Yeah… those stupid fire alarms in my apartment that chirp roughly every 3 minutes all day and all night… those bastards actually speak when they go off. I found out this morning when making my coffee with the camping coffee pot on the stove. I’ll be damned if it didn’t boil over and start smoking a bit on the heating element. Or at least I assume it must have even though I didn’t see any smoke. Those alarms rang three times and then said “Fire Fire” in almost the same creepy voice the robot says “I can’t let you do that Dave.” Really wish now I could remember which movie that was from. I know that’s not the voice the makers of these alarms used but I swear that’s all my brain heard. So after it says that it does its ring again three times only to say “Fire” again. 

I can hear people moving around down stairs below me and as I’m freaking out about these stupid, useless and overly sensitive fire alarms, I’m wondering WHY on earth would anyone be awake at this ungodly hour. Well aside from the fact that the fire alarms are going off – which is clearly my fault – because I heard them moving around down there before the fire alarms started. The whole time I just wanted to scream that the building is not on fire, I’m just making coffee. No sooner than I grab the pot and take it off the stove, the alarms stop. I can only imagine what the lady that lives down stairs must have thought. It’s bad enough I have to fight with Little Bear nearly every night to get him into bed. Now this? I clearly need a new plan. This is so not going to work for me if these alarms are going to freak out every time I try to make coffee. The only reason I even crawled out of bed at the ass crack of dawn was because I had a therapy appointment this morning. Otherwise I still would have been playing dead at that hour.

So I make it to my parents’ house to drop the boys off before I need to leave for said appointment and share with them the entire passing of the K-cup machine, explaining to them how I think I killed it. I hadn’t even made it to the tale of setting off the fire alarms when my mother presented to me her dusty old electric one cup coffee machine. I think this machine is the ancestor to the Keurig. It’s set up like a drip machine, with a basket and everything, but it makes only one cup and you just put your cup under it. There’s no pot. This is why I never question my parents keeping everything that still works or in still good condition. If it’s usable, even if they are currently not using it, they either keep it or give it to someone that can use it. They never just throw it away.

If I remember correctly they bought this little machine for $10 ages ago. I bet you’d have a hard time finding one like it now. It’s a far cry from the $80+ I paid for the “cheap” Keurig model I just killed. I’m not sure they even make that one anymore. I think the WalMart around here carries just the 2.0 models now. I’m not interested in a machine that will only use the pre-packaged, brand name K-cups. Sometimes I like to buy custom grind coffee and use my own filter cup. If that’s how the 2.0 model works then I can’t use the custom grind coffee anymore. If someone out there owns a 2.0 model could explain to me how the machine actually works I would be very grateful. My dad and I had an argument over the labeling’s explanation of how it reads the K-cups’ labels before brewing. The way I understand it is, this model will not brew the coffee if the K-cup does not have the Keurig brand/logo on the label. I think that’s total bullshit, I cry foul, and it all smells like a monopoly in the making.

Feel free to tell me I’m over reacting. I’ll rock that shit, that’s fine. If my dollar is my biggest voting power then I will simply vote by not buying it if that is really what they are doing. Weirdo fire alarms aside, I know how to make coffee without their machine. Therefore I will choose the freedom to shop at artisan coffee shops for custom grinds when I can afford to do so. I refuse to allow them to tell me which coffee I can and can’t drink. I decide that, nobody else. No I’m not a connoisseur like some wine taster. I’m just… no not really picky either.

Let me put it this way… even if it was something I wanted to do initially, the moment that someone says to me “You HAVE to do it” and that freedom of choice has been taken away from me is the moment I resent it and the moment I no longer really want to do it. In some cases, depending on the person that robs me of that choice, I will even go so far as outright rebel. It’s a thing with me. I don’t know why it’s a thing with me, but it is. And now that I am of an adult age, pretending to be an adult, and trying to survive within the adult world, I very often need to catch myself and ask “Which is more important: doing this thing or proving that I have freedom of choice?” More often that not I find that I follow orders well. Doesn’t mean I like it. However, when it comes to marketing and money you bet I will choose my freedom of choice. Every time.

So coffee pot and fire alarm nonsense addressed and taken care of, I no longer have to worry about listening to creepy alarm voices while trying to fix myself coffee at anytime of the day. There is more I could talk about but since this has been pretty much the main focus of my post I’m going to close it here.