So I see this blog post at Street Use about a news story warning me to “Think twice before using hotel room coffee pots.”

Ask just about anyone in law enforcement, and they’ll tell you to be careful if you ever brew coffee in a hotel room.
“I know enough now that whenever I go to a hotel, regardless of how nice it is, I’ll never use a coffee pot,” said Marshall County District Attorney Steve Marshall.

…

Rick Phillips of the Marshall County Drug Enforcement Unit says there’s definitely a risk. “The coffee makers that you find in every motel room is an ideal heat source. They mix it up in the coffee pot, put it on a heat source and let it sit there and cook,” said Phillips. It’s common knowledge to those who fight meth, but a shock to your average citizen. Phillips says it’s pretty easy to tell if a coffee pot has been used to cook meth. It will have a dark reddish-orange stain.

This is handy to know, but probably only vaguely more useful than being able to differentiate poisonous from non-poisonous snakes. I’ll assume I’m good enough on the whole “clean glass/dirty, orange-stained glass” thing to keep using my hotel micro-coffee maker.

I drink coffee out of a lot of those little micro-pots. I have never seen one that was orange, but that could be because I’m staying in the wrong hotels. If I do, though, I’ll be sure to not use it. Just like I would not prepare or consume food or drinks in or from any other vessel that looked exceptionally dirty and resisted cleaning.

As a matter of fact, I drank coffee out of the little micro-pot of coffee in my hotel room for the last three mornings. I had know idea I was taking my life in my own hands by doing so. Fortunately, it was clean and tasty (as those things go). Of course, the idea that I was making potentially life-threatening risk decisions before I had my morning coffee was probably the risk I shouldn’t have accepted.