coffee making issues

Did  mention that the other day when I made the coffee I had another "coffee adventure"? Sort of like a bad dream:

I rinse out the carafe, fill it with water and put it on the burner, get the filter and coffee in the right places, plug in the machine and turn it on. I hear a steam-pop sound and a quick loud gurgling as I'm cleaning up the counter. I realize that I don't hear the drip-drip-drip of the coffee filling the pot.

When I look over I see that the machine steaming but the coffee carafe is sitting on the burner full of plain, clear water. YIKES!

I rush over turn off the machine take the carafe off the burner and put a coffee cup on the burner to catch any coffee that drips through while I'm trying to fix this. The water isn't hot, so I know I'll be able to put it in the machine. I'm hoping to get all the parts in the right places before my husband comes into the kitchen and see that I tried to burn up his coffee maker, again.

Of course, he walks in, sees me holding the full pot of water and the coffee cup on the burner and says, "What's going on here?"

I'm busted - so I tell him and he just laughs (he knows as soon as I start back to work he'll be in charge of making the coffee!) and asks why I put the cup on the burner. As I start to explain I realize that the coffee maker has a little spring in it under the basket that holds the grounds. The lid of the carafe pushes this spring up and that is what allows the liquid to flow out of the basket into the carafe. Totally busted myself since if I'd remembered this before I put the cup there he wouldn't have noticed anything wrong.

I open the lid and after a steam burst I'm able to add the water and start the machine so we can have coffee on the back patio as we watch birds catch bugs in the grass. All ended well but until I started this project with Whitney, I had no idea that I had so many coffee making issues. It's really a simple machine with just a few steps... but so many different orders in which to put those steps together!