Yesterday I had a bad coffee day. I didn’t get a chance to make my usual morning coffee at home, so I decided to make some at work. The only grind I had sitting around at work was an “espresso” grind. The packaging actually says it should work in all coffee makers, but, it is a very fine grind.

So, after loading up the coffee maker with 10 cups worth of grind and water (figured I’d share), I let it run. I let everyone know that the coffee was brewing, and then after 30 mins went back to check on it. It was everywhere. Everywhere except in the coffee pot. It appears as though the grind was not letting the water through fast enough, so it overflowed over the basket - getting all over the outside of the pot, the coffee maker, the counter, the cabinets and the floor. Now keep in mind, I still haven’t had any coffee - so cleaning this up was especially effortfull.

Meh.

In the afternoon I was reminded that I had a secret stash of coarse grind for my french press. I brewed that and, although it didn’t result in a disaster, didn’t result in very good coffee.

Brent brought in a nice baggie of starbucks today. He threw it at me, and thankfully the ziplock held. We’ll have to save it for a rainy day (or Friday), as I brewed some pumpkin spice at home and brought it in.

A few days ago a rep from Rockstar energy drinks was in our office giving out product. Everyone I knew was taking several samples (especially Mr. NeoGeek, with his SuperDrink Mentos Power Punch) - so I grabbed some too.

I tried the low-carb, then the diet. They’re okay, but I never really cared for the super drinks for their taste. Today I tried the non-diet Juiced Guava. This one is 70% juice, so it actually had a kind of natural consistency, and wasn’t ultra carbonated. It was pretty high in calories (I think like 180 for the 2-serving 16 oz. can) - but also high in CaFfEinE!

To top it off, I found some of my leftover biking Clif bars in a drawer this morning, so I had the caffeinated Peanut Toffee Crunch clif bar along with the rockstar, making a clifrock snack. I was doing a lot of high action activities, like sitting in meetings and writing code - so I needed all the zap I could get. It was fantastic, everything was vibrating.

Mrmmmph. This happens every year, right around this time. Summer is over, biking is over, sunlight is over. There is little daylight, and my internal clock just won’t reset. Maybe it will improve when we change the clocks at the end of the month.

So, right now my day starts after I put the kids to bed. It is dark out, and I am ready to go. So, I do some work, watch TV, have some snacks, and then bang! It is like 2am. So I force myself to go to sleep, knowing that full well I should get up at 6am.

Well, it doesn’t get light out until like 7:30, so, I can’t get up. 7:30 rolls around and I am already late, need to get up, get cleaned up, make breakfast, pack lunch, wake up my daughter, get her ready to leave, leave. We are supposed to leave at 8 - but lately it has been 8:20, takes 20 minutes to get her to school, where she arrives late at 8:40.

And then I get to go to work. Must have coffee.

After work we’ve got activities almost every night of the week. So, either run home and make dinner then go, or sometimes they have dinner there. Then get home late, put the kids to bed and start all over.

artwork is ColdRain by Skybase

I’m part of a small team that is part of a larger team which in turn, is co-parts of a sub-small team and is divided between the two teams. In any case, there are three of us and we have to share pager duty.

One of the joys of pager duty is being called at 4am on Sundays so that we can identify that we should in fact not have been called, and who in fact, should have been called.

The other joy is that when on pager duty, it is your responsibility to provide coffee on Friday morning. This usually consists of a box of coffee from either Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, and sometimes involves some type of baked good, like banana bread, muffins or donuts.

In my recent plight recently to spend less money, I brought in an extra coffee maker and finally got around to trying it out this Friday. I brought in some Starbucks grinds and a pint of half and half. We have a store of sweeteners, cups and stirrers from all the previous Fridays. I brewed up a pot, and here were the results.

It came out tasting like Starbucks coffee! Yay me!

I did have several technical issues though. Starbucks needs to brew strong, they call for two tablespoons of grind per “cup.” This is twice the amount of most other coffees. The filter basket is just not meant to hold that much - so I either make less coffee, or risk grind overflow. I risked it - made a full 12 cups.

So, had a good sludge of grinds at the bottom of the pot. Everyone had to make a comment on it of course, at least most of the comments were after I had my caffeine. My friend made use of the goo and fed it to his plant. He asked if I wanted it for my plant, which has been dead for quite a time, and I didn’t think it would help.

Later in the day I made a second pot just to prove that it was so much cheaper to do it yourself that I could do it twice a day. This time I cut it down to 10 cups, but the grinds were still pretty close to the top of the filter - still had the same issue. Next time I’ll cut it down to 8 and see how it does. Alternatively, we could use a different brand of coffee with normal measurement requirements.