Quite some time ago, I came across a Keurig machine at a thrift store. I had been looking for such an item for a while, and had come to believe that I would never find it. But lo and behold, there it was — for just $9.99. It didn’t look exactly like the model that my mother had recently purchased; hers had a tall water reservoir and this one had, well, a little well at the back of the machine. Evidently it was intended to make just one cup at a time, which was fine.
Anyway, I brought it home, cleaned the outside, and descaled the inside (after finding a copy of the manual online). Then I took it to work and set it up next to the K-pod drawer that I had purchased for the department (also at a thrift store) a few years before. It’s also next to three other coffee makers; we have a large department and we do go through a lot of coffee. We’re not permitted to spend department funds on anything food-related, though, so everything we use is either crowdfunded or scrounged from the thrift stores.
We soon found out that this Keurig was, shall I say, a little particular about how it preferred to receive user input. There was a definite order to the steps involved — and if you missed a step or pushed a button out of sequence, you would be arguing with it for a while before you received your cup of coffee.
Pour water, set mug under spout, raise lever, inset pod, lower lever, and lean on the giant “K” button. That should have been simple, but the process often felt complicated. The machine would make some noise, then just sit. And sit. Sometimes you would get a cup of coffee and sometimes you wouldn’t. We did learn that when the big “K” button double-flashed every 30 seconds or so, the machine was actually going to make coffee. To paraphrase part of a rhyme my father used to tell me about a curly-headed little girl, when it was good it was very very good, but when it was bad it was horrid.
In the back of my mind, I wished there were something I could do about it. Lo and behold, just after Thanksgiving I found another Keurig in another thrift store, for $19.99. This one looked sort of like my mother’s, with a large reservoir off to one side. It was called a SmartBrew. I took it back to her house, cleaned it up, and promptly made two mugs of Earl Grey tea (hot) using K-pods she had on hand. Perfect! No issues.
I brought the new machine back to Wisconsin and took it to work as soon as I could. Out with the old, I thought, unplugging the single-cup model and taking it back to my office, and in with the new, hauling the new machine to the kitchen and plugging it in.
The SmartBrew had a lot more buttons — and a video panel. It started up right away. Then it asked to be connected to the wi-fi. And suggested that I download the Keurig app. And wouldn’t make any beverages for me until it had that wi-fi.
Uh-oh.
For context, I need my smartphone to complete the multi-factor authentication process for every piece of software that I use in the course of my job — and I don’t even put my own phone on the university’s wi-fi system. I didn’t want to answer to a network administrator (hi, Matt!) who detected a coffee maker on our network. I did download the app, though, thinking that I would need it later.
Back with the old, I thought, hauling the finicky single-cupper back to the kitchen and plugging it in again, and home with the new, taking the bandwidth-hungry new machine to my car so I could take it home.
For a few weeks I didn’t know where to put it. Then I moved it to my writing desk, next to my iMac, but I couldn’t plug it in there because its cord was too short. For a moment I considered mounting the power strip on the back of my desk so that the cord would reach, but it seemed like a ridiculous amount of work.
Then, while I was in the midst of reorganizing my kitchen this weekend, I suddenly saw the perfect place for the new machine. It meant moving eight glass jars filled with various flours and sugars to the dining room. The best place to put those jars was on the sideboard where the books for the Impossible Read were set up. So I squeezed some items together and created shelf space for the (currently) thirty-two books of the Impossible Read. Then I set up the glass jars on the sideboard. And then I was able to plug in the new coffee maker. Huzzah!
Add water, said a message on the screen. So I filled the reservoir.
Connect to wi-fi, the screen now read. Follow instructions on app.
I would like to say that this was a simple process. I scanned the QR code on the back of the machine three times, checked my Spectrum records for the network password, and entered the password at least two times before it “took.” But in the end, after about half an hour, I had the machine all hooked up with the home network — and I clicked on the “BREW” button in my Keurig app to make my first mug of Green Mountain Nantucket Blend Medium Roast coffee.
Then the SmartBrew registered itself and extended my warranty by an extra twelve months.
It was a good cup of coffee. But then I noticed a new message on the screen.
Software update detected, it read. Machine will restart after installation. And it did.
In fact, if I put my coffee mug in place and insert a k-pod before I go to bed tonight… I can press that “BREW” button in the app and start my next cup before I even get out of bed.
When I haven’t been wrestling with technology, I have been immersing myself in a book I picked up on the university bookstore’s discount shelf on Friday morning. Its title, Morning Altars, intrigued me, and the photography was stunning.
It turns out to be an amazing book that connects Zen and art and creativity as a spiritual practice. And the author has a series of short videos that sum up each chapter of the book. Here’s a video that gives a good overview of the concept. As he mentions, it’s an exercise that allows you to build up a certain tolerance for impermanence.
At first, I told myself that I could read the introduction on the first day and then go through the rest of the book at one chapter per day. After I started getting into the book, my plan began to sound like nonsense. It was a holiday weekend, why couldn’t I just dive in and read the whole book? Why was I being so strict with myself, metering out the book in such tiny portions? So I have been reading a chapter and thinking about it, then watching the corresponding video. Tonight I’m almost through the entire text.
This morning when I walked Monty, I saw a little “fairy ring” in the grass. So I decided to try my hand at making my first altar. I didn’t follow all of the steps, because I didn’t know about them yet, but it was really satisfying just to do the little that I did with arranging the leaves and blossoms that I found.
One of the steps of the altar-making process is to share the altar that you make. So I used this image as my first-ever Instagram post, with the hashtag MorningAltars. I am still trying to figure out how to use Instagram, but when it asked who else I wanted to share the post with, I typed in MorningAltars — and lo and behold, the author did have an account. I shared the photo, and a short while later he put a little heart on my post. So that’s a heartening little human-to-human connection made possible by, of all things, Instagram.
I wonder what natural objects I’ll find tomorrow morning, and what I might make from them?
Knitwise, I added a few more repeats on the Thrifted Stripe scarf; I’m at 41 repeats now and will measure it at 45 to see if that will be enough.
I went through a lot of my stash to see if I could find any little scraps or partial skeins of Plymouth Encore in color 151, but I came up empty. However, I did decide to pull out some nice-looking yarn and match it with patterns.
I have one skein of Trekking Pro Natural in a pale grey (color 1511, oddly enough), and after searching through Ravellry for a while I decided to knit it up in a shawl pattern named Reyna. One Ravelrer who made the shawl added some modifications to use up the entire skein, so I’ll have to go on Rav at some point and make a note of the changes she made.
The other yarn consists of two balls of Sublime (get this) Cashmere Merino Silk Aran. In black. The pattern I really liked was “Cosy knitted hand/wrist warmers” by Joelle Hoverson, but the yarn is worked on two 8-inch circular needles, a technique I have never used. I had better look for a new pattern or commit to learning something entirely new. The wristwarmers do look so nice….
Chocolate Sheep 