October 08, 2002

Coffee distributor

This morning I arrived to work to find that my coffee-ring project had been sabotaged. Everyday I get about one-and-a-half cups of coffee and put them in this Nissan stainless steel flask (no airbags included) from which I dispense coffee throughout the day to a small blue mug. I drink different amounts of coffee each day, rarely drinking a full one-and-a-half cups. Everyday I let the coffee sit in the blue mug and flask and then throw it out the next day by transferring the coffee back into the flask and then refilling it there. When the coffee sits in the blue mug overnight it leaves small rings of dried coffee around the edge of the mug. My first few months of doing this through sheer laziness I found that the patterns this forms are quite pretty and that it makes the coffee taste better each day (it gives it a nice burnt taste). For the last three days I have been trying to form a cool pattern intentionally.

This morning during the blue-mug-to-flask transfer I happened to look down into the flask before emptying it. I saw what looked to be a large bit of dried coffee floating on top. It turned out to be a very large roach that had somehow wandered into the blue mug overnight and drowned. I had to clean out everything and the coffee rings are now reset.

I am guessing that drowning in anything is not fun, especially a small pool that you can't climb out of, but didn't the roach by definition drink some of the coffee right before he died? He looked a little fat when I threw him out, and given his size it looke like the equivalent of me drinking about a gallon of coffee. If he did he was probably too high on life to care about breathing. I threw him outside and the ants out there will probably eat him and absorb some of this very stronge coffee as well - I hope they don't get really psyched and bring my car back to their nest or something.

That's me - distributing coffee down the food chain.

October 8, 2002 05:34 PM