Kat, my daughter, goes back to school tomorrow.
When first noted, the Christmas vacation seemed endless – December 21 to January 15.
It wasn’t.

Kat being a typical 20-year-old with many contacts and many things to do; and each was life or death to see and do.

I have her part of today.
Am at Thinking Cup on Newbury Street working on the blog.
This.

Expecting her at 12.30pm, she amazingly prompt.
We’ll go to the Apple store to buy her a new Mach.
She’s had hers since 7th grade, about 7 years.
An excellent student, she certainly needs one.

We’ll have our main meal afterwards at Abe and Louie’s.

How much time did we spend together?
Not much, I think.
Altho since we live together, we have plenty of casual contacts, especially around meal times.
Dedicated time, however, I can count.

Night of arrival and airport pickup at 11.00pm and late dinner following.
New Year’s Eve.
Christmas morning.
Christmas Eve.
Dinner w son/brother Dom and entourage.
Today.
One I’ve likely forgotten of which she would remind me were she here.

Seven visits, average 4 hours each, 28 hours together.

I began this sit-down ready to cry about the little time I had with her.
But really, after listing, not too bad.

Subtract a week that she spent in Mexico with school friends.
And a day in New Haven with boyfriend.
And two days in Tennessee with a school friend.
Two days with her mother.
A half-day with grandparents.
Two nights with high school friends.
And two days with her boyfriend, he visiting. A really nice guy. She has always chosen really nice guys to hang with.

I guess I’m pretty fortunate, timewise.
I was going to complain.
I can’t.
Now what?

Tagging Today
Wednesday, January 16, 2019
My 279th consecutive posting, committed to 5,000.
Time is 12.01am.
On Wednesday, Boston’s temperature will reach a high of 37* under mostly sunny skies.

Dinner is a Fish Soup experiment: leftover Bouillabaisse chopped and thinn stock.

__________________________
Question of the day:
January 16
What defines a café?

_____________________________________
Love your notes.
Contact me at existentialautotrip@hotmail.com

This amusement from papafooch:

Dear Dom,

A cute poem I thought I’d pass on.

A lump of sugar

It was simple in the old days; you took your prescription without pause.
If you happened to die, God forbid….they said pneumonia was the cause.

The doctor would say “take two and call me in the morning”
but now that’s no good, because now it comes with a warning.

So lets examine some of the remedies,
and then determine if there really the enemies.

Many, medications are over the counter, no prescription
however, the instructions are written in Egyptian.

So reluctantly, you try to find yourself a cure
but beware, of the “side effects”, you must endure.
Are you willing to try and relieve that terrible itch
when you’re sure to encounter a constant twitch.

Now I agree that pain and suffering is no joke
but do I risk taking medication that will make me choke.
Or even worse, I’d take those pills if I were choking,
next thing you know, I’d be croaking.

Now let’s get serious, and talk about the big stuff,
just tell me, when you’ve had enough.

There are cramps, and chills and good old fashion psoriasis
for this you send for a priest, from your archdiocese

Are you bloated, or swollen, dripping or have seepage,
Are you cold or hot, or is it the dreaded anal leakage.

Are you dizzy, or woozy, or just in a fog
Are your “B” movements ok, or is there a clog

I’ve reviewed all the ailments, and the medication that promise a cure
but it’s the side effects, I know, I won’t  be able to endure.

I can’t get my mind around, the idea of easing a pain in my head
then hoping the side effects, don’t leave me for dead.

We take some meds, because we are stressed,
And when they don’t work, we become really depressed.

It upsets us to know, that the meds lied,
which leads to the alternative…..that right suicide.

So here we are in modern times, were witchcraft, not the answer
like wearing garlic around your neck, while watching a voodoo dancer.

The best results, for ailing is when your mother put you in a hot tub
then put you to bed, with a warm cloth on your chest filled with Vicks vapor rub.
 
Web Meister Responds: It is cute. Thanks, Ron. 

Answer to Question:
What is a cafe?

A coffeehouse, coffee shop, or café is an establishment that primarily serves coffee, related coffee drinks (latte, cappuccino, espresso), and – depending on country – other drinks including alcoholic.
Some coffeehouses may serve cold drinks such as iced coffee and iced tea; in continental Europe, cafés serve alcoholic drinks.
A coffeehouse may also serve some type of food, such as light snacks, sandwiches, muffins or other pastries.
Coffeehouses range from owner-operated small businesses to large multinational corporations.

While café may refer to a coffeehouse, the term "cafe" generally refers to a diner, British cafe (colloquially called a "caff"), "greasy spoon" (a small and inexpensive restaurant), transport cafe, teahouse or tea room, or other casual eating and drinking place.
A coffeehouse may share some of the same characteristics of a bar or restaurant, but it is different from a cafeteria.
Many coffeehouses in the Middle East and in West Asian immigrant districts in the Western world offer shisha (nargile in Greek and Turkish), flavored tobacco smoked through a hookah. Espresso bars are a type of coffeehouse that specializes in serving espresso and espresso-based drinks.

From a cultural standpoint, coffeehouses largely serve as centers of social interaction: the coffeehouse provides patrons with a place to congregate, talk, read, write, entertain one another, or pass the time, whether individually or in small groups.
Since the development of Wi-Fi, coffeehouses with this capability have also become places for patrons to access the Internet on their laptops and tablet computers.

A coffeehouse can serve as an informal club for its regular members.
As early as the 1950s Beatnik era and the 1960s folk music scene, coffeehouses have hosted singer-songwriter performances, typically in the evening.

The first coffeehouses appeared in Venice in 1629, due to the traffic between La Serenissima and the Ottomans; the very first one is recorded in 1645.

The first coffeehouse in England was set up in Oxford in 1650 by a Jewish man named Jacob at the Angel in the parish of St Peter in the East.
A building on the same site now houses a cafe-bar called The Grand Cafe.
Oxford's Queen's Lane Coffee House, established in 1654, is also still in existence today.
The first coffeehouse in London was opened in 1652 in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill.
The proprietor was Pasqua Rosée, the servant of a trader in Turkish goods named Daniel Edwards, who imported the coffee and assisted Rosée in setting up the establishment in St Michael's Alley, Cornhill.

From 1670 to 1685, the number of London coffee-houses began to multiply, and also began to gain political importance due to their popularity as places of debate.
English coffeehouses in the 17th and 18th centuries were significant meeting places, particularly in London.
By 1675, there were more than 3,000 coffeehouses in England.

Pasqua Rosée also established the first coffeehouse in Paris in 1672 and held a citywide coffee monopoly until Procopio Cutò opened the Café Procope in 1686.
This coffeehouse still exists today and was a popular meeting place of the French Enlightenment; Voltaire, Rousseau, and Denis Diderot frequented it, and it is arguably the birthplace of the Encyclopédie, the first modern encyclopedia.

In 1667, Kara Hamie, a former Ottoman Janissary from Constantinople, opened the first coffee shop in Bucharest (then the capital of the Principality of Wallachia), in the center of the city, where today sits the main building of the National Bank of Romania.

America had its first coffeehouse in Boston, in 1676.

Though Charles II later tried to suppress the London coffeehouses as "places where the disaffected met, and spread scandalous reports concerning the conduct of His Majesty and his Ministers", the public flocked to them.
For several decades following the Restoration, the Wits gathered around John Dryden at Will's Coffee House, in Russell Street, Covent Garden.
The coffeehouses were great social levelers, open to all men and indifferent to social status, and as a result associated with equality and republicanism.
The rich intellectual atmosphere of early London coffeehouses were available to anyone who could pay the sometimes one penny entry fee, giving them the name of 'Penny Universities'.

More generally, coffeehouses became meeting places where business could be carried on, news exchanged and the London Gazette (government announcements) read.
Lloyd's of London had its origins in a coffeehouse run by Edward Lloyd, where underwriters of ship insurance met to do business.
By 1739, there were 551 coffeehouses in London; each attracted a particular clientele divided by occupation or attitude, such as Tories and Whigs, wits and stockjobbers, merchants and lawyers, booksellers and authors, men of fashion or the "cits" of the old city center.
According to one French visitor, Antoine François Prévost, coffeehouses, "where you have the right to read all the papers for and against the government," were the "seats of English liberty.”

The banning of women from coffeehouses was not universal, but does appear to have been common in Europe.
In Germany, women frequented them, but in England and France they were banned.
Émilie du Châtelet purportedly cross-dressed to gain entrance to a coffeehouse in Paris.

In a well-known engraving of a Parisian café c. 1700, the gentlemen hang their hats on pegs and sit at long communal tables strewn with papers and writing implements. Coffeepots are ranged at an open fire, with a hanging cauldron of boiling water. The only woman present presides, separated in a canopied booth, from which she serves coffee in tall cups.

__________________________
Good Wednesday morning to us on this 16th day of January.

We talked about a father’s complaint vis a vis lack of hang-out time with daughter.
We updated our time and weather section.
We were treated to a cute prescription poem.
And we looked at cafes.


Che vuoi? Le pocketbook?

See you soon.

Love

Dom