Mexico, day 1.

It's too typical that my company would send an email putting in writing our previously unspoken 'no personal coffee makers' policy three days after I order my first-ever coffee maker. It would also be why I was at work at 6.30 am, to go through to the inevitable fumblings of setup while no one was around. Including trying to find a way to fit the coffee maker into the cabinet over my head - I can get it in, with a little finagling, and if the door was closed, it would fit, but there's no way to close the door with the coffee maker inside. Le sigh. I may need to bring this one home and purchase a smaller one. Like, a centimetre smaller. So close!

My coffee of choice this week is A.L. Van Houtte's fair trade 'Mexico' (and the irony of putting that in a bag that announces 'a taste of Europe in your cup' does not escape me). My coffee grinder has not yet arrived (it's on back order), so I had to grind the beans at the grocery store. I know, I know, if you're going to bother buying beans at all instead of pre-ground, pre-packaged stuff, it needs to be done right, but I'm also not expecting a huge payoff from Van Houtte. This'll be a good bean to try and work the kinks out of my coffee routine with, since I won't feel too terrible about dumping an entire pot down the drain if I screw it up and it ends up tasting like dishwater instead of coffee.

But here I am, at last, listening to Beethoven through my headphones and finishing off a cup of coffee that, while not about to win any awards, is also not that bad. And beats out the coffee machine in the office kitchen by actually filling my gigantic Montreal Canadiens mug instead of wussing out at 8 ounces (according the carafe on my coffee maker, this mug is three cups' worth of coffee). I'm using paper filters for now, I may look into getting a permanent filter, since I'm told they don't absorb the oil and it changes the flavour a little. Tomorrow I'll also try making it a little stronger. For some reason the aroma of today's cup is making me think of mushrooms - not really a bad thing, just kind of odd.

I've also found that I need to be here at roughly 6.55 if I want to have the evidence hidden away in time. For some bizarre reason, one of the commercial provisioners gets here at 7.10.