Track number seven, on disk two, of the soundtrack of my life has no lyrics or musical instruments, but it is music to my ears. It is the sweet, gentle purr of my coffee grinder taking care of business. Imagine my dismay when pressing the button on my grinder produced a horrifying silence.
Fortunately, it was just circumstances playing a cruel joke on my sleep deprived mind. I pressed the button again and was rewarded with a symphony of coffee grinding sound.
Last week I experimented with Folger’s Coffee Singles. Other than the coffee tasting really bad, it was a success. So, I tracked down my coffee grinder, brewing device, left-over filters, and went shopping for beans. After a trip to the mall (we didn’t just go for beans), I was ready to begin my education, as the brew-master. First I did some research. I looked into grind quality (course v. fine), water temperatures, and bean to water ratios. I settled on a fine grind (widely preferred for drip methods of brewing – as I would be employing) and four tablespoons of beans per cup. If you are familiar with coffee brewing you know that four tablespoons is an awful lot of beans for one cup. And you know what? It is.
Adam has been sick the last few days, and this has meant we’ve had fewer hours to sleep. Sunday was my crash, the day when consecutive nights of little sleep caught up with me. It was beginning to look like we picked the wrong morning to go to church. It was then that I decided on my bean to water ratio. Several of the serious coffee drinkers on the web suggested two tablespoons of beans per cup, but I kept thinking of my Jolt Cola inspired, twice the sugar added, Kool-Aid concoctions from my childhood.
Twice the coffee beans are the same as twice the sugar in Kool-aid, right? No, it isn’t.
Hopped up Kool-Aid may help children defy gravity for a little while, but it can’t touch the toe curling experience of putting down a strong cup of coffee. Quite by accident, I learned that my cup of Super Joe also makes a superb engine degreaser. This morning I tried it with just two. Despite the inherent advantages of having engine degreaser on hand in an office setting, I think I may stick with just two from now on.
I’ve decided that it’s not a good idea to take pharmaceutical grade caffeine on a regular basis. However, a single cup of merely mortal coffee isn’t doing the trick either. Enter John’s official “hair-brained scheme of the day.”
The idea goes something like this,
Pills deliver too much too quickly and a cup of joe (as brewed by my office mates) delivers too little too slowly. So, I’ll brew my own special blend. However, being a frugal civil servant I don’t want to invest in the kind of capital that self-brewing “right” will require. So, I’ll do a little experimentation on the cheap with “Folger’s Coffee Singles.”
My little false start can be blamed on the marketing folks at Folgers. The color green generally means “go.” It’s the color of springtime, of fresh new beginnings, and of growth. Red on the other hand means “stop.” It’s the color of warning, of danger, and of “turn around and go back.” When I’m tired, or in other words, when I most need coffee as God intended, I gotta go with the green baby. It’s go time. Only, it wasn’t, not with a “green” coffee single. In Folger speak, green means DECAF. You know how I feel about decaf, so I’ll spare you the censored obscenities. Fortunately I noticed my error before I left the house.
Which means I’ve probably used up my quota of good fortune for the week. Good thing it’s Friday.
At work I took my little red packet of magic, read the instructions, then did something else entirely. No, I didn’t rip open the package and swallow the grounds whole. The instructions called for soaking the bag of grounds for fifteen seconds. So, I figured a minute and a half sounded about right.
So far, so good. I’ve never been so fleet of finger on the keys.
You are filling your coffee mug from the tap at your office, when you smell a distinct metallic odor. Do you:
a. dump out the water in your mug and seek another source;
b. stick your nose in your partially filled mug to determine if the smell is coming from the water;
c. put your mouth under the tap to see if it tastes like metal too; or,
d. pretend you never smelled anything and finish making your cup ‘o joe?
If you answered “c” or “d,” you are what people in the life insurance industry refer to as “bad business.”
If you answered “d,” then I’d like to offer you a cup, the smell of lead lends a wonderful bouquet to your average cup o’ joe.
After exhaustive research, experimentation, and countless case studies, I’ve concluded that longer delays rinsing your coffee mug – do not always result in increasing cleaning difficulties. There’s a point at which the graph plotting “wait time” and “cleaning effort expended” flattens out – a little something I like to call “The Procrastinator’s Payoff Effect.” This effect is punctuated by the “Oh F&%# It Point,” where the diminishing return on diligence is most pronounced. Studies show that the O.F.I. Point is typically reached anywhere between 18 and 24 hours (depending on atmospheric conditions), when the remaining coffee slurry is almost fully cured.
Once again my tireless efforts have proven the obvious, at almost no expense to you, the reader. No thanks are necessary.
There are some circles where this is generally not true (there’s a circle around my house, for example). However, there are a few narrowly defined areas where cleaning – especially with commercially available solvents – is taboo. I’ve heard that there are families where the unwashed spaghetti sauce pot is an heirloom, passed from generation to unwashed generation. What I want to know is if the same can hold true for a coffee mug? The way I see it, an office coffee mug is barely worth it’s weight in Cascade if you can’t determine it’s age like an old tree.
I’m always b****ing and moaning about being tired. At my optimal bedtime I usually say to myself, “I’m just going to read one more article.” Uh, yeah, sure you will. Pretty soon two hours have passed, and I’m good and f***ed.
Tomorrow I’ll no doubt be up at my normal time, engaging in my latest hobby – coffee slurping. I’m working on a wicked tough patch of scar tissue on my tongue from repeated scalding. I figure by this time next year I’ll be able to boil spaghetti on my tongue without flinching (I still haven’t thought of how I can overcome the obvious capacity problem though). Of course all of this begs the question, “what the f*** are you still doing up writing this c**p?”
Just adding insult to injury baby! Throwing caution to the wind! Living for the moment! Carpe diem!
Sounds like I should be having a really good time. Sounds like I’ve really got this staying up late thing completely screwed up.
S***, are we out of coffee?
Seriously, are we out of coffee? That’s not even funny. Tragic, but not funny.
I got to work this morning and had some caffeine. I would tell you that I sat down and enjoyed a morning cup of joe, but I’d feel dishonest. We all know that coffee is just a delivery device for caffeine anyway, so,. After some morning “go” juice I was clipping away at a healthy pace, whistling while I worked. You walk through a state office building and see how many people are whistling. There’s no surer sign of mental illness. Ah, but you see, it wasn’t THAT kind of whistling. I’ve got this nagging cough, with accompanying irritated airways; a holdover from three weeks of fighting the good fight against all sorts of viral and bacterial invasions. If you must know, it’s driving me a bit batty.
Flash back to two years ago. I was talking to a nurse at my allergist’s office about my then (as now) nagging cough. She said that some of their patients took the occasional, as needed, puff on their “rescue” inhaler. This sometimes alleviated their cold related symptoms. She didn’t recommend doing it all of the time, but she reassured me that a couple of hits wouldn’t kill me.
Flash forward to the present. I’ve got this nagging cough that’s a real downer man. That visit to the allergist came to mind, so I decided to give it a shot.
First off, let me bring you up to speed on “rescue” inhalers. It’s a metered aerosol spray that you suck through your mouth and into your airways. It is prescribed for people with asthma, or people like me that occasionally have undesirable reactions to allergy shots. “No Mr. Kauffman, the shots are not supposed to turn your throat into a woodwind instrument.” Your garden variety “rescue inhaler” is a stimulant that works almost instantly, absorbing into the tissues in your airways. Picture caffeine, chopped up into a fine powder, and snorting it; that’s how it feels to suck on a “rescue” inhaler. Think instant go. Now imagine that you had already taken your daily dose of caffeine, and then took a puff on that inhaler. That’s some soak your pants in gasoline, light ’em up, and get up and go!
I just hope I don’t need any fine motor control this morning.
Alternate title: “Is this blog becoming a treatise on substance addiction?”
What’s faster than Crash Bandicoot, produces more energy than a stray match at your local propane refilling station, and is more excitable than a cat stuck in the dryer? What if you were a little anxious about going to work this morning, then you proceeded to drink two cups of coffee, two glasses of iced tea, and topped it off with a diet crashing Twix bar? What if your tolerance for such things was lower than a Mormon at his first frat party?
“I’d like to buy another cup, and live in harmony,”
Falling from the wagon can hurt so much, but oh it hurts so good.
Do you know someone who has a disgusting coffee mug? Don’t we all know someone who refuses to take their mug home to wash it? Are there offices at work you are afraid to enter, for fear that you will be sucked into the dark coffee ring of oblivion? Well I think it’s high time the coffee makers of America step up and take some responsibility. They got us into this mess with their deceptively addictive product. They could take a lesson from the Dutch and institute a mug trade in program. The unwashed, coffee drinking masses of America could trade in their dirty, disease ridden mugs for cleaner, sterilized mugs.
Think of the benefits to the rest of us. Coffee drinkers would reap the benefits of better overall hygiene. Employers would benefit from healthier, more productive employees. Employees would be less afraid to “borrow” office supplies from their coworker’s desks, no longer afraid that they may become contaminated. This sharing of resources would, in turn, simultaneously increase productivity by decreasing operating costs, and stimulate the economy through the increased sale of personal security devices (desk locks, etc).
A mug trade in program.
The right choice for coffee drinkers.
The right choice for America.