On Coffee

I've been a sort of coffee fiend for the past few days. Not that I'm a stranger to caffeine or anything-- I mean, you show me an EE major who's made it this far without the help of heavy stimulant use and I'll show you a failing liar. Here on campus, though, coffee isn't exactly as free and available as you'd think...

• Coffeehouse coffee costs too much for the flavor and benefit received. I guess it's because they insist on using "Free Trade" coffee that tastes like foot and is grown in the second world rather than third world. Besides, I've totally spent all my Tetra points on $6 smoothies and sexual favors from Joel Hernandez. Nothing like a Caribbean Way and a hummer to help me chug through some optics homework.
  
• Some department offices-- like the ECE Department office-- have a coffee machine or two adorning the halls. But not only do I avoid professor offices like the plague but the coffee that inhabits these particular pots looks like it was brewed during the Warren Commission hearings.
• There's always the serveries for early morning coffee but again, taste is an issue. And it's only served in the mornings. As if those weren't deterring factors, though, realize that unless you wake up at the asscrack of breakfast time you will NOT get any coffee. I have this sneaking suspicion that the big fat pot o' coffee sits out for no more than three seconds before some archaic dinosaur of an RA picks it up with both of his calloused hands, raises it three feet above his head, and pours the entire thing down his gullet. He then looks over at the kitchen staff with an evil glare and dares them to make more. Frightened and unmotivated by their wage, they just don't make any more coffee.

Obviously there must be a solution to this dilemma. After all, if Kyle can't get moderately priced and delicious coffee on demand at any hour... I shudder to think of how bad my grades would be. If only there was some small machine that could keep in my room along with a fresh supply of flavored beans and sugar...

Enter the BrewStation Deluxe 12-Cup Personal Coffee Maker.


My suitemate Sage has had this delicious, sub-$100 chunk of God's Glory for the entire year. Foolishly, though, I had been resorting to the channels above to get my shit amped. Now there is a better way.

I asked him the other day if he wouldn't mind me moving the coffee machine from his side of the suite to mine. He said it really wasn't a problem, seeing as the relic used to be tucked away behind a papasan and was next to impossible to use. It didn't have an outlet nearby. It was shamed. I brought it out into the open air of my common room and did it some well-deserved justice.

The other caffeine fiends of the APC have taken note to this new and convenient life dispenser. I can't walk three feet in any direction before Julie and Lea are latched onto my pale and embarrassingly out-of-shape calves, begging with the cold gaze of so many junkies for me to make one more pot o' java.

I guess the question now-- with me going off campus and all-- is if I'm willing to make the investment in the ULTIMATE coffee maker for my apartment. Should I get an espresso maker too? Should it be a dispenser or a classic pot-style machine? Should it have a cold brew option?

OMG LIVING ON MY OWN IS CRAZY BALLS.