LadyGypsy.net – the blog of Kimberly Dowd of New Jersey

Not long after I moved into my deeluxe apartment in the sky, I bought a Black & Decker Home Cafe single-serving coffee maker. It used teensy pods and could brew a small, medium or large size cup of coffee. I loved it to bits and pieces. Then it broke.

So we (by then “I” became “we”) went to Bed, Bath & Beyond and, saddened that the Home Cafe was discontinued, bought a Senseo single-serving coffee maker. I didn’t love it as much, because it took longer to heat up the water and only brewed a 4 oz or an 8 oz cup (four ounce cup? Seriously? Who drinks only 4 ounces of anything?). I’d have to cycle it twice to fill my 12-oz travel mug. Plus, it was too small to accommodate that travel mug so I had to brew my coffee into my Pyrex measuring cup and then pour it into my mug.

After commisserating on the coffee issue, WM found a Home Cafe model on eBay. We bought that one & put the Senseo away. Life was good again and I had my mug filled in very little time and only one cycle.

‘Til one day my coffee tasted like burned dirt and melted rubber. The Home Cafe broke. The Senseo returned to the counter, and the stupid Pyrex measuring cup returned. To fill both our mugs for after-dinner coffee, we had to use 2 pods and go through 4 brew cycles.

This week, we did some thinking and realized that we could probably save money and time by ditching the pod system altogether and brewing a real POT of coffee.

Now meet the newest man in my life: Mr. Coffee:

Allo. I weel wake you up good tomorrow, yes?

It makes 12 cups of coffee in a 12-minute brew cycle. Plus, it’s programmable so I can set it to start brewing at 7:45 so I’ll be able to fill my mug at 8 to head out.

The coffee is a LOT stronger than the pods we’re used to, so we’re in the process of determining exactly how much we need to put into the pot.

Yes, Virginia, this is why I have a blog. To detail the boring minutiae of my life and to document that it has taken me 37 years to own a proper adult coffee pot.

The houseplants are staring at me…

I always feel like somebody's watching me...

Inspired by the plant that’s growing so quickly it will eventually eat my television, I drew eyes in Photoshop, taped the printouts to drinking straws and shoved them into the pot. I think this is about as “crafty” as I get.

Hey, guess what? I went to the gym THREE times in the last week. Wednesday, Friday & yesterday. Yesterday I started out on the elliptical machine and after 5 minutes, I had enough and had to switch to the treadmill. Remember when I could do 30 minutes on the elliptical? So do I. It’s pretty depressing. Stupid blog with its stupid deep archives.

Anyway, I did 5 on the elliptical, 20 on the treadmill, 10 bicep curls, 10 knee lifts (my knees sound like Rice Krispies when I do those) and 10 crunches. Tiny numbers, but I can’t wait to see them grow.

Can’t remember what I dreamed of last night, sadly.

Can I tell you about what a great weekend I was GOING to have?

We were going to go to the Xponential festival on Saturday, where we would have basked in the sun all day and taken in They Might Be Giants, among other neat bands.

And yeah, I said neat. They are neat.

Then today, we were going to have our usual Sunday breakfast at Starbucks, followed up by food shopping and I was going to bake the best from-scratch cupcakes ever. Chocolate cupcake, peanut butter frosting and Reeses’ cups level of good.

Given I had only baked cupcakes from scratch ONCE, these would have been guaranteed to be the best ever!

There would have been pictures galore of everything, taken with our nice GOOD camera. Perhaps even a nice new picture of me to replace Hostess whatever and my Facebook photo.

But alas, t’was not to be.

I started feeling sick on Friday and declined into a fevery stupor for the rest of the weekend.

Can’t go out and sit in 90-degree weather in full sun when you have a fever. (Well, I can’t…dunno about you.) Can’t bake cupcakes unless you want to infect your friends and loved ones.

So here is the only picture of what looked to be (through my window at least) the perfect summer weekend.

Not pictured: Zicam nose swabs & QVC’s Christmas in July 2-day spectacular.

At least I have off Tuesday & Wednesday to make up for my craptastic weekend.