In Which Jeremy Brews Up Trouble, Or Coffee Or Something, And Also I Want A Trained Squirrel

Remember that post I did about Jeremy needing a new coffee machine because his old one broke due to being shipped back from Afghanistan in a cardboard box with no padding?  Me neither.  This is because I blogged about it way, waaaaaaay back in April, and I neglected to research the company I ordered it from.  Turns out this was a bad idea, because they kept claiming it was back ordered and then extending the date it was back ordered to until finally a couple of weeks ago I just canceled our order and got it from someone else.  Anyway, it finally came! 

It's the Rancilo Silvia**, which is apparently some sort of awesome machine but I can't tell you why because I don't know anything about coffee, and when I ask Jer to explain it he always pulls out all of these fancy words, like "first crack" and "pyrolysis" and "chaff," and so I don't know what he's talking about.  Except maybe for that last one, which is what I think happens when your underwear gets pulled all out of whack.  Oh, wait-- that's "chafe." 

Um, anyway I just kind of start tuning him out after a little while and so I haven't actually learned anything about making good coffee, other than the fact that if you roast coffee beans in the house you set off the fire alarm and have to stand up on a chair to take out the batteries before it gives you permanent hearing loss.  I relearn that one about once a week.  Fun times.

So while I've learned all about the inner mechanism of our fire alarms, I haven't learned anything at all about operating the coffee pot, and believe me-- this thing looks like it would involve some sort of advanced degree to operate.  It's got a ton of buttons on the front, with mysterious pictographs that I have yet to decipher.  I'd read the directions, but they're probably in Italian.  Or French.  Or Frenalian or something.  Also I don't care enough about coffee to actually want to learn how to operate this machine, which is why we'll still holding on to the French press. 

We're keeping it because that way when we have guests who drink coffee and Jeremy is gone, I don't have to try and figure out what all the pictographs on the new machine mean.  After having spent four months making Jeremy coffee on the French press when he couldn't get into the kitchen to do it himself, I have totally got pushing that little plunger thing on the top of it down to an art form.  Except when I forget to set a timer and have to sort of guesstimate when the coffee is ready based on color, since I'm not going to taste it.  Also when I forget to heat the water.  It's not really my fault that my French press skills actually suck, though-- Jeremy gave me directions on how to work the press while on extremely large quantities of morphine.  But that's okay, because it gives me the chance to demonstrate my amazing drive-through coffee ordering skills.  I am awesome.

Anyway, Jeremy got this thing set up on the counter in the place of honor, and apparently it makes coffee that is greatly superior to the French press variety, or at least makes it with a lot more noise and button-pushing.  I'm glad that it's finally here, because it means that we can put our enormous drive-through coffee budget into something more productive.  I'm thinking we could use it buy a trained squirrel that could take the batteries out of fire alarms as needed.  Or maybe we could just keep the money and train the squirrel ourselves.  I wouldn't think it would be too hard-- all we'd have to do is fill the fire alarm batteries with birdseed. 

It would totally work.

~Jess


**Yes, we're choosing the American name for our future daughter partially based on the name of a coffee machine.  That was Jeremy's idea.  But I'm sure there are worse ways of picking a name.  Plus we spelled it differently.  We spelled it like the name of the poet who committed suicide by sticking her head in the oven.  That was my idea.

See?  Much better.