Death of a coffee maker
Our beloved Braun coffeemaker, which has been brewing almost daily for longer than we've lived in this house, finally gave up the ghost earlier this week. It just simply stopped working.
It decided to die on Wednesday, the last day of school for Emmeline and James, which I took to be a peculiar omen.
Fortunately, we had a backup -- the Cuisinart Grind and Brew model my mom picked up for us a while back, which we'd rotated out of service (in favor of resurrecting the Braun) after one too many early morning cleanup events involving the grinding of beans not working quite as planned.
As a normal drip coffee maker working with already-ground beans, the Cuisinart is relatively well behaved, and its white finish complements the majority of the other kitchen appliances we have.
While the Cuisinart caused more problems than it was worth as grinding apparatus, it has some advantages -- the decanter itself is thermal, and the base doesn't heat. That means the coffee stays hot but doesn't get burnt. Unfortunately, its capacity is a bit less than the Braun's, and it's a total pain in the ass to clean inside. Ah well. Life is a series of compromises.