A mellow high

This blog entry is not about smoking pot. I've never smoked pot. Well, actually I did once, but it was by accident. Its a good story, involving a lot of alcohol, some moderately grizzled WWII commandos, and some folks from Amsterdam (which might help clarify the story).

This is about coffee vs. soda.

Pop, Coke (Even when used in that oddly generic sense where you can say "what kind of Coke would you like?" and hear the answer "a rootbeer." Whatever.), soda, whatever you call it.
I'm not sure if this is true for anyone but me, but I somehow feel that coffee, brewed well and with care, gives a much better feeling than soda, ounce for ounce.

Now it might be a quantity thing. The legend, back in college, was that soda had more caffeine, ounce per ounce, than coffee. Add in the fact that a typical cup of coffee is 8 oz and a soda 50% more and you can easily take in a lot more of that wonderful (but disturbing) stimulant upon which I so deeply depend.

I drink too much soda and I get jittery, irritable, and plagued by a certain tight behind the eyeballs feeling. Things go out of focus, I find it ever harder to concentrate.

Don't get me wrong -- coffee in excess can get me just as bad. But it takes more. And I drink it more slowly -- I take time to go back and clean my press and load some grounds and let it sit and pour it out and let it cool and then enjoy the results.

That's one reason I like winter. When its 55 degrees out, I can enjoy standing at a window and looking out at the rain and drinking my 4th coffee of the day. Can I do that when it 85 degrees and, even inside the air-conditioned bubble of my Bellevue office tower, I can feel the sun hitting me and popping bubbles of sweat out of my pores?