Trouble Brewing

It's nearing the end of the year, bringing with it the annual family pile-up of birthdays, anniversary and a little thing we Christians like to call Go Broke for Jesus.

Over the several hundred years Sharon and I have been together - or, counting only this incarnation, forty - we have boiled our gift-giving down to a no-surprises-left policy; unless and until we park one of those bow-topped luxury cars in the driveway, we play it low-key and open.

This year, the score is this: Sharon gets a Mac and an HDTV/DVD combo; I get a single-serve coffee-maker. And therein lies the story.

POWER SOURCE

The aforementioned coffee-maker, a Keurig from Costco, if you must know, makes it waaaaaaaaaaay too easy to overindulge in a substance best consumed in moderation.

Heretofore there were natural impediments to breaking the caffeine piggy-bank: either you had to put on actual clothes and make the arduous 0.10-mile trek to one of about a dozen neighborhood Starbuckses, or you had to indulge in the time-consuming ritual of grinding and brewing a cuppa at home.

No more. With this miraculous machine, you simply pop in a little plastic gizmo, push a button, and in about a minute you enjoy a nearly-perfect cup of coffee.

Since I tend to be a very late-adopter, it's likely you've had one of these units for years, and the awe and wonder I describe is analogous to my discovering how amazing it is to have opposable thumbs. But this is my show, so work with me.

The particular model I got from Costco comes with a grand total of 72 of the little coffee pods, which smokes the 12 that come with the unit elsewhere. This seems like a great value, until you realize that you actually only want three of the 72: a decaf coffee, a hot chocolate and an herbal tea. The other 69 pods contain various varieties of caffeine-laden beverages, the consumption of just one of which can cause me to perform unbelievable feats of strength and stupidity.

But I feel duty-bound to take advantage of the value - especially since there are less fortunate souls in remote parts of the world who went for the twelve-pack and are thus 60 pods short.

So, after unpacking, cleaning and setting up the unit, I brewed my first cup of coffee - a tasty Newman's Own Organic Fair Trade blend. It was so easy to do that I had downed the entire portion before realizing how much caffeine it contained. That, coupled with the Thai tea I had at lunch and the free sample of Red Bull they gave me outside Trader Joe's, gave me enough energy to power a small country.

Now, several days later, as I work through the K-cups that came with my coffee-maker, I feel like Julie Powell, who cooked all of Julia Child's recipes in a year. But at the rate I'm going, it'll take me less than two weeks to exhaust my stash.

At this point I feel good. Invincible, even. I'm negotiating with California Edison to hook myself up to the grid; my contributions will make me wealthy enough to afford a constant stream of caffeination. After a few more weeks of convenient joy-joy beverages, I will be the grid.