Dan and I both enjoy our morning coffee. Correction: I enjoy my morning coffee and Dan NEEDS his morning coffee. I tend to wake up full of energy, whereas Dan is in a dense fog until he gets to the bottom of his first cup. We generally spend Sunday mornings together over coffee, lazily reading the paper, while pointing out tidbits of information to each other.
Earlier in our relationship we had a hard time agreeing on a coffee ‘system’ that would work for both of us. I get to work early most mornings and prefer to keep the coffee preparation time to minimum. My usual coffee routing consisted of setting up a drip coffee pot before I went to bed. However, Dan is a bit of a coffee snob and disdains ordinary drip-coffee. He also gets to work a bit later in the day; which allowed him time to refine a labor intensive system involving heating water in a teapot, grinding beans and manually (and slowly) pouring the hot water into a self-designed contraption to get a fresh and strong brew. This system is fine for someone who has time and patience in the morning; and I have neither.
After a few years of compromises and experiments with other coffee brewing solutions, we achieved a coffee detente. Christmas of 2012 I put two packages under the tree for Dan: one containing a Keurig cup coffee maker and another with a sample-pack of Keurig cups. As I opened my gift FROM Dan imagine my surprise to find almost the exact same thing in a slightly different brand. A gift of the Magi moment (without the tragedy). Since Dan had, very characteristically, put much more thought and analysis into his purchase, I returned the Keurig, and we have since enjoyed two years of excellent (if somewhat expensive and non-eco-friendly) coffee.
This morning the machine quit working. I put in the disc as usual and pressed the button and was rewarded with a horrible mess of coffee grounds and coffee–most of which was NOT in my coffee cup. I ran out to the local coffee shop and returned with two steaming cups just as Dan announced that he fixed the machine–at least temporarily.
At least we will know what to get each other for Christmas this year.