The book I’m reading (another Terry Pratchett book, Monstrous Regiment) has a vampire who’s joined the Temperance League and substituted a blood addiction for an addiction to coffee. Somehow that got the idea stuck in my head that I should do the same thing.
Not give up my addiction to blood, of course — I love blood. But I’ve got a costly Coke habit that has not only done a number on my teeth and my breath, but also keeps me perpetually chubby. I figure if I could just get over my aversion to coffee, I’d get all the caffeine — something my body needs anyway, and I like that — without as much of the high fructose corn syrup.
So sometime last week (details are hazy), I went and busted up a Starbuck’s in my initial test run. I’m not even going to go into the whole business about the coffee-drinkers vs. non-coffee-drinkers club, and how the feeling I got looking at the menu must be what normal people feel like when they go into a comic book store. The double whammy of you don’t belong here and you have no idea how this works. (Plus the double grande non-fat mocha latte chino bit was already tired even when LA Story came out).
I ended up with a latte because I heard someone order one one time and I know it has something to do with milk. Tasted like warm milk served in a cup that had been previously used to drink coffee and wasn’t sufficiently cleaned. Not bad, definitely not as bad as my previous attempts at coffee-drinking, but nothing spectacular. I forced myself to like beer and cigarettes, I figured, so I can force myself to like this. The only question was whether it would have any effect — it didn’t seem very strong, and my years of the Coke monkey on my back have built up a pretty significant tolerance to caffeine.
At about 5:30 the next morning, I thought it would probably be a good idea to go to bed. I wasn’t tired yet, but it was starting to get light out so it just seemed like the thing to do. As I stopped vibrating long enough to drift off, I started to wonder what an espresso would do… Maybe Coke Blak is the answer?
Update: Apparently a latte is espresso. Go figure. Well, now I know, and knowing is half the battle.