When I was a teenager, working at Target, I drank Coke like crazy. Or Pepsi, if it was on sale. For my lunch break, I’d buy a 2-liter bottle of whatever was on sale and drink it. The whole thing, sometimes. Coke, by the way, is by far the superior for the high-volume cola drinker. Pepsi’s faults are much worse over the course of a can, much less a couple of glasses.

In college, I went through soda like crazy. I’d pile up cans on the help desk where I was working, and I kept pallets of the stuff in my room in case I ever decided to drink all six cans in the mini-fridge at once or something. I had trouble sleeping, my skin was pretty bad, and sometimes, after going through a string of Cokes, I’d feel my heart doing a hummingbird impression. So I stopped. I started to sleep well for the first time in years, my skin cleared up, and my heart’s been fine. I didn’t drink any cola of any kind for years (though I did go through Sprite (and Citra, for a while) like crazy during my time at Wireless). I didn’t have anything significantly caffinated until maybe a year ago.

But I love the smell of coffee. I like the taste. So I started drinking it once in a while, not ordering a decaf when having a meeting over coffees with someone at work, and since then, it’s been a long slide. Today I bought a grinder and made a drip cup for the first time in almost ten years.

I’ll skip the philosophizing. I’m hoping I don’t buy a $150 coffee grinder while I’m semi-employed, because I’m not sure a “required author tool” would get by.