I Think the Coffee Machine at Work is a Dude!

Flavia Machine via dickster1961

We have a Flavia machine in my office.  For those of you who do not know what it is, it is a single serve brewer that uses individual pouches to brew a cup of coffee or tea.  It can also be used to make cappuccinos and mochaccinos by combining two different pouches.

Unlike my Keurig K-Cup brewer, the Flavia machine has a sensor under the spout to prevent the brewer from brewing if there is nothing beneath the spout to catch the hot liquid.  I hate to admit this, but there has been more than one occasion when I began brewing a K-Cup and forgot to place a mug under the spout.  What a mess!  Sometimes you just operate on automatic first thing in the morning, and accidents happen.

Recently, I have been having a few issues with the Flavia machine at work.  As you can see in the picture above, when the machine is brewing, the liquid flows straight down, directly into the mug.  On more than one occasion, the machine has been a little less than accurate with the brewing of my beverage.  Instead of the drink flowing straight down into my mug, the drink sprayed either behind the mug or off to the side.  Not only do I not get a full beverage, but then I have a mess to clean up.

It reminded me of my when my son was learning to urinate in the toilet.  Let's just say that his aim wasn't the best.  Not that I myself am not subject to occasional bad aim, especially if I wake up in the middle of the night and need to relieve myself.  Sure, I have all sorts of reasons...er excuses.  Perhaps I didn't turn on the light because I didn't want to disturb anybody, perhaps I was sleepwalking, or I just didn't put on my glasses and couldn't see.  So that is the reason I think the coffee machine at work is a dude.

Locked Out

I hate when I do something stupid.  Well, maybe stupid is too strong a word.  Maybe a better term would be absentminded or forgetful.  I tend to do most of my absentminded stuff in the morning before I have had my morning fill of coffee.  Though that doesn't mean that I am immune from it at other times of the day.  My wife says that I suffer from Craft disease-I "Can't Remember A F---ing Thing."

One example of my early morning forgetfulness due to lack of coffee actually occurred while trying to prepare my first cup of joe.  I fired up the Keurig coffee maker, put in a K-cup, and pressed the brew button.  The only problem was that I forgot to put a mug on the Keurig to catch the coffee in as it brewed.  Thankfully it wasn't too much of a mess.

The coffee making fiasco only happened once, well nearly twice but I caught myself the second time.  Most of my early morning forgetfulness involves keys, as in, forgetting to put my keys in my pocket before heading out the door to work leaving me locked out of my car and my house.  Fortunately, each time this has occurred, the wife has been home and I had my cell phone with me so that I could call and wake her up to let me back in.

I had another incident with getting locked out of something when I got my current car.  After the car salesman dropped the car at our house, I was checking things out.  Most of my recent vehicles had automatic locks so that you locked the car by pressing a button on your key chain.  This one has good old fashion manual locks.  As you can probably guess, I put the keys down inside the car, shut the door, and locked the keys in the car.  We had to have roadside assistance send out an emergency locksmith Calgary.

Of course, getting locked out of your car or house isn't the only reason you might need a locksmith Calgary.  Our house is getting up there in years.  We had a front door lock that kept sticking.  Sure, we could get in, but it was getting harder and harder to turn the key.  Another problem is that my wife suspected that her sister, who had a spare key, was sometimes visiting our house when we weren't home and helping herself to a thing or two.  So, we ended up changing the lock on the door.

I haven't had any recent bouts with my early morning forgetfulness.  I try to make sure that before I head out the door that I have everything I need before closing the door.  That means patting myself down to make sure I have the keys and the cell phone. Still, my wife still maintains that I am suffering from Craft Disease as I tend to forget some small details of conversations she claims we have had.  At least I haven't locked myself out of anything recently.

San Francisco Bay Coffee

Back in January, I took advantage of some gift cards and cash Christmas present to purchase myself a Keurig coffee maker to replace my little Mr. Coffee 4-cup drip coffee maker.  I really do love the convenience of being able to pop a single K-cup into the brewer to make one cup at a time.  Each cup is brewed fresh, and there is none of that burnt taste that sometimes accompanies a cup of coffee that has been sitting on the heating element of my old Mr. Coffee machine.  Some of my favorite varieties are Tully's Kona Blend, Green Mountain Nantucket Blend, and Dunkin Donuts brand coffee.

The one thing that I do not like about the Keurig coffee maker is the cost of making a cup of coffee.  I usually go to Target to pick up my K-cups.  They have 18 count boxes that usually sell for around $11 or $12 per box.  So, a cup of coffee ends up costing me 60-65 cents per cup.  My local Giant grocery store sells 12 count boxes for around $9 per box, or 75 cents per cup.  So, you can see why I usually go to Target.  I am considering buying a box of 80 from BJ's Club Warehouse for $40 to get my cost down to 50 cents but that is just too much to lay out at one time.

As I mentioned on Sunday, my wife and I drove out to visit our son for a bit.  After our visit, we needed to stop at the grocery store to pick up our weekly groceries.  Since hitting the Giant was going to be much later than my usual grocery shopping trip, I did not want to make two stops by going to Target to pick up my coffee supplies.  I decided to bite the bullet and get a box at Giant by paying a bit more per cup for the convenience of making just one stop for shopping.

During my trip down the coffee aisle, I saw a variety of coffee that I had not seen before, San Francisco Bay Fog Chaser.  They had a 12 pack box for only $6.49, or a little more that 50 cents for a cup.  I figured it was a small price to pay to take a chance on something new for my coffee fix.  I brewed my first cup of it this morning for my commute into work.  I have to say I was quite satisfied.  It is a rich, deep brown brew with a full bodied taste.  Just the way I like it.

There was one other thing that I noticed about the San Francisco Bay coffee.  When I opened the box, I noticed that this was not your ordinary K-cup.  If you are not familiar with K-cups, they are a small shot sized plastic cup of ground coffee with a built in filter.  When you put it into the brewer, a hole is punctured in the top and and bottom.  Water is forced through the top hole and empties out through the bottom for your cup of coffee.

The San Francisco Bay coffee did not have the plastic cup.  Instead, it had the familiar lid and in place of a cup was a sealed filter pouch containing the coffee.  You can see the difference in the picture above.  Upon closer examination of the box, I noticed that the company, The Rogers Family, is very concerned about environmental issues.  They have listed on the box a number of their projects to help improve the environment when it comes to the making and processing of their coffee.

I do not go out of my way to purchase "environmentally friendly" products.  The reason is simple.  Those things usually end up being more expensive.  The San Francisco Bay coffee is an item that is both environmental friendly, and in this case is actually less expensive.  Plus it is a great cup of coffee.  It is going to be one brew that I will be buying on a regular basis.

Good News, Bad News

This may end up being a purely random post, keeping in line with the title of this blog.  There are just a few little things on my mind that I feel like sharing, none of which might be enough to make a whole post on their own.  So, I am going to share a little good news and a little bad news.

First the good news.  I always love the first week of a new diet when I am trying to lose weight.  When I have that mindset to lose weight, I do not feel like I depriving myself.  The great thing about the first week of the diet is  it is the week when I lose the most weight.  Last Tuesday when I posted that I was starting this quest, weighed 228 pounds.  This morning, I weighed in at 220 pounds.  A pretty good start.

A few days ago we had our annual IEP meeting at my son's school.  Since we made the decision, along with his doctor, to cut one of his medications out, he has been doing much better.  He is no longer sleeping in class and he is doing all of his work.  He also has started eating a lot more variety of food, albeit covered in BBQ sauce.  They even told us that he recently ate French toast, with BBQ sauce.  Yuck, but whatever works.

That's pretty much it for the good news, now the bad.  While my son has been doing better at school, he still has some of his behavioral issues like dropping to the floor, hitting others, and throwing things like his shoes and glasses.  When we were at school Thursday his glasses were pretty bent at the hinge. I bent them back into place while we were there.  On Friday, we got an email from the school saying he had thrown them and they were broken at the bridge.  We had to go back out to school on Saturday to give them a spare pair.

I have mentioned before that I hesitate to buy myself things.  I have this phobia that as soon as I splurge on something for myself, then something else will go wrong around the house and I will soon have to scrape up more money.  At Christmas, I had received some American Express gift cards and some cash.  I debated on whether or not to hold on to the money or to buy myself something I wouldn't normally buy myself.  I decided to get myself a Keurig coffee maker.

As luck would have it, last Sunday I went out to do my grocery shopping and other errands with our family car, which is the one my wife uses during the week.  It hesitated a little bit before starting, so I decided to take it up to Advanced Auto Parts to have them check the battery.  The diagnostic test indicated that the battery needed to be replaced, no big surprise as the car has over 85000 miles and it was the original battery.  So I had to replace the battery.

Yesterday, I had our other car while I was out delivering pizzas.  There were a few times that my car had a difficult time starting.  Since the car has almost 90000 miles on it, I took it up to Advanced Auto Parts to check the battery.  The battery checked out as fine which means that there might be something else wrong with it like the starter.  Plus, it recently started making a squeaking noise when traveling at slow speeds. I really need to get my tax info so that I can my refund to get things looked at.

Speaking of spending money, there have been a few things that I really hate buying when I do my weekly grocery shopping.  These items are things that I consider necessities in our daily lives, but I just hate spending money on them.

• Trash bags, I feel like all I am doing is throwing money away.
• Toilet paper, again a necessity, but it is like flushing money down the drain.
• Paper towels are another item that I put in the same category as trash bags.

Ironically, I do not feel the same way about laundry detergent.  I guess because I can usually find a decent brand name laundry detergent at a low price ($3-$4 a bottle) that will last several weeks, where a $6 or $7 pack of toilet paper only lasts a couple weeks.  I guess it is all a matter of perspective.

Related articles

• How to Lose Weight in Five Words (notesfromtheblogusfear.wordpress.com)
• Good News and Bad News (witsblog.org)
• Top 10 Suddenly Frugal Posts for 2011: Number 1 (suddenlyfrugal.com)

I Love Coffee

Image via WikipediaI love coffee, but it hasn't always been that way.  I guess you could say that it was an acquired taste for me.  When I first started drinking hot, caffeinated beverages in the morning, I started with tea.  Drinking tea was an adventure for me.  I really got into trying all of the different varieties of tea available in the grocery store.  My favorites have been Earl Grey and English Breakfast teas. 

Eventually, I moved on to drinking coffee in the morning.  My approach to drinking coffee mirrored my sense of adventure when I went out to discover coffee.  Instead of going with the standard ground coffee that you can get in the grocery stores, I ventured out to the gourmet coffee shops to see the wide variety of coffees available.

I bought myself a nice little coffee grinder and bought my coffee in whole bean format.  Grinding my beans gave me a fresher taste to my morning brew.  I tried all kinds of different coffee; Kona from Hawaii, Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee, coffee from different parts of Africa and South America.  Eventually, I moved on to Starbucks drinks.  This time of year, I love Egg Nog Lattes.  It is a rare treat for me these days, as I have moved back to drinking grocery store coffee.

I have been thinking a bit more these days about going back to more variety in my coffee.  Every now and then while browsing the store shelves, I look at the wide variety of Keurig K-cup coffees that are available and think I would like to get a Keurig machine to replace my little 4-cup Mr. Coffee coffee maker.  Since I am the only coffee drinker in the house, the Keurig machine and the 4-cup Mr. Coffee is perfect for me for the small amount that it makes. 

In addition to the K-cup coffee, I was browsing my local Giant grocery store last week and looking at the variety of coffees that they had available in their coffee aisle.  They had Kona blends, Sumatra blends, different South American and African blends.  They are a little more expensive than the Columbian ground coffee that I have been getting, but not that much more.

I don't think that I will ever go back to grinding my own beans again, but I would like to add some variety back into my coffee drinking.  One of the few things that I would like for Christmas this year would be a Keurig coffee maker.  With their My K-cup filter, I can also use my favorite ground coffee to make a cup as I need them. 

Related articles

• Starbucks offering Keurig K-Cups of select blends (jennstrathman.com)
• Starbucks to have Keurig packages in U.S. grocery stores in Nov. (seattletimes.nwsource.com)
• Green Mountain Coffee Goes Home for the Holidays (fool.com)