Escapades from October, 2017:

Professional

I just finished a plastic surgery rotation with the aim of learning their techniques for facelifts, blepharoplasty (eyelid surgeries), scar revision, and their esthetic closures.

Current Projects

-My wife and I are finalizing the manuscript for our first children’s book

-Converting my Roth IRA from Merrill Lynch to Vanguard so I can purchase their index fund ETF shares, as recommended by JP Livingston (pseudonym) of The Money Habit. I am selling my current assets and buying VTI, their total stock index ETF. Here’s why I’m doing it all at once instead of in installments.

-Making a series of tinctures according to methods I read about in Bitters: A Spirited History of a Classic Cure-All, with Cocktails, Recipes, and Formulas by Brad Thomas Parsons. Our current concoctions include a Rosemary and Earl Grey. I’m also experimenting with a basic bitters making kit by Easy & Oskey, with which I am using to make Coffee & Pecan Bitters.

Reading

Writer Sailor Soldier Spy: Ernest Hemingway’s Secret Adventures, 1935-1961, by Nicholas Reynolds, a review of Ernest Hemingway’s Communist leanings in 1930s Spain.  This book offers a more objective view of the man than any I’ve yet seen. I recommend it only if you are intrigued by Hemingway or the history of communism in prominent American literary and entertainment circles, something that is too often relegated to a few prominent Hollywood figures. It has relevance today as the internet has replaced newspapers, movies,  and magazines as the propaganda driver of choice.

Drinking

Deeper Roots Coffee Roaster’s Ethiopian Amaro Gayo offering. They describe it as blackberry jam, currant, and floral. I’m not that sophisticated, but what I can say: light, fruity, impeccable. Armistice (Don’t Let Food and Coffee Fight) tip: try it with whole, non-pitted, Medjool dates.