Coffee, anyone?

Photos.

I’ve had my share of coffeemaker troubles over the years, one of them a few years back in this very resort, when I forgot to put the coffee pot back on the heating element after firing up the brewing process. The results were predictably messy. My sister Marilyn did most of the cleaning up that time.

Today I started the coffee in the dark and made two mistakes. First, I overfilled the water chamber, and then I failed to seat the filter basket properly in its shell, and I did have a vague concern that something didn't feel quite right. However, I'd made coffee yesterday without incident so I walked away.

I spent about 15 minutes on the deck taking pictures of the sunrise and then went in to get my coffee. The floor felt a little wet on my bare feet and I immediately thought that Bob must have spilled water and failed to clean it up. No matter. I folded some paper towels and swished the damp floor with the wad of towels under my right foot. When I encountered a brownish stain on the beige tile, I wondered how I could have missed a stain for the last 36 hours.

I picked up the pot and couldn't miss the problem this time. The counter was soaked with a grainy coffee mixture. Clean up took about 15 minutes, and I made another pot. The coffee was full of grounds and Bob made unhelpful comments as he filtered his own cup through a paper towel. I then filtered the rest of Pot #2 -- I think it's too weak to be palatable -- and ran a coffeemaker cleaning cycle, without vinegar because I have none.

The water in the pot looks brownish, so I will leave the final touches to the resident expert.