World's newest barista

I have fallen and I can't get up; conquered by the slippery slope.

I guess that's a little vague. Lots of things can present slippery slopes. The particular Everest that I'm gazing back up at is coffee.

I used to be so good, so innocent. I stayed away from the hard caffeine, drank only coca-cola. Sure, the quantity of coke (2 cans a day) seemed prodigious to some (teetotalers), but it was perfectly excusable on the grounds that I'm from Georgia.

Then I was introduced to the coffee drink. Not coffee, oh no. No bitter brews, these, but magical potions of chocolatey, caffeiney goodness. I was raised among the greatest independent coffee shop ever. Where else to hang out with friends but Jittery Joe's? Embraced by the culture of the coffee shop. But these were reserved as treats.

Ah, but it's the same old story, isn't it? How can one avoid the vicious cycle of caffeine? Inevitably, I was having several "treats" a week. Maybe even 5 a week. (Amazingly, I'm able to limit myself to caffeine in soda form on Mondays and Wednesdays.) Those buy-10-get-1-free punchcards only encourage addiction by legitimizing frequent indulging.

Then came the next step down. The step to real coffee. Why should I spend $3 on a mocha when I can get a cup of coffee downstairs for 50¢? We junkies are very good at justifying. Having never actually made coffee myself, I could only have some if someone else had brewed a pot. This was a useful wall between my addiction and me, but it could be so agonizing. Until the undergraduate (who I like to call "whipping boy") taught me how to make coffee, that is. He took quite a pleasure in demonstrating this basic skill to an ancient grad student...

Rather than staging an intervention, my family seems to encourage the downward spiral. On her last trip to Athens, Jenny got me some Jittery Joe's beans. Who am I to complain? ;) But since I don't have any coffee accessories, they remained an objet d'art. I was loathe to share (it's Jittery Joe's, after all, not Costco coffee!), so I didn't want to bring them in to lab to grind. I had a grand plan to do it at the grocery store and bat my eyes at the cashier so they wouldn't think I was stealing coffee, just borrowing the grinder, but I never got around to it.

So Jenny and I (there's the support of family, again) got a coffee grinder over Christmas. And I scrubbed (and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed and scrubbed, seriously, I have bruises and abrasions from all the scrubbing) the moka express percolator I found in a cupboard, and went at it. I can now make coffee!

And there you have it: my downfall.