RIP

Last week has shown us that it isn't always puppies and rainbows in NorthernBabyLand.

Sometimes, life throws us a sudden and saddening curve. Without warning, our faithful coffee maker quit coffee making. After cheerfully greeting us every morning for six years, we awoke to find an empty carafe and the lifeless hull of our once proud Mr. Coffee.

A little worn and sad looking; Mr. Coffee served us well.

Of course, you just know that Northern Dad held a short memorial service before placing the departed into a shallow grave in the back yard.

Finding a replacement coffee maker was difficult. The machines that fit Northern Dad's requirements cost over $200. Well, N.Dad is far too stingy to fork out that kind of cash for a coffee maker - no matter how much he loves his coffee! A limit of $100 was set (okay, so that's still a lot of money for a coffee maker), and the shopping started. Northern Dad made several excursions to local retail establishments in search of a machine he could live with. Three days in a row, multiple stores per day, no success. It turns out that choosing a coffee maker is harder than choosing a new vehicle. On a sunny Saturday, the whole Northern Baby clan headed out to the only store we hadn't visited. Northern Daddy found a few possible candidates, and started his comparisons...apparently N.B. and Mommy don't share Daddy's passion for coffee makers: they stayed near the display for about five minutes and then left the area when Daddy started to pull different models down off the shelves and compare them. They headed off on a few laps of the store - only to come rolling by every ten minutes or so to see if the DECISION had been made. After working all of the controls and checking the details, the choice was narrowed to two models. One was a very nice KRUPS that ran just over $100, but was styled in a little too modern of a style to fit our kitchen. The winner was a cute little maker manufactured by none other than Mr. Coffee! The bonus was that it cost just under $50, so that if it fails the long term test, it can go out to the woodshed without much loss.