It was a challenge like none other I had faced: wake up calls for delayed flights, sickness in family, hurricane and tropical storm warnings.

I had just returned from Costa Rica a week ago and was settling in with my clients, comrades and family from being missing in action. Approaching the coffee pot this Friday morning with the world in my hand, I suddenly realized the convenient supply of coffee represented before me was Folgers 1/2-Caff option. Seriously, you have to be kidding. This just can't be. OK, so I started the day a bit later than yesterday, surely this kind of punishment could only add to an unfocused, haze of unaccomplishment for the day?

Options, what are my options. I was nervous, I was confused. Never take no for an answer, call back, take the best answer out of 3, run with it, ask questions later - all the principal problem solving elements I practiced immediately surfaced for support!

So here I am, performing coffee surgery this morning, but yes, I think I will succeed! Grabbing each and every packet of coffee taken from hotel room to hotel room and the ever so nicely packaged samples given from Cafe Quetzal, Espiritu Santo "Peaberry", Cafe Tarrazu, and Cafe Britt. But wait, reaching farther back my fingers grip more foil packets! Some Cafe Tres Generaciones by the Doka Estate AND Valle Escondido! I could be slipping into a false sense of security, yet I cringed at the idea of opening the ever-so-coveted Costa Rica coffee beans securely packaged and carried home with care.

I analyzed my options, I wanted it now. I deserved it, I had earned it. It was rightly mine. It was me who squeezed each packet carefully into my suitcase at each stop! I wanted to smell the aroma, the "Arabian Variety" cultivated and harvested in the traditional way.

It became witchcraft. I pictured myself on the slopes of Espiritu Santo Mountain at an altitude of 4,000 feet above sea level. I imagined the exquisite aroma and grabbed the nearby knife to begin the operation. My final tools chosen for this coffee surgery were Cafe Quetzal and Cafe Britt with an acute awareness that tomorrow morning, early, another Saturday surgery is scheduled in my daytimer ahead of tropical storms and even the destination wedding bride and groom.