Coffee

Coffee

It’s a wond’rous thing, the use of an apostrophe to replace a single character. I mean, come on, it’s the same number of characters! So what did you gain by replacing the “e” with the “‘”. And try and make sense of the ‘ and the ” when it comes to quotes!

Well, now that we’re suitably charged up, upset, angry or otherwise agitated, let’s calm ourselves and talk about the thing, that cause, that wonderful concoction that helps us hang on. Yes, tea.

Eh? No! Coffee! More coffee!

Tea, has its place. In the afternoon, maybe. In the morning, I’m afraid, we need coffee.

We are not royal, and we are amused. Quite easily, we may add. We are SloWord and LeggieLefty, and we need coffee in the morning.

Previously

We have chatted about our coffees, and the ladies of the household who brings us everyday our daily coffee.

In this episode, we introduced you to them, their characteristics and their efficiency. Among them is Syntia. The boxy, efficient Syntia who did espressos, coffees, cappuccinos without breaking too much of a sweat.

We also talked about the crisis that unfolded in the household when Syntia decided she needed a spa vacation, in this episode

Since then, we’ve watched anxiously as she aged perceptibly and demanded more and more spa vacations. She became forgetful, chewing up beans and then forgetting to convert those beans into coffee.

Eventually, we had to make some decisions. She arrived into the household in 2011, a dozen years ago and many a time and oft had she provided us with coffee.

And, as she neared retirement, we initiated The Succession Plan.

The Succession Plan

The rising cost of Syntia’s service was chiefly in her spa vacations and the quantity of beans she chewed up per coffee. As we mentioned above, she would grind up the beans and then dementia would strike and she’d forget to use the powder she had just created to produce the thing she was designed to do, viz. produce a dark liquid that helped us wake up and be irresponsibly responsible and functioning adults.

We are not known for impulse. In fact, we are famous for being comatose and forgetful, so The Succession Plan remained, for many months a mere talking point. As happens, the talking points slowly and steadily morphed into Idle Research.

Idle Research

Every once in a while, we would search Google with keywords like “best automatic espresso machines” and read with unbated breath the articles that came up. These research moments usually happened when we were sitting down to work on the 5 novels we are supposed to be working on.

In fact, the impulse to work on the novels was a sure fire trigger for research. Slowly, the same names kept coming up and inserting themselves into our consciousness, or unconsciousness. (Note: “we”, “our” “us” and other plurals refer to the two co-authors of this site, SloWord and LeggieLefty).

As the months passed, the research narrowed down into two contenders.

Results

It all came down to the wire. Did we need a wifi-enabled coffee machine? Did we need a touchscreen? An app?

As an ex-techie, we are horribly wifi-phobic. We believe wifi is the work of the a satanic cult of engineers with a morbidly deranged view of “user friendliness” and UX. With their settings and their incomprehensible settings driven off the need to provide a UX so terrible that grown men, used to techiness are moved to tears, these engineers continue to thrive, in some horrid dystopian nightmare.

As far as Bluetooth is concerned, we believe it to be the work of Satan himself. We picture him laughing maniacally as it works or not based on his whims, his trident weaving diagrams in the air in red (or blue) trails of smoke, as we sit 6 inches away from the device willing it to work.

And so, ladies, gentlemen, readers and writers, we thought short and soft and came to the foregone conclusion.

No, we didn’t need any wifi nonsense.

So it became clear what we needed.

We got it.

Syntia has now been unplugged and the new guy is already at work.

The Question

We, both SloWord and LeggieLefty are unanimous on this, like to name our artifacts. We have a car named Selena and a van we call Trusty (but it has lost the beginning T and is now just Rusty). And we had a coffee machine called Syntia.

The question is this:

What do we call our new inmate?

We’re torn between:

  1. Roger
  2. Yuri

Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to vote for one or the other.

Or offer up another option.

Go for it! Use the comment box below!

Comments are Free, so go ahead!

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

This Post Has 2 Comments

  1. Chakra Incognita

    I’ll take Yuri – coz Roger is my chat show partner. How did you hit upon these names? I will write one day about my heritage coffee makers – no they don’t have names. And yes, mornings ain’t mornings without coffee. Tea is for those lazy afternoons.

    1. SloWord

      I will be delighted to read about that! I messaged you the rationale behind the names!