Beauty and the bean.
Coffee is a fairly regular event for me; I'm not necessarily a cup-a-day gal, but at least a cup every other day, and especially on Mondays/Wednesdays/Fridays, my early days. So when, on Thursday, I ran out of coffee for the first time ever, I knew we had a potentially dangerous situation on our hands. However, I'm an idiot and forgot to get to the store, and so Friday morning came along with my 9:00am Spanish class, and I went uncaffeinated and unprepared to discuss anything in Spanish. The initial "conversation" with my profesora that we start every class with went woefully bad; I hate being the student that answers every questions with "uh" or "yes" or "what?" So Friday night a trip to the grocery store was more than necessary.
Usually my grandmother buys me coffee, and I love what she gets me, so I grabbed a bag of that. (I know a great deal about drinking coffee--pour it in a cup, bring cup to mouth, sip carefully, still manage to burn inside of mouth, swallow, repeat--but I know nothing about coffee.) I think I did notice something about "AMERICA'S FAVORITE WHOLE BEAN COFFEE OMGZ YAY!" on the bag (probably minus the "omgz yay"), but I just thought these were silly marketing terms: of course the coffee is made from whole beans, I thought, and happily purchased my coffee.
This morning I woke up at a not-so-early 11 in the morning (hey, I did go to bed at 3, okay?) and decided that nothing would be better than a Saturday morning-ish cup of coffee. I start to open the bag, again notice the words "WHOLE BEAN" plastered all over the bag--geez, they are really pushing that issue, eh?--and notice, "Well, this feels lumpy." And then I open the bag and notice AMERICA'S FAVORITE.... whole beans. You know. As in beans, that are whole, and not ground. Oops...
So I did what any self-respecting college student caffeine junkie would do: I put some beans in a ziploc bag, grabbed a hammer (note that I did not miss an opportunity to say out loud, "Stop! It's hammer time,"), and went outside in all my morning fug to bang the shit out of some coffee beans, and to hell with whoever sees me doing this (which ultimately included all passing traffic on Highway 119 and one of my male neighbors).
This process yielded a not-so-fine-but-possibly-workable coffee crumble, which I have tossed in the coffee maker and am about to enjoy taste experience.
Comments
Oh, and if you continue your Spanish education, the tendency to have nothing but a pathetic "uh/yes/what" responses will continue for many, many many years. I'm finishing what I guess is my ninth (holy shit!) year of Spanish and I still have major brain farts. I'm just happy that "ok" seems to be somewhat universal and technically counts as Spanish.
Mad laugh out louds. What is it with coffee and those that partake of it? I don't drink it, and it's not so much that I don't like the taste, I just, guess I never really realized until recently how large a difference it can make. Does it enhance the world? Am I missing out on an entirely new sensory experience because I don't drink it? Are colors more colorful, and sights more sightful, and sounds more soundful? I want to knooow!
I could not buy whole beans though, I would probably be the person who broke the grinder in the store. When it comes to shopping mechanical crap tends to just mechanically malfunction around me. Or I guess I could take my sister's meat tenderizer to it.