Pod Brewers Not Worth It Based on Price Alone

I've been thinking about a new coffee maker lately. I'm getting married soon and one of the guilty pleasures on the registry is a new coffee maker for me. For those of you who know me well, I'm a bit of a coffee drinker. With all that in mind my friend Brandon got a new Single Cup Brewer for his wedding and he raves about it. Now #1 I'm a slow - medium transitioner which means I'm do usually go to the newest and latest thing as soon as its out but rather towards the end of the movement or somewhere around there. I get skeptical. I like the way I've been doing things... #2 I do my research on significant purchases. Check the consumer reports. Scour the internet for reviews and blogs. Thats just how I do things. So with the new coffee pot hopefully on the way I decided to do my research;

#1. I'm not blown away by the variety of coffees available. I know that there are tons of different "pods" out there but I just don't see any brands that are grabbing my attention. This tells me that I shouldn't buy into the hype, or just simply buy the hype. To me that's part of the whole coffee experience is getting the kind of coffee you want, flavor, acidity, texture...

#2. The single cups brewers are much cleaner. No spilled coffee grounds. Pretty simple and very nice feature

and

#3. The prices. My math... and i'm only 90% sure I'm doing it right ;-) says that an average brand of the single cup brewer pods cost $8.35/pound. While an average brand (Maxwell House) of ground coffee beans for drip costs $4.69/pound. That's nearly half! I found that the price goes up depending on brand, obviously more for dunkin donuts or starbucks brands... but you get the gist. Also there's the coupon thing... I have never seen coupons for the pods, but that could be because I haven't been looking. But I've seen them for ground beans. Even the buy 1 get 1 free deals we have down here in Chattanooga. That brings the ground beans down to $2.35/pound sometimes.

So I just can't justify the pod style coffee brewing yet. I don't know if the price will come down on them over time or not. And who knows, maybe one day I'll be rich enough to buy myself a pod brewer to have the convenience but right now I can't.

One man's trash...

I'm currently teaching softball to high school girls. Where I'm working there is this shed that houses the "sports equipment" When I was preparing to each I had to do a lot of sorting of the equipment that was in there. I had different sizes of softballs, bats, and two piles of gloves. The ones that were in one piece enough to be used and then the one's that were child sized or I could see the stiching was broken. The other day I found this string on the sidewalk that probably came out of a hoodie or a jacket when I walking down to class and just like my grandfather I picked it up knowing I would have a use for that string (immediately knowing that I would use it to repair one of the gloves) So today I take my string down to the sports shed and I just grab the first glove I see that isn't child sized and needs some stich repair and head out with the intention of repairing it. Well it only took 2 seconds for me to realize that I had just grabbed a Nokona baseball glove. For those of you who don't know the signifigance of that, Nokona is an american baseball equipment company known for their baseball gloves that are made out of premium leather, sometimes buffalo hide and other exotic hides as well. They are worn by major leaguers like David Ortiz, Vladamir Guerraro , and Miguel Tejada. Some of their gloves retail for $300, most around $175-$225. I'm going to look into getting it repaired. Despite being in a shed for who knows how long and not being used at all, the leather is relatively soft and the glove still has good shape. Anyway, you know what they say about one man's trash.... sometimes it ends up actaully being a treasure and maybe you were a tad bit mistaken about what you thought was worthless and you were donating away for free.

Where have all the fathers gone?

Recently at work I've been really struck by the lack of fathers in the lives of the youth of today. I work with teenage boys, providing a safe home environment for them. All of the boys I work with do not have their fathers apart of their lives. Some rarely see him some never see him. It is amazing to me that so many men have made the decision to not be apart of their child's life. How can it be that so many men are just dropping the ball? Failure to make the right choices, live with your decisions, and raise your son to be a honorable, honest, committed man. I don't understand how we got to this point. There once was a carpenter who risked severe ridicule and banishment to be the most important father in humanity, and now there are million of fathers incarcerated and incapable of being a role model. What happened?