In Which Everyone Has A Birthday, And I Get Jer A Present

April is like second Christmas around here. 

There are a ridiculous number of people in my family that have birthdays in April.  There are nine family members that have April birthdays, including Connor and Jeremy. 

I ordered Jeremy's birthday present today.  He already knows what it is as he picked it out, so I feel perfectly fine in sharing it with you.  He's getting a new espresso machine.  A really, really nice espresso machine.

I wasn't about to try and select one of these for him, as I know next to nothing about coffee and he's really particular about the equipment he uses.  Jeremy is just slightly into coffee, and when I say "just slightly," I mean that not only does he roast and grind his own beans (usually setting off the fire alarm in the process), but when he deployed he had his espresso machine shipped to Afghanistan and once a month I'd ship him unroasted beans so that he could continue to make high quality lattes in the middle of the desert. 

I'm sad to say that 120 degree temperatures do not do good things to espresso machines.  Nor does the Afghanistan sand, which the guys call "moon dust," that gets into anything and everything over there.  The last straw was when the poor, much-maligned espresso machine was shipped back from Afghanistan in a cardboard box with no padding.  As a result Jeremy now has to use a wrench to turn the steamer on, and I believe some portions of the machine itself are currently held together with duct tape. 

So I informed him a while back that he'd be getting a new espresso machine for his birthday, and he's spent the last few weeks doing research to figure out exactly what model he wanted.  The one he picked out is about one step below a commercial machine-- it is for serious coffee drinkers.  The good news is it will pay for itself after about six months of Jer making his own Venti Caramel Macchiatos.  It should come in a week or so and he's pretty excited about it.  I'm sure he'll be cranking it up straight out of the box.

Expect to hear more about fire alarms in the near future.

~Jess