happy new tethered fuel tank cap day imaginary constructs!
thank you for your service factory installed fuel cap last seen at the gas station on crossville highway. we traveled enough miles together to have commuted back and forth to devil's tower, fifty-four times. you will be missed
this week's intrusive craving has been a mission burrito in the mission
during my rambles, i've eaten most of three pints of foraged wild blackberries straight from the cane, and i have fine thorny scratches up my arms and legs to show for it
i learned that in the mirror world they might actually say "knuckle-butty"
last night, i dreamt i was drinking a cup of coffee and experienced the sense of taste in a dream for the first time ever. it was bad diner coffee, and i marveled at the badness of it in my dream, and when i awoke
the heat dome descended on us this morning. i'm not sure how long its meant to last
on monday, i'm getting new brakes. i plan on celebrating with a drive up a winding mountain road in the near future
There are new people in the office--and at least one of them seems to be confused about the etiquette for the office coffee machine. The coffee at the office is critical when you need it--but it's not really supposed to be a luxury.1 Nobody expects perfection. But you can take some basic steps to make sure it's as pleasant as practical for everybody involved. It's not terribly hard.
If you finish the pot, do not make another pot (unless it's before 10 am, in which case it would be the decent thing to do). Those of us who drink coffee at 3 pm are addicted, obsessed, or compulsive. (I've hit the trifecta of distinct, coffee-related vices.2) If you finish the pot at 1:00 and immediately make another pot, it could sit on the burner for an hour and a half deteriorating before anybody tries to drink it. (In the case of the standard diner-style carafe on a burner, the deterioration consists of the coffee simultaneously burning and cooling. So you end up with something that is both too bitter from sitting on the heating element too long and somehow also luke-warm.) The rule for 3 pm coffee is that the person who wants 3 pm coffee 1) makes a fresh pot, and 2) notifies the people who need to be notified3 that there's a fresh pot of coffee.
In light of this, there is absolutely no reason not to finish the coffee pot. If you leave enough coffee in the carafe to fill one eighth of one cup, you're not avoiding the obligation to make a new pot. All you're doing by leaving the last few sips is making it obvious to the next person that you were trying to dodge the perceived obligation to make another pot. Just finish it. That way the next person can thing, (the pot is empty. I'll make another* instead of the pot is empty. And one of my coworkers is a jerk.
It's a bit like the office restroom in that sense. ↩︎
Somebody is going to say something like, "Dan, lighten up. It's just coffee. You don't need to have so many feelings about it. Go out and change the world instead of fretting about coffee on the internet." This will not be somebody who drinks much coffee. My response? You wouldn't understand. You don't know me. You're not my mom. (Incidentally, if somebody can figure out a proper way to format a footnote to a footnote, I'd appreciate it. I would like to clarify that for any of you who are my mom, you do know me, and you're also not asking me to lighten up because you understand that some of us have some feelings about coffee. ↩︎
If you're making the coffee at 3 pm, you know who the others are. It's not quite as obvious as cocaine sniffles or heroin trackmarks. But we know eachother. I think it's something in the eyes that's a bit dead and a bit too alive. ↩︎
