Coffee Raises My New Year

I have been sick all year. Sure, while it may be a trite statement to make on the 8th of January, it's very much the truth. In fact, about 85% of everyone I know has been sick... all year. I spend the first two hours of every morning emptying my head and learning to talk again. The rest of the day is like going through a second stage of vocal puberty, where I transition from the nasally way I normally talk to a poor James Earl Jones impression.

The worst part about being sick all year is that I had to cut back on coffee. The first week of the year and I barely touched the stuff. Thankfully, over the past three days, I have been able to bounce back, and I've been making up for lost time. At the end of last week, I visited my favorite cafe three days in a row. By the end of the week, one of the baristas said to me: "Glad to hear it doesn't sound like Satan is living in your throat anymore." I, too, was very glad he left... I was sick of having sulfur breath.

Speaking of coffee, one of my highlights of this new year has been the discovery of "Coffee Cake Coffee;" a Flavor of the Day that I never imagined I would actually like. However it was recommended to me last Friday, I tried it, and I couldn't get enough! At the same time, I couldn't help but taste a sense of irony: a coffee that tastes like a dessert made to be eaten with coffee. It had a cinnamon-y vanilla taste to it, and wasn't nearly as "crummy" as the actual dessert. I'm currently in the throws of a long decision-making process to decide what blend of coffee I shall be taking back with me for my final semester of college.

Prior to Friday, I was set on a pound of "J.P. Hearty." It's a Prestogeorge Pittsburgh original that sounds like a Tammany Hall politician but tastes like a Bull Moose Senator! It's a dang good blend that never seems to let me down... that is, until I found this Coffee Cake Coffee. My concern is that if I have too much of it, I may get sick of it. That has always been my concern with flavored coffee. Too much of that flavor and it became lame and tired. So, perhaps I may be compromising, going with the pound of J.P. Hearty and a half, or quarter pound of the Coffee Cake Coffee.

Thus far over break, my creativity has been on vacation as well. With the only Dweller show being one that we wrote three years ago, and a break in the radio show writing, I haven't felt the need to blog to express myself. But, as things wind down (faster than I had previously expected!) I find my creativity returning. The Dwellers are in the brainstorming stages of a new show slated for May, James and I have begun writing our next four episodes of Dodge, and I'm able to drink coffee again... which means more oxygen is getting to my brain. Plus, my ability to breathe through my nose is giving me access to more oxygen in general. I'm watching alot of movies, I'm reading pulp novels, I'm catching up on all of the Fall episodes of "The Unit"... things are coming around and the laziness of the Christmas season has been packed away in boxes in the basement.

Knowing my luck, I will discover a great new project to work on days before moving back to school.