Gutterbrew

What kind of Starbucks Frappuccino are you? My Result: Vanilla Bean

You are all about beauty, and you like things just the way they are. You also typically keep to yourself.    Take What kind of Starbucks Frappuccino are you? Find more quizzes at Quibblo.com

I don't usually explain my post titles; if they aren't easily sussed, then they will be a future mental agility exercise for me.

Picture yourself as the unfortunate middle schooler assigned to spending 20 minutes of merit badge time with me in the home: "Sweetie, can you please look at my old blog post titles and tell me what I was talking about? I'll give you five old-style dollars. Just let me get my coin purse."

(I've decided that when I'm really old, I'm going to carry a coin purse. Except, I'll wear it around my neck like a medicine bag. And it will be full of Jolly Ranchers and Spamalot confetti. That show was almost three weeks ago, and confetti is still spilling out of my "wallet." And the reason "wallet" is in quotes is a story for another post.)

I'll call this one "Gutterbrew" because I was thinking of Frappuccinos when I started typing. Fraps are Gutterbrew because:

• They get me out of the emotional gutter.
• I drink them when I want to do the lie-in-the-metaphorical-gutter-and-look-at-the-stars routine. (The stars may or may not be metaphorical.)
• I would be in the financial gutter if I drank them whenever I wanted.

I was going to disagree with the "Vanilla Bean" assessment above, but you know what? I don't know. I've never had one. Are they great?

My order is the double chocolaty chip, and lately I've been adding a mix-in. (Oops, I mean a shot. I'm getting my trendy franchises confused.) First I tried peppermint. Then hazelnut. Now I'm all about... CARAMEL. However, Hazelnut Caramel Double Chocolaty Chip is probably inevitable.

So, caramel Fraps are one thing I've discovered since summer vacation started. Another is Sky & Telescope magazine's amazing-super-awesome-SWELL-o-RAMA printable sky charts.

Unless you have no soul, you have to try this. Go here, on their website, and enter your location info.

Okay, wait, they changed it. Now you have to register. Sorry. Well, if you want to see a pretty neat view of which stars are hanging around outside your window right now, then print that view (or a view for another place or time) into an incredibly tidy one-page PDF that you can carry outside and use as a reference, go here.

Shhh, don't tell their web developers, but you can see an example of the PDF, using my location and the current time, here. No registration required (yet).

Help, help, Ursa Major's going to get me! Except, ha ha, no. Light pollution saves me from the big bear. I can probably go out on the balcony and see Jupiter, but that's about it. (Oh, the light pollution isn't that bad. Often we can see as many as seven or eight stars. Honest!)

Still thinking about stars - wait, I can't do that without hearing Starrider in my head.

That has to be the most underrated Foreigner song. (The most recent live version is better, though. You know, the one I sing on? *cough*) If I had a planetarium, it would be all this, Blue Oyster Cult, and the current theme to Space Mountain:

And you know why that Disney music is so poi-feckt? Because it makes me think of...

But I don't run a planetarium. But, that's not going to keep me from staying up past 5 a.m., designing brochures for it. Look at these fonts! (I love DaFont.)

The gutter, it is my launchpad.