Things Old And Broken

A long, long, long time ago (I’m talking about pre-pandemic days, kids) I won a reading contest at the Seattle Public Library. My prize was a basket of goodies. I kind of remember it containing chocolate, and coffee, and gift cards – and I don’t remember what else. I do know that it had a mug in it.

(Phillip says that he also won this contest at another time. He seems to remember it better than I do. This is a reversal of our roles at remembering things.)

(I’ve been looking for a blog post about this, but I can’t find it. Could that prize basket be older than this blog? The pre-Wordpress – Blogger – version of this blog doesn’t have a search feature, so I don’t know.)

That mug was made out of glass, and it was from the Seattle Art Museum.

That mug became my standard alcoholic drink container. It was the mug that appeared in my posts about the Old Fashioned Kit Phillip gave me for Christmas. It was a nice size for drinking whiskey. The fact that it was made out of glass disguised the fact that I was drinking whiskey out of a mug.

This week, that mug somehow developed a large crack and had to be thrown away. I’m going to miss it. I got a lot of use out of it all those years.

More recently – several months, no more than a year, I think – I found a Black & Decker coffee maker in the “free stuff” area of our apartment building. It was in great shape. I had a Black & Decker coffee maker in our kitchen, but it was showing signs of age. Specifically, I would occasionally have to press the power button at least twice to get it to turn on. I took the new, free coffee maker and stored it in a cabinet in our apartment for the day my coffee maker died.

But my coffee maker kept on going, although it would sometimes need an extra push of the power button.

Yesterday morning, I made a pot of coffee and needed to press the power button five or six times to get the coffee to start brewing. It was time to replace the coffee maker I’ve had for years.

This morning, I finished the last of that last pot of coffee. (Yes, I go through a 12-cup pot of coffee in a day.) I put my old coffee maker in a bag to be taken down to the garbage, and retrieved the new, free one out of the cabinet.

Then it occurred to me that I’d never tested the new coffee maker to see if it works. I was out of coffee, but I plugged in it and pushed the power button, just long enough to see the On light come on.

That old coffee pot doesn’t have the sentimental value that my glass mug does.

Today, Phillip and I went to The Deluxe for an early dinner. Billie Eilish’s new song, “Lunch,” came on the barely audible background music. I told Phillip that I like this song a lot. Phillip didn’t know what I was talking about.

I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to get Phillip as interested in Billie Eilish’s music as I am. That’s fine. I like music that not everyone does. (Who, besides me, loves Let’s Eat Grandma or Poliça or Dream Wife or Young Fathers?)

A while back, “Bad Guy,” by Billie Eilish, was mentioned in a video Phillip and I watched together. Phillip wanted to know what that song was. So I showed him the “Bad Guy” video, and, to my surprise, he almost liked it.

When we got home from The Deluxe, I showed Phillip the video for “Lunch.” He didn’t seem inpressed.

“Subtle,” was his sarcastic reaction.