Haiku of the Day:
Coffee in my cup
Awesome caffeine wakes me up
Me? An addict? Yup!
I know. I'm no poet. But sometimes you just have to haiku. Who's with me here? Most of my haiku focus on how stupid my job is. It's a way to express my rage in a concise, time efficient manner. When I'm at work I normally don't have time for more than 17 syllables of venting.
Well, anyways... This was meant to be a blog about coffee and the haiku was just a tangent. So yes. I am a caffeine addict. I can not live my life without my coffee. I am a blithering idiot in the morning when I wake up. You think I'm lazy normally, but you probably haven't seen me without my caffeine fix. The word catatonic is not entirely inaccurate.
So I am addicted to caffeine, and I will not really accept my drug in any form other than coffee. I love coffee. I love how it tastes, I love the aroma. I love the different forms of coffee. I like a nice basic cup of black coffee with sugar. I like espresso. I like mochas, cappuccinos, iced coffee, blended coffee drinks, cafe caramel, iced toddies, and so on. If it has coffee in it, I probably like it.
This all started years ago. When I was in college, I had a particularly bad week sophomore year. It involved me being sick with the flu, and having to write a lot of papers and take several final exams all in one week. The end of this hellish week was near, but I still had my greatest challenge of all ahead of me: a Calculus Final. On Saturday morning at 7am, after 5 grueling days of all that other shit I just mentioned. By Friday afternoon, I was TIRED. I had missed several nights of sleep that week. I was in rough shape. Any qualified health professional would have advised me to go directly home, take my codeine, and sleep a lot. Actually, a qualified medical professional HAD told me to do that. But what did she know? She wasn't flunking calculus. So thanks to this Calculus final, again there would be no sleep for Liz.
My friend Brian helped make this all possible by forcing me to drink lots of coffee, even though I didn't like coffee much. He made good coffee for me (as opposed to crappy brown water you get at Denny's), and made me drink it. A lot of it. And then he forced me to study calculus for 12 hours straight while continually drinking coffee. And I didn't fail my class! Thank you Brian, where ever you are. You saved me from having to repeat that torturous class from hell. And you got me liking coffee.
And also know that I hold you personally responsible for this raging drug addiction that afflicts me to this day. Ha ha ha ha ha ha.
Well, it might not be fair to blame Brian completely. It might not be his fault that I now need three shots of espresso a day in order to live my life. But maybe he is to blame. It's not clear to me either way, and the sad truth is we will probably never know. So let's just blame him anyway.
So now that I'm hooked on the stuff, I usually go to my friendly local family owned coffee shop. They have really good coffee, and they are always nice to me. They know what I want (because I go there every day), and they are all just cool in general. In the mornings I am too stupid to do anything before I have my coffee. This includes going to get my coffee. They understand when I am too retarded to coherently place my order and pay for it. They know I need a little extra assistance sometimes. And they are OK with it, and they don't make me feel like an ass. Sometimes by mistake I order too many or too few shots of espresso. They notice and they make sure I don't overdose. Good people. We are also open about the fact that they are my drug dealer. We joke about it, but it's totally true.
I like this coffee place because it is the opposite of Starbucks. Starbucks is the corporate coffee evil empire. I hate Starbucks. I avoid Starbucks whenever I can. Someday I will explain why I hate Starbucks, but not today. I've already been going on and on for too long, and even I am getting bored now.
But back to my haiku. I decided while I was writing this blog that my coffee haiku is a lot better than most of my previous ones, and it would appeal to a much broader audience than the ones I write about my stupid job. So I decided to submit it to thinkgeek.com. If you aren't aware of this, thinkgeek.com has a monthly haiku contest. The winner gets their haiku printed in the monthly thinkgeek newsletter, and also wins $50 off stuff on their website! I've never sent a haiku in to thinkgeek before, so I'm pretty excited. I know, it's a long shot. But I can always use $50 worth of free geeky toys and gadgets, caffeinated soap, and things like that. Also, if they choose my haiku, I will be able to say that "some of my writing has been published." And I won't technically be lying. Come on... if you are reading my blog, you know as well as I do that this is probably the only chance I have at being published. So this could be a breakthrough for me!
So everyone! Keep your fingers crossed and wish me luck, OK?
2 comments:
Good luck with the haiku contest!
I, too, am a coffee addict. I'm really trying to cut back, though, because the habit always comes back to bite me when I travel - it's impossible to get the same quality and volume that I'm used to on a regular basis when overseas. Hence, I spend the first few days of my trips walking around in a fog and cursing a splitting headache.
Withdrawl sucks...
I also have tried to cut back/quit. But I can't! By the third day I feel like I have the flu and I can't even function at work at all. It's really bad.
When I travel that happens to me too. But that's the only time I am happy to see that evil green and white sign on almost every street corner on earth.
Post a Comment