A good cuppa -

I was talking to a girlfriend awhile ago about trying to make a good cup of coffee.
We both complained about poor taste, bitterness, and inconsistency - never really knowing whether the coffee was going to turn out good that morning or not.
A couple of months ago, without any previous thoughts on the subject, I found myself filling my kettle with cold water and setting the burner on high.  I took my coffee maker carafe  and just spooned the coffee right into the bottom of it.  When the water came to a boil, I poured it into the carafe!  "Well now," I thought, "this should be good for a laugh".  I stared with some nervousness at the carafe sitting on the counter - half filled with what looked like dark brown sludge.  Using a sieve, I poured the sludge into 2 coffee mugs.  There was as lot of coffee grounds in the sieve.  I felt really stupid .  But guess what? The coffee tasted completely awesome!  I watched Merv's face, and sure enough,  "Boy, what did you do with the coffee?  It tastes delicious!"
Needless to say, I kept doing this every morning.  I kept the carafe, but threw out the rest of the coffee maker.  I started experimenting. Stirred the coffee a bit, stirred it a lot, let it sit for 5 minutes before serving, let it sit longer. The only change was that sometimes I would have less coffee grounds in the sieve.  Other than that the coffee remained completely perfect in taste.  Never wavered.  Merv and I started having little snits about "you took too much coffee!".  There was never any coffee left over.  (We have always used our microwave to "re-hot" our coffee so this remained the same.)
On our travels one time, we stayed at a bed and breakfast with a kitchen!  Whatever you liked for breakfast was already in the frig. We loved this arrangement, and got to use a "french press" coffee maker there.  I thought back to this and decided that this was close to what I was doing in my kitchen.  I was making coffee by pouring hot water into coffee grounds.  Last weekend we bought a french press coffee maker - a "Bodum".  Looks exactly like the picture above.  Not sure if it is big enough.  It bills itself as an 8-cup pot, but I think it translates into about 4 cups of coffee.  It makes the same cup of coffee as mine. Tastes exactly the same.  I look forward to it with complete confidence every morning.
A perfect way to start the day.