Privacy, please

I like my privacy. Not quite as much as the lovely and gracious bb who turns around bottles of beer so as not to give away sensitive secret information. The Tuvalu Intelligence Agency knew what it was doing when it hired her.

Anyway, that wasn't the point. The point is me and my privacy. As a moderately reclusive sort I have to fight the impulse to brag about stuff I've yoinked on eBay for pennies on the dollar until the auction fades from the public record and I can't be traced to my little suburban corner on the Fringes of Paradise. Usually, time causes the impulse to fade.

Not today, dear hearts.

I am going to sing paeans to my espresso machine, snagged for a mere 20% of what the discounted retail price is. It was a dealer demo and the guy spelled the name of the brand wrong. I swooped in and practically stole it.

I LOVE IT. Every morning, at 7:12am its timer shuffles it to life, and it begins to grind the beans and tamp the whatever the Hell it is that gets tamped. Some rude noises later, a PERFECT shot of espresso. Perfect as in "flawless, devoid of defect. Optimal." The right temperature, the right consistency, a GORGEOUS tan crema on top. Even using frou-frou beans the purchase of the machine and all the beans I'll need in a year are a FRACTION of what I'd spend at Starbucks, for lesser coffee, in a year*.

The downside is that the espresso is so spectacularly delicious I'm practically mainlining it. It's not as bad as when I was in B-school (how much caffeine must you have in your system if you can have a shot of espresso and then fall asleep?) but it's more than I was gulping a year ago. After all, if you could get flawless espresso--15 seconds or less!--by only pushing one li'l itty-bitty button, you would. You know you would.

See, about a year ago I realized the perfectly nice espresso maker we got as a wedding gift was only "okay." Pretty much B- stuff. Pleasant enough, but hardly the pinnacle of the art. So I started looking on eBay. Because I am a cheap bastid. (Ask Poppy.) I could have paid close to retail, I could have settled for something with bashed-in buttons. I wanted a steal. I was willing to wait it out. One day I saw a typo-ed dealer demo and I pounced. The guy was in Jacksonville, so shipping (this muhfuh is heavy) was cheap.

I was so bloody happy when this thing arrived. It had a timer. It had all kids of adjustments (weak, strong, short, tall, etc.) and a built-in coffee grinder and a built in water tank w. filter and a temp. controlled milk thing attachment option for IDIOT-PROOF cappucino, and caffee latte. After it brews the espresso it cleans itself (you have to do a major cleanup every 3-4 months) and you stop living like a savage. It even makes regular ::shudder:: coffee and tea.

-J.

* Say you spend a mere $3 x 300 days (assume you don't go on weekends) = $900