I want to quickly mention one thing about my coffee situation. I did use my new thermos today and it worked very well - an entirely adequate replacement for my old thermos, but without the sentimental attachment.

However, just when I thought that my coffee situation was well settled, a distressing event occurred with my coffee maker i.e. coffee storage is secure and adequate, but coffee brewing was problematic this morning. It took nearly thirty minutes for my six cup pot of coffee to brew and I had to interrupt it to use the pause-and-pour feature in order to get a cup with breakfast.

For the record, I loathe the pause-and-pour feature because it creates an unequal distribution of the coffee strength for the batch being brewed. When one uses pause-and-pour, the first cup is stronger than the rest and all the rest of the coffee is weaker. A marxist at heart, I believe each cup of coffee should get an equal share of the boiled juice of the coffee bean.

Jill and I have been running water and vinegar through the coffee maker all day long in alternating batches in order to collect data on the situation. The assay I just finished running brewed the requisite six cups in about seven minutes, so that should be fine for tomorrow.