Morning Dilemma

brian — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 17:24:43 +0000

Even though I embrace change, I sometimes worry about unnecessarily upsetting my routine.

In order to make things run smoothly around the house, I have adopted a fairly regular morning ritual. I need to leave the house by a specific time in order to avoid certain hassles on my commute.

This means I have planned out the proper wakeup time and do as many things as possible the night before. If I have to load my iPod or make my lunch in the morning, I run the risk of throwing everything else off kilter.

But I have one change which could make or break everything. I could significantly improve my morning experience or make my ride to work intolerable.

I think I need a new travel mug.

Last summer, I acquired a new coffee delivery system. My old travel mug had been through the ringer – I drove up the street with it sitting on top of the car more than once – and I found a good deal on a mug which would benefit a good cause.

The new mug fit perfectly into my cup holder and kept the coffee warm for the proper amount of time. The opening did not lead to any spillage problems. I had it made.

But over the past few months, I have just not felt right. I have now used a metal travel mug for I don’t know how many years. I keep seeing other kinds of mugs while shopping, opening my eyes to the possibilities out there.

Let’s face it – metal travel mugs aren’t the nicest looking things sometimes. Could I look cooler (OK, I’m not cool now, but let’s just roll with it) if I changed to a new travel mug? Is my metal mug ruining the environment? Does the style of mug really make a difference?

I think “No” would serve as a proper answer to all of those questions, but I still want to make a change. I think I have convinced myself that the metal mug has altered the taste of my coffee.

This, of course, sounds completely absurd, but when I want to justify an important change in my life, absurdity will probably have to come into play at some point. Millions of people use travel mugs with a stainless steel interior, but only mine makes the coffee taste funny once in a while. Yeah, right.

Still, I soldier on. For some reason, I feel like I need to switch to one of those white ceramic-type mugs that can look like a plastic cup. But I need to do some research on their durability.

For all of my problems with my current travel mug style, I did manage to drive almost two blocks with my old mug on top of the car and only lost the handle when it finally fell off the roof. Do the folks making these trendy, eco-friendly mugs take idiots like me into consideration when assessing the durability of their product?

Questions like that one force me to take my time on this decision. I put a lot of work into nailing down my morning schedule. I don’t need to ruin it because I had to clean up shards of my coffee mug from the street.

Coffee Panic

brian — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 13:59:03 +0000

I thought I had planned everything perfectly. I scheduled two days off for the beginning of March Madness and the NCAA wrestling tournament.

If I went into work on those days, I would have no motivation so I figured I might as well just spend the time in our basement watching TV and relaxing.

For 24 hours, the plan worked perfectly. I had a wonderful day on Thursday bouncing between online updates and the action on my TV. I chatted with friends and managed to not worry too much about my brackets.

When Friday rolled around, I had everything planned out. Basketball didn’t start until a little afternoon, leaving me time to enjoy the early wrestling action when it kicked off at 10:30.

Before that, Maria and I could catch up on the Thursday night comedies we had recorded. I got up at a reasonable hour, grabbed the last cup of the coffee she had made earlier and settled into my spot on the couch. Nothing could stop me, or so I thought.

After one show and one cup of Joe, I decided to brew another pot. We drink half-caffeinated coffee in the morning, but I needed some of the real stuff if I wanted to achieve my goal of doing nothing productive for the rest of the day.

I put the grounds in the filter. I put the filter in the basket. I filled up the machine with water. I plugged the machine in and went into the other room while the coffee brewed. When I returned a few minutes later, panic set in.

The pot was still empty. I checked the plug, and then made sure I had the machine turned on. I hadn’t screwed up that way. Maria and I pushed things and looked quizzically at the empty pot. We had no idea what happened, but we knew one of our greatest fears had come true.

The coffee maker died.

We do have backup plans in place, but I had kind of denied this day would ever come. I guess I didn’t want to deal with the reality of needing a cup of coffee and finding that my main method of satisfaction had quit on me.

I immediately gained a great deal of interest in the errand Maria had asked me to run earlier that morning. I knew that plenty of places on the outside could satisfy my craving while I mulled over what kind of new coffee maker we could get.

So many options now exist. We didn’t have to settle for your run of the mill plain coffee maker. In the end, we did because I’m cheap, but I got to experience the thrill of imagining how our lives would change if we had some fancy machine to brew one cup at a time.

In the end, that merely added some excitement to one of my favorite weekends of the year. I ran the errand, got my coffee, check out coffee makers and still made it home in time to catch all of my sports on television.

I will definitely take those two days off again next year, but I think I might make an emergency coffee backup plan just in case. I like to learn from my mistakes.

Coffee – Regular Guy

Morning Dilemma

Coffee Panic