I Guess You Could Call It a Pot Problem

So, rereading yesterday's post has made it readily apparent that I need to relax a bit. As such, I must now look for ways of cutting stress out of my life. I believe that I will start with an old standby - cutting way back on my coffee intake. Hopefully this will help bring my level of crazy back down to a reasonable point.

Speaking of coffee, we've had a shake up at the office. We have one of those vendors who comes by and dumps off boxes of whatever industrial brand coffee that they're pushing this week. Ordinarily I don't notice such things beyond having to figure out how to break into the latest packaging to get to the sweet, life giving grounds that can be found therein. This time I noticed it because the previous brand had been Grandpa...something, and had featured a drawing of a creepy old guy standing in front of what looked like a steampunk version of a Starbucks machine. I distinctly remember thinking to myself that it was a peculiar drawing, and that this Grandpa character seemed like someone I would avoid taking candy from, but creepy old people do make fine coffee, so what the heck.

Then one day creepy grandpa was replaced by a much more sterile looking package named like a subdivision. You know...Highland Parks or Deer Run Estate or something like that. I snickered momentarily at the name, paused for a moment out of respect for Grandpa Whatshisname, and went to bust open the new package. Unfortunately, my penchant for overthinking slogans kicked in when I read the following words :

Taste a world of flavors inside your cup

I see that and all I can think is "Woah woah woah...I'm looking for precisely one flavor in my cup - coffee. You can keep whatever other flavors you had in mind to yourself.". Seriously, what the hell does that mean anyway? "Mmm. Is it me or does the coffee have a hint of mint with a light, Spam-like finish today?" You all know that I've been burned by experimenting with flavors that do not go together naturally, so this set off some serious red flags.

Of course, I got over it when I remembered that if it's free and caffeinated, it can taste like sewer rat for all I care. The important thing is not nodding off at my desk. But everyone is relatively healthy, bedtimes are all fairly regular now, and I can probably afford to cut back on my minimum-pot-a-day habit. Perhaps this will be a good first step towards me learning how to relax again.

If not, at least I'll be able to answer my doctor's inquiry of how many cups of coffee I drink a day without needing a conversion chart.