Prairiecrow's InsaneJournal

You might remember my tale of WOES about our good ol' coffee maker going feet-up, requiring us to buy a new and less spiffy coffee maker.

Well, yesterday George decided to clean the carafe of the old coffee maker (which was presumably still good). We'd been storing it in a box in the hallway (with all the other boxes from my mom's place), so he dug it out of that -- along with the rest of the coffee maker. He poured in water, fired it up, and let it drip through.

It did. Flawlessly.

He did it again.

Again, perfect performance.

So he made a pot of coffee with it.

It worked like a dream.

So now our "dead" coffee maker is back and it's absolutely FAH-bulous. (And for the record, it definitely makes a better pot of coffee than its successor, which is sitting neglected but hopeful on the counter behind it.)

...

Stupid technology. :-P

The new coffeemaker is in da house -- George just got home with it about an hour and a half ago. It came with a cute little orange card that said "Please Wash Me with warm, sudsy water before using!", so we did, and lo and behold it actually makes a decent pot of coffee.

However, compared to our old coffeemaker, it appears... well, a bit fragile and ricketty. It has a lot more moving parts, ie: more stuff to break. The old coffee maker was a solid state marvel. If this new one lasts a year I'll be pleasantly surprised. But for $34.99, what more can you really expect?

I'm managing to get work done, albeit slowly. But I've been absolutely horrible as far as my eating schedule -- eating too much and at intervals shorter than four hours. When I'm in the lighter stages of depression eating brngs comfort, so... yeah. *embarassed shrug* I'm going to try to exercise around 8 pm but I'll have to see how my body feels.

Back to work, and trying not to think of the fresh juicy apples in the kitchen fruit bowl.

After we got back from dinner I made a few phone calls and found a Black & Decker 8 cup thermal coffee maker at London Drugs for the unheard of price of $34.99 -- AND they were willing to put one on hold for us, which amazes me because it's their door crasher special this week.

London Drugs is a quite a distance away, in the south end of the city, but it's on a major thoroughfare and the buses run regularly. Either George or I will go down there tomorrow afternoon and pick it up.

George thinks he might be able to get our current thermal carafe coffee maker working again, but I honestly wouldn't trust it.

So, yay -- new coffee maker. I feel a bit better about the day now. I don't think I'll be getting any real work done but at least I accomplished something.

(Oh, and I picked up a copy of the latest Discover magazine at the Shell gas station on our way home. When I'm feeling low it always perks me up. I don't know why. It just does.)

... and now it looks like our coffee maker might be going feet-up. When I first tried to use it today, it kept shutting off after about ten seconds of drip. Now it's dripping, but REALLY slowly. And it's making more "chuffing" sounds than it usually does.

There might also be more steam coming off the top than usual, but I generally turn it on and leave the kitchen, so I honestly can't say.

Goddammit.

EDITED TO ADD: Yep, that "more steam" indicates trouble. When I checked how much water had dripped through, it was about one quarter of what I'd put in. Looks like the heating element might be running too high.

Well, now I know what I'm doing tomorrow: going out and getting a new coffee maker, since this one is about three years old and the warranty is long gone. Pity. It was a wonderful coffee maker and I don't think they sell them anymore.