To caf or not to caf, that is the question

...Caffeinate that is...(that's not even a verb... meh)

Tweek just posted after a long hiatus and I might as well do the same - with the same topic: coffee.

I never drank coffee, of any variety, until I was in university; however this isn't the typical get hooked on coffee due to late nights of essay writing and cramming for exams. I got hooked on coffee during the summer months when Indigo Eve and I would go for marathon "coffee walks" after work. Our coffee was more of a dessert than a coffee: Tall Hazelnut Mocha - with the whipped cream and the chocolate syrup and the chocolate sugar power and the chocolate covered coffee bean on top of the mountain of whipped cream that you'd have to eat super fast before it sunk to the bottom. I'm sure that there was some espresso in there but it was more the sugar we were after and the coffee bit was a nice flavour.

Then I became somewhat calorie conscious, only somewhat. I started experimenting. First it was the skim milk instead of 2%. Then it was the sugar free hazelnut, and if the barista asked if I wanted the chocolate sugar free I'd go for that as well. Then I took the biggest step - no whip, just foam. *gasp* Suddenly, this was no longer a dessert in a cup but it was getting to be more like coffee.

Undergrad came and went and the dessert coffee's became a fleeting summer time romance that were slowly being replaced the current favourite: "tall, non-fat, no whip, sugar-free hazelnut mocha" or, if I'm in my usual coffee shop "the usual."

But here's the caffeine experience that leads me to the crux of this post. During my grad studies I was given a regular coffee one night by classmates. They had gone to the coffee shop for a break but I couldn't afford the time so I stayed behind. Unbeknown to then, while they were gone I had made and consumed a super caffeinated "usual" and got back to working. So when this coffee arrived - black, sugarless, and delivered with good intentions - I had to drink it. It tasted pretty horrible so I doctored it up a bit and drank it and no word of a lie, I could no longer work. My brain was so saturated with caffeine that synapses were going off like fireworks in my head but not connecting to anything. My eyes could not focus and I couldn't sit still. It was freaking me out man! I was trippin' on coffee!

I had tried plain old coffee before and hated it. Too bitter. But I thought that was just my underdeveloped palette rejecting new things. Apparently, it was my brain trying to communicate with me through my taste buds to tell me that I don't mix well with caffeine and to only drink it when masked by other favours.

I've realized that the favour of a mocha is excellent caffeinated or not therefore if I know I need to sleep, I'll ask for decaf and hope the barista actually remembers to use the right beans. I find that they generally forget the mocha part and serve me a latte instead, which is fine but still... not what I ordered. I have learned that I can still sleep when I have caffeine in my system because if I'm so tired that I'm drinking more than one mocha a day, my brain and body will override the caffeine and I'll crash anyway.

Kinda like right now... I've been running on only a few hours of sleep the past 2 days and have had many a coffee. That doesn't seem to matter at this point because I'm about fall asleep.

Tweek: I win. The time line between posts was longer on my blog than yours. It's like the race that never actually starts because neither person wants to get there first but you must have twitched over the starting line when in a caffeine induced state. Better luck next time.