So, another little thing about living on a small island way out in the Pacific is that you can't find anyone to fix your espresso machine. Needless to say, I'm doing pretty good at fixing stuff, reading manuals, and I'm way more mechanically inclined than I ever knew. However, our steam want pulled out of it's socket a few weeks ago. What do you do? So we jimmy-rigged a wand from another machine that we have (our current method of competing with other shops is to buy up all the espresso machines on the island so no one else can have one unless they pay a heck of a lot for shipping - we own four) and screwed it onto our machine and now there's this big dangly weird thing hanging off the side. Then, we hated the tip on the new wand, so we unscrewed it from the old wand and put it on the new wand.

Now, our machine is old to begin with, so old in fact, that I have been unable to find any manuals for it. It just goes to show you that you don't need all the new-fangled equipment to make kick ass coffee; you just have to take care of it. Growing out of that, we have this weird arm dangling, and it looks like a nightmare. The baristas are pissed, too, because they were losing their milk-steaming mojo, a definite depressant.

So we're practicing and practicing, and whining, and pounding pitchers, and waiting for the new wand to be shipped from Italy, and I just want to tell you how cute all my baristas are now. They learned their tricks, trading info and tips, and they're getting the silkiest milk ever right now. And showing each other, and cheering for each other. High-fives over foam. Making me get up and look at their latte art. And the customers are in to it, too, they now know all the tricks for steaming milk because that's all we talk about anymore behind the counter. I think it was that they had to still perform with the adversity of the machine being broken and really put their thinking caps on to re-get their dexterity and really find their mojo. My input on re-training: break something irreparably.