{"id":5806,"date":"2011-05-16T20:33:20","date_gmt":"2011-05-17T01:33:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.net\/?p=5806"},"modified":"2011-05-16T20:33:20","modified_gmt":"2011-05-17T01:33:20","slug":"on-my-daily-caffeine-intake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=5806","title":{"rendered":"On My Daily Caffeine Intake"},"content":{"rendered":"

I am nothing without my morning coffee.<\/p>\n

I started drinking coffee at an early age. I must have been ten. It would be served after church services, and I would help myself to the coffee. Everyone — every adult<\/i>, anyway — drank it. So why couldn’t I?<\/p>\n

I drank coffee irregularly. It wasn’t until 1996 — the Charlottesville year — that I began drinking coffee on a regular basis. There was a Barnes & Noble at Barracks Road, and it had a Starbucks, and there was a cute redheaded barrista named Sally. I was twenty-two.<\/p>\n

Tea, hot<\/i> tea that is, did nothing<\/i> for me.<\/p>\n

Iced tea was fine. But brewing a cup of tea? No interest. It seemed like too much trouble.<\/p>\n

And anyway, I loved coffee. I loved its blackness and its bitterness. I would "dope" the coffee with two sugars and a dollop of milk.<\/p>\n

And yes, on occasion, when I’d go out I’d get an Irish Coffee. Because, frankly, that’s good<\/i> stuff. Wasn’t it Larry Niven who said that Irish Coffee was the perfect drink for the creative because the caffeine kept you awake and the alcohol relaxed the mind? I have my own variation on an Irish Coffee<\/a>; it happens to be easier to make. \ud83d\ude09<\/p>\n

I don’t know precisely when I began drinking coffee as part of my daily routine. I’ll say that it was probably<\/i> after college, as likely as not circa 2001, when I was promoted to a store manager with EB Games in Pennsylvania.<\/p>\n

After I moved to North Carolina, coffee was definitely<\/i> part of the daily routine; every morning I’d stop at Panera Bread and buy a coffee — and occasionally a bagel. Suddenly I’m nostalgic for a Panera cinnamon raisin bagel — oh, they are so<\/i> good…<\/p>\n

And then I bought a coffee pot for the store. I realized that it would be cheaper to brew my own coffee instead of going out every morning to buy coffee.<\/p>\n

And then…<\/p>\n

Then I started brewing tea in the coffee pot. But not any tea. I’d brew mint tea in it. I went to BJ’s, I bought a box of mint tea bags, and sometimes when I didn’t feel like coffee I’d brew a pot of mint tea, putting three or four of the teabags in the coffee grounds basket.<\/p>\n

It was an awesome<\/i> coffee pot. It was a Mr. Coffee, and it had an LED analog clockface on its front. My grandmother dismantled that coffee pot one day — I have no idea what she did or how she did it — and it never worked again.<\/p>\n

I’ve scaled back my coffee intake. I had to — one day, not long after I started my current job, I was so<\/i> wired from coffee that I could barely function. At my absolute worst<\/i>, I was drinking up to two pots of coffee a day. Now, I drink two 16oz mugs of coffee in the morning before I leave for the office. And when I get to the office, I drink tea.<\/p>\n

I have teabags and I’ll brew a cup of tea between 10 and 10:30. Then, around lunchtime I’ll have a Peace Iced Tea<\/a>; I’m particular fond of the new "Caddy Shack" Tea\/Lemonade flavor.<\/p>\n

Then I won’t touch anything caffeinated after about six o’clock.<\/p>\n

See, once upon a time, I could stop at Starbucks after nine o’clock at night and order something toxic and caffeinated. I could consume it, I could go home, and I could fall fast asleep.<\/p>\n

Then I turned thirty. My body just didn’t work<\/i> like that any longer.<\/p>\n

I can’t imagine giving up coffee or<\/i> tea, not completely. Coffee gets the day going, tea keeps it level.<\/p>\n

This works for me. \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n

\"Powered<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I am nothing without my morning coffee. I started drinking coffee at an early age. I must have been ten. It would be served after church services, and I would help myself to the coffee. Everyone — every adult, anyway — drank it. So why couldn’t I? I drank coffee irregularly. It wasn’t until 1996Continue reading “On My Daily Caffeine Intake”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[399,799],"class_list":["post-5806","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-coffee","tag-tea","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5806","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5806"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5806\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5806"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5806"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5806"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}