Adapting

Coffee Talk
Originally uploaded by 365 Things

What: "Adapter" for a replacement coffeemaker carafe.
Origin: Splat.   The glass carafe for my coffeemaker had a hard landing onto the tile kitchen floor.
How long kept: < 1 day
Why kept: I Might Need It.
Usage: Not at all.
Destination: Trash. (Non-recyclable plastic. It doesn't even have a number on it.)

Confession: I have a 4 cup coffeemaker, which I bought in 2003. (No, I didn't remember this. The receipt was in the manual, which I consulted in an effort to get a replacement from the manufacturer.)

These little guys are rare, and the manufacturer no longer makes them. I found a coffeemaker like mine, inexplicably, on ebay, buy it now for $77.00. WTH?

Thanks to the internet, I found that a generic replacement carafe not only existed, but was carried a few blocks away from me, at J&R Music. (They also have an appliance store.) The carafe came with two adapters, which can be clipped to the top of the carafe to adjust the height to fit different coffeemakers.   I'm discarding the one that doesn't fit.

Chances are that either the coffeemaker will go, or the carafe will meet the same fate as the last one. Either way, it's unlikely that I'd actually need the adaptor.

I have to say, that this is a change for me. Previously, I would have probably put this in my tool box. And then found it some time down the road, wondering what it was.

Another victory? Last week I went to a conference. The nice leather branded portfolios the conference hosts gave to us? STAG, not SWAG...my fellow conference attendees, well, "they" took the portfolios.

I did not. Thus, Stuff They All Got.

Digression:   This may be the last time I "never" go back to J&R again.   In deference to J&R being a local, woman owned business, I swam over in the rain yesterday.  I asked for help finding the carafe, which was shown as in stock at J&R via Amazon.  

A bright shiny young woman didn't find it in a computer.   She asked a supposedly more experienced woman, who told me -- without moving --  that they were out of stock.   I asked when they would get new ones, and she told me that I could get one at the supermarket.

I laughed and asked, "Don't you want me to buy it here?"    All of a sudden I realized that she was standing about 4 feet away from the display for replacement carafes.   I looked behind the front row of carafes and found the replacement carafe there.

The woman who had all the answers didn't move a muscle.   The bright shiny young woman wrote up my sale.

Digression, part deux:   In the 90s J&R was divided into "worlds" -- J&R Music World, J&R Computer World, and so on.   My friend AMO and I used to call  them "J&R Hit On World", as we were usually hit on by other customers in the computer store...IT guys on their day off, I always figured, striking up conversations about computers.