Posted by Doug
Fri, 27 Jan 2006 13:30:14 GMT
One of my goals has been to get up earlier. I typically work fairly late into the evening; 12:00am – 12:30am is pretty typical. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve found I need a certain number of hours to function well. So, there’s something of a disconnect between me getting up in the morning and me working late in the night.
Anyway, nobody really wakes up early and easily in the morning. Sadly, it’s our eight-year-old, Josh who has to get up the earliest. So I’ve been getting up with him in the morning and spending some quiet time with him before everyone else gets up.
This morning he was making toast while I was making coffee. My coffee maker is right next to the toaster. It struck me how funny we must have looked to an outside observer. Both of us were kinda shuffling around, each of us taking turns using the same bit of counter space. It struck me as a comical, clumsy, slow dance of the morning.
Posted in Josh, Family | Tags Coffee, dancing, morning | 1 comment
Posted by Doug
Sat, 15 Oct 2005 15:26:51 GMT
It may seem mundane to you, but I’m very excited about my new coffee pot! I got a Mr. Coffee 10-Cup, Black with Brushed Chrome Accents, Thermal Programmable Coffeemaker – ISTX85. It’s one of those appliances I use very regularly, but don’t upgrade very often.
My last coffee maker was one of those freebies from Gevalia (this i the funniest story about Gevalia I’ve read). I really liked that it used a thermal carafe instead of those “warming plates” (aka coffee scorchers). The down side was that it was white plastic and only 8 cups. After years of use, the white plastic parts had become quite stained. Also, it was taking 45 minutes to brew those meager 8 cups! I know I could have run vinegar through it like 100 times to get all the calcification out; but I’m too lazy for that.
This new coffee maker has a chrome carafe; so no stains to worry about. It also has a timer! Seems like a small thing, but it’s very exciting to wake up to coffee already made. Catering to my lazy nature, it’s also got some type of a sensor that tells me when it needs to be cleaned/de-calicfied and then an automatic mode for doing the cleaning. All I have to do is mix up the vinegar solution when it tells me and press a buttong. The one thing I wish it had is a built in grinder. I’m going for the ultimate laziness here! I didn’t want to pay an arm and a leg for it though.
Speaking of which, it’s not every day you get to rip off Wal-Mart. You can see on the web site above that the MSRP for this coffee maker is $59.99. I found it at Target for $56. Wal-Mart had it for $54. However, the “display” unit was labeled as an 8-cup maker for $38. I asked for help from someone and said I wanted the 8-cup version. She looks around and doesn’t see any boxed up, “Sorry, we’re sold out.” So, she let me buy the display unit! I could see boxed versions of “mine” clearly labeled as a 10-cup for $54. But they still let me have it for $38! So I guess the net result is that I got the maker for $16 less and helped push more jobs over to China.
Posted in House | Tags Coffee, Wal-Mart | 2 comments
