A farewell to my coffee machine

Yesterday was a sad day in the Campbell household. And a happy day too. I don’t know if you, dear reader, suffer from the same disorder that I do – but I grow all too fond of my inanimate possessions because I imbue them with personality, and if the occasion warrants it, I give them a name. Yesterday I decommissioned Sheila. My three group Rancilio coffee machine. Sheila has been a good, and faithful, servant these two years… and now she is for sale (though I have a potential buyer so if you want to make an offer get in quick).

The day she arrived

Sheila in happier times

I feel a little heartless replacing Sheila with a younger, and skinnier model, but that is what I have done.

The new model

She’s beautiful. But we’re still working each other out. This morning she had a little meltdown, shooting coffee around the kitchen and all over me. But we’ll overcome this. I still don’t have a name for her.

Any suggestions for names? And am I the only one who thinks about my worldly possessions in this manner?

Comments

Jeff K says:

“Barbarella”
I’m working with the ExpoBAR thing…and it sounds Italian, but not having anywhere near the traction which I thought I would.

Are you using a sunbeam Cafe series grinder? What “setting” for coarseness/fineness is yours on?

Nathan Campbell says:

Love it Jeff.

No, the Sunbeam has long since been upgraded. I was, from memory, running at about 7 or 8. I’ve now got a Macap M4. It’s nice. I loved the Sunbeam but it couldn’t handle grinding 500gms at a time. It overheated on me a couple of times and locked up. So I sold it.

Gary Ware says:

My kids are coming to terms with the fact that every family does not have personal names for every inanimate object in the kitchen. (being honest these will sometimes just take the primary attribute/function of the tool/implement and add a ‘y’ as a suffix.)
My ena5 keeps telling me to empty the grounds keeper, which I introduced to my daughter as ‘Willie’.

They are also surprised that all families do not provide running monologue on behalf of the cat.

Goannatree says:

A name: Lucinda

(kind of named after Oscar and Lucinda – its a very australian book!)

Gav says:

I’m going with the “younger and skinnier” comment….so call her

PARIS HILTON or Paris for short.

Not sure how Robyn will take to it though. ;-)

KIM says:

she looks like a portia to me. (when in doubt, go shakespearean.)

and yes, i name my objects. had an absolute spree my freshman year of college (university) when i met elmer, frederick and cecilia (lights), as well as dmitri (the ceiling) and a.j. (the terrible light that always flickered and was named after the two worst people i could think of: adolf judas.) my friends chimed in and name their bad lights after other infamous traitors: brutus and benedict (arnold).