Out of Coffee

I woke up this morning to the automatic alarm clock called the bladder. I announced to my body that I would exert just enough energy to take care of business and then go back to sleep. I zoomed through that process and headed for my favorite recliner and discovered that someone had left the fan on in the living room over night. Two thoughts ran through my mind as I thought about that. The first thought was that I was glad the fan did not short out and catch the house on fire and the second thought was to wonder how much that jacked up the electric bill by running all night. I don’t think that floor fans suck that much amperage so I did not spend too much time contemplating that. I landed in my recliner fully expecting to go to sleep and catch some extra snore time. My mind had other ideas and decided it wanted to ramp up and start thinking about this and that so no matter how much I fidgeted and tried to position myself in the recliner with my eyes shut it was a no go for visiting the sandman. I guess my bladder and the sandman have an understanding. When it is time for me to get up and go potty the sandman has to leave and go visit someone else in their dreams.

Seeing as sleep was over I figured I would start my day out with some much needed decaf coffee. That is a hoot huh. Why would anyone NEED decaf coffee? Some would think that decaf coffee has no caffeine. If you think that you are mistaken because decaf does have caffeine. I think it is just more of a psychological thing in that it is a daily ritual that I follow. In order for life to be normal I have to go to the restroom and have a cup of coffee in the morning. I do not care if anything does or does not happen those things must take place. My sweet wife was still playing tag with the sandman in our bedroom so I took it upon my lazy self to wander into the kitchen and was greeted by a mess. Imagine my surprise when I saw that the kitchen was a mess. One side of the sink was full of dirty dishes and the other side was partially full. I did some quick load balancing and filled up one side so I could use the other side to wash out the coffee pot. The coffee pot builds up a brown residue in the inside of the pot if all that is done to clean it is to do a quick rinse job. From what I could tell that is exactly the method that has been used to clean the pot. I engaged a wash rag and soap to do this quick clean job since there were no sponges in sight.
The coffee pot was clean and the counter around the coffee pot was clean again so I filled the pot with water from the filter because we are on well water and we have to use a filter to keep the water from smelling or tasting like rotten eggs. I don’t think that rotten eggs and French vanilla go well together so I opted to use the filtered water. Stage three would include finding coffee and coffee filters and since I normally do not make the coffee or much else for that matter in the kitchen I started to scan my surroundings for the rest of the items I needed. I located a container on the counter that had a very tiny amount of coffee sitting in the bottom. After all that preparation and overcoming the recliner potato syndrome I was being rewarded with NO coffee.

Not to be thwarted I decided to go gently wake up the wife with “Honey where did you hide the coffee this time or are we out?” Gizmo told me through the fog of waking up that we were indeed out of coffee. I was thinking to myself that this could not be possible. It took me several moments to come to the realization that bad things do happen to good people even if it was just being out of coffee early in the morning. I grabbed my keys and wallet and headed outside to find that there was dense fog all around me. I decided to hop in the Honda Accord since it has the most gas in it and zoomed up to Food Lion to get the things I needed for a quick morning treat. Luckily for me there were very few shoppers dragging around the store in search of stuff that they needed. I grabbed up everything I needed in my two arms and dumped them on the counter and waited for the cashier to magically appear. Once he did I paid for my loot and scooted back out to the parking lot to head back home. I stopped at the cleaners to get my cleaning and was proud of the fact that I had my cleaning receipt to hand to the young lady at the counter. I am notorious for showing up at the counter and saying “I don’t know where my ticket is but my name is….” Then the poor person working the counter has to go search all the tickets for my name instead of just scanning for the large numbers on the ticket that makes it much easier for them to find my stuff.

I am safely back home banging on the keyboard and drinking coffee at last. By this time on most days I would be at the office banging on the keyboard answering e-mail and checking on the many servers that I maintain with the many applications and systems that run on them. Luckily for me I am starting a four day mini vacation in which I plan on doing whatever it is I WANT to do. I plan on being as selfish as my wife and family will allow me to be within reason. I am figuring that some of my activities will include but not be limited to a trip to the county park for a swim in their pool, a movie, a trip to Myrtle Beach to visit Fuddruckers and the beach and perhaps a show at South Carolina Opry . I told my wife that we will bond so much in the next four days she will be anxious to see me go back to work on next Tuesday. When we are not doing those things I assume we will be doing low budget items such as playing Monopoly with the children or some cards with friends of mine.

All in all I am content with life as it is and I am happy to have a few days off in which to enjoy my family and do some fun things other than work. You know what they say, all work and no play makes James a dull boy. I hope that you have a wonderful weekend and that you do not allow Friday the 13th to ruin your day. Just remember that if something bad does happen to you on this date that it really does not have anything to do with the date but that life just happens. Take it on the chin, clean up the mess, make the wrongs right if you can and just go on. Tomorrow will have its own unique problems that you can deal with tomorrow.


James Moffitt
http://www.lightourworld.com
james.moffitt@comcast.net