When we got married, my little sister and her husband bought us a coffee maker for our wedding present. It was a lovely coffee maker, being the type that could be preprogrammed, so that many mornings we would wake to the rather abrupt sound of the bean grinder starting up, followed immediately thereafter by the massive skittering of cats who had just had their wits scared out of them by the aforementioned grinding of beans. The coffee pot worked hard, brewing up pot after pot of coffee for us and our house guests for the past five years.

Notice I am speaking of this wonderful appliance in the past tense? A few weeks ago, the grinder part of the coffee maker started to go. No problem, we figured, since luckily not only had I saved my old coffee grinder, I knew where it had been stashed in the kitchen. But last night, as Richard tried to brew a pot of decaf, it suddenly decided to shut off, mid-brew. At first we thought maybe there was a problem with the power connection, but the outlet wasn't tripped, and restarting the pot didn't seem to work, and plugging it into other outlets didn't fix the problem, and we were forced to conclude that our wonderful little coffee maker had finally decided to pass on to wherever it is trusty kitchen appliances go when they die.

It is hard to buy a new coffee maker. It's not like you can just go out and grab one off the shelf. Research is required. Brands must be compared. Reviews must be read, and merits must be weighed. Do we go with another pot of the same brand? Do we pick one that has a thermal carafe? What about one that dispenses coffee one cup at a time? Which feature is more important - the abilty to grind the beans in the same contraption as the brewer, or the ability to program the pot so that one wakes up to freshly brewed coffee (with or without the preceeding cat skitterage as noted above).

Richard worked from home today, so he decided to go out and see what kind of options we could pick off the shelf, while I spent a small amount of time online, reading about the pros and cons of all the major brands. He called me from the store and as he read me the brands, I looked them up and then listed out all the points covered in the various user reviews, all without any success, until finally we decided that this sort of thing should not be rushed, and that we should take our time in finding a suitable replacement, So after more research, we finally found the one that looks right for us.

Our new coffee maker has been ordered, and will hopefully arrive soon. In the meantime, we are having to make do with a cheap and flimsy (temporary) replacement Richard picked up - the sort of thing that will likely fall apart if we look at it cross-eyed, but which ends up cheaper in the long run than running to the coffee shop every morning on the way to work instead.

This is a NaBloPoMo entry