems only fitting to have the greatest athlete of the sport’s history on the cover. The depth of the content in the game is astounding and the control is unreal. All other superlatives aside this is a fantastic game, with tons of polish.

The first time you put the disk in your machine the game runs through a vignette of Jordan’s career defining moments. And then without a menu to be seen the game drops you into the 1991 NBA finals. Jordan vs Magic. The uniforms, the arena, the players from both teams are done in exquisite detail. This was a jaw dropping moment for me. I wasn’t expecting it, and to be put in the drivers seat of a There are 10 historic Jordan challenges and the level of detail in each is astounding and rewarding to a fan of the game. Read the rest of this entry »

The Wings of Nature Almond Raisin Bars are a new type of snack bar on the market right now. They are gluten free, with no trans fat, and have no refined sugar added to them. That’s all well and good but how do they taste?

The Wings of Nature Espresso Coffee Bars are a new type of snack bar on the market right now. They are gluten free, with no trans fat, and have no refined sugar added to them. That’s all well and good but how do they taste?

The gritty world of Empire city looks wide and deep as you travel around the city. Go too fast and the cops pull you over, Bump into someone trying to make a getaway and the cops are on your tail.

I am an absolute sucker for T shirts. I love buying them. I love wearing them. They help me not be naked. Which I have found in polite society, is probably a good thing. I was contacted by the fine folks from Coy Clothes about their coffee related T shirts. Well this was a win no matter how you slice it.

Lisa sent me a wonderful T shirt, a very very comfortable T shirt. With a coffee related patch on it, as seen to the left. These are not simple silk screened T shirts but rather canvas sown onto the shirt to highlight the design. Spiffy! They have a ton of neat designs over there, and as you can see they do make a stylish statement.

So if you want to not be naked, and represent Coffee, or bacon head on over and check them out!

*The Fine Folks at Coy Clothes Sent me a T Shirt for the purpose of  review, and wearing