SAGA

Of the coffee machine.

Noam and I are selling coffee and baked goods, a pretty reasonable and successful fundraiser during finals period. Suddenly, the coffee maker stops working - it just stops releasing water. We pour more water in, thinking it's too empty...nope now water overflows everywhere and we sort of freak out. I tip the machine and pour lots of water out. Then we plug it back in and let it heat up, but we just end up witha lot of hot water still stuck in the machine. I start to take parts off of the bottom (where the water drips out) and some weird sludge comes out. Ick. Oh and it burned my fingers a bit. So I wait a bit and take a few more pieces off, then once I get some more sludge out I put them all back in and turn it on and wait for water to turn into hot water coming out of the machine. Nope, no coming out of the machine, just hot water. I take more pieces off of the top, scoop a bunch of the hot water out of the machine, than go chat with my engineering friend for a while. I go back, still no water coming out. I take all of the pieces off of the bottom again, unplug the machine, decide that it must be clogged with sludge, and stick a coffee stirrer up it. Yayay lots of water comes out. Hot water. All over my hand OWWWWWW. After a lot more attempts to prod the machine with a stirrer to get water to come out, I can't find a way to not burn my hand. Finally I just suck it up and stick the stirrer far up into the valve, so that it stays stuck and tons of hot water rushes out. Once it's finally all out (Noam and I get really excited now) we twist the stirrer up and down and get lots of weird sludge that's probably old coffee residue to come out. We plug with machine in again, turn the heat switch on, and wait for a green light (green light? water? unrequited longing? Gatsby anyone?). Finally, it's on. We pour more water in, put in a fresh coffee filter and grounds, and high five and hug in triumphant relief as the water flows through as hot, clean, working coffee. Beautiful. I take a lap around the smaller area of the cafe with my hands in Olympic-champ-style fists in the air. This was an hour and a half... I'm very full of myself now for taking it apart and fixing it. I couldn't care less about basically the rest of anything in my life, because I am so self-satisfied with finally getting this to work. Oh and also credit to Noam for extreme patience/emotional support/also legit helping with this.

Guys, this is serious work we're doing. I mean, that was intense. Noam and I are actually really excited to tell the epic saga of the coffee-maker (with other embellishments that I don't want to mention here but would gladly recount in person) when we're on our trip or talking to Bike-and-Build supporters.

Wow what a night. I am soooooo not looking forward to my art history final Friday am.