Wednesday, January 19, 2005

Half a Cup Short of a Full Cup

If there isn't a law already there should be a law that makes it illegal to operate a coffee machine, in the morning, before one has had a cup of coffee to drink.

I know, I know, it's a Catch 22. How can you operate a coffee machine before having a cup of coffee that the machine produces? It's not fair. Who said laws had to be fair? Laws are there to protect the innocent and the weak and those of us who are incapable of operating a coffee machine without first having coffee in their system.

So there I am, dark thirty, standing in front of the company coffee machine, a machine I've operated a zillion times before. The sequence is as follows:

insert cup
press double
press extra strong
press Pacific Blend
wait for cup to fill
go on merry way.

And that's just what I did...almost:

press double
press extra strong
press Pacific Blend
watch coffee pour into empty space
listen to co-workers ask "Why'd you do that?"
reach into cobweb infested brain for a plausible answer, failing that, any old answer.

The first answer.

The least cobwebby answer.

Well, you see, you have to clear the coffee pipes every once and a while. That's why they have this little plugged up drain thing, to catch the, er, coffee...pipe...effluent. Yes, the coffee effluent from the pipe is important to catch.

Right there.

In the coffee effluent catcher thing.

Meanwhile my automatic functions were as smooth as James Bond sliding a plastic hot cup into the slot and pressing single, regular, Morning Swill. Anything. Just so long as it is hot, brown and in a cup.

Machines. Who needs 'em?

1 comment:

Shalee said...

One should not make breakfast prior to getting a swig of coffee either!

Yesterday I thought I would be the good wife and let my husband sleep in a few extra minutes and start the breakfast routine. I got the coffee part right, believe it or not. I started the water for oatmeal (old fashioned oats thank you very much!), too a cup of joe to the man upstairs, came back down and proceeded to make the oatmeal. Five minutes later I realized that the oatmeal was way too dry and my coffee cup was still sitting in front of the coffee pot, clean and empty.

Lesson learned? Quit being the good wife, selfishly grab those last few minutes of sleep, and let hubby do the breakfast thing.