Like the title says…

Let me back up a little. I took a couple of days off of running to recoup from some good, long miles earlier this week. We were expecting rain on Thursday evening so I thought my timing of taking a day off of running would be good. It was. It ended up raining later in the night and probably should have run. Ah well.

Millstone Coffee

I haven’t slept great since my mids began…but it hasn’t been terrible either. There’s always something to do when I am awake so once I’m awake I can usually stay awake. This brings me to my next point. Drinking coffee. I never thought in a million years I would drink the stuff. The smell used to make me sick when I was a kid. The slurpping my folks did at breakfast was enough to drive me insane too! Anyway – Lisa picked me up some Chocolate Velvet flavored coffee made by Millstone. I don’t know if that’s important…but that’s what I drank. I was up for the adventure of learning what velvet would taste like when mixed with chocolate.

My in-laws purchased a 12 cup Mr. Coffee brewer for when they visit here (because Lisa and I never thought of drinking coffee – see above). So I disassembled the coffee maker to see what was involved and how stuff worked. I still don’t understand the heat part! What is important is that I needed to clean the part that holds the coffee beans. It was pretty nasty and smelled like old coffee so I cleaned it…first with a paper towel. Then I ran some water and vinegar through it a couple of times. When I was satisfied I placed three teaspoons of my chocolate velvet flavored coffee into a filter and put some cold water in the maker. Apparently, from what I’ve read….this part is important. If I wasn’t so cheap, I would filter the water, but I’ve been drinking the water for a long time…and coffee is pretty yucky at first. I was willing to take my chances. I mean, how much better would it make the coffee to an amateur like me?!

So I made 6 cups of joe. Now, for those of you who don’t know a cup is not a mug full of coffee. It’s actually a cup…like a measuring cup! And the real stupid thing is that the coffee beans come with the directions that say, “Mix one even teaspoon for every 6 oz of water.” It’s a trick for us newbies!! When working mid shifts or on little sleep, you have to muster up some good math to figure out how many scoops of beans you’ll need. By the time you figure it out…you’ll have wasted a good part of your “morning” and you’ll no longer be interested in drinking anything. Soda is looking better and better, huh?

Okay…so put 3 scoops in the filter with 6 cups of water. The brew was very light which I am assuming the nature of the chocolate velvet beans. I was imagining it being black or at least very dark. It wasn’t. I think that’s a good thing because…again from my research…the darker brews are supposed to be bitter (aka better tasting to the coffee connoisseur). Okay…so it couldn’t be that bad, huh? I searched for my Boxer mug but Lisa has hidden it somewhere so I used a larger coffee mug we had. I think it was slated to be a pen/pencil holder someday. To be safe, I mixed a packet of sugar substitute with my first mug full (NOT cup).  It wasn’t as bad tasting as I was expecting. Toward the end of the first cup, it started tasting a little worse. Reminded me of the end of a beer bottle/can. I filled up for another cup with another packet of sugar substitute. I threw the remaining coffee out and drank the 2nd mug.

The following day, I added another scoop and again placed 6 cups of water in the maker. I thought this would make the brew a little darker…but I was wrong. I think I wasted a teaspoon full of the sample sized bag of beans. Day 2, I had to use real sugar because all of the packets of sweetner were gone (Lisa drinks tea). I used about a teaspoon and a half of sugar. It was tasty and I drank all 6 cups!  I did the same thing yesterday and added some creamer (Lisa bought me some earlier in the day) and no sugar. This made it taste even better! I drank all 6 cups again. I’m low on the sample bag of beans now. Looking to try another blend…something with some caffeine for my upcoming work week.

So late yesterday afternoon we got slammed by a major winter storm. I woke up around 430 pm and was wondering if anything had fallen. We issued a winter storm warning earlier that morning…so I was hoping we would be right. I’m guessing there was about 2 inches of snow when I looked out the window. The snow persisted through about 3 am. I haven’t looked outside yet this morning but it looks bright outside as the sun is rising.

I had to stay home tonight to let Lisa get some rest and watch over Lucianna. She woke up about every 10 to 15 minutes through 2 am. I fed her some milk around 1 am. She’s slept pretty well after 2 am or so. I hope Lisa got enough sleep and no longer has a fever. I was hoping to finish working the snow storm event. Bummer.