Frappé Nation

A friend of mine at work is from Greece and he makes the most amazing iced Greek frappé coffees. He brings one in every day in a tall glass with whipped milk on top. I asked him about it the other day and he brought me one today. Good stuff! It's made with that super-powdered Greek coffee that will probably keep me alert and active for three days, and awake for an additional two.

My eyes are already the size of saucers.

Note to Dennis: No Greek jokes. Not even that one.

No, not that one either.

Jitters

Today is an all-out, go-for-broke, caffeine bachanalia buzz fest. Heather and I both woke up So tired from the weekend festivities that we had to be dragged out of bed by a special last-minute act of congress.

I'm drinking coffee like a jet pilot on night patrol. I feel a low-level humming, not unlike the background echo of the Big Bang, permeating my every nerve ending. I'm hot, radioactive, ultra-alert . Jumpy as a Joey. The faintest sound sends chills up my spine and into my brain like shockwaves from a grenade.

Really, really dreading coming down from this. It could be bad. No spotters, no net. Just a hard desk top to break my fall.

A Bunch Of Nuts And A Bolt

I never thought I'd grow up to be a coffee drinker. But then again, I am a lot of things I never thought I'd be. It usually takes me about two giant cups of coffee to get through a typical day now. If it's really bad, I might need three, but then the jitters set in and I become volatile, like a nervous squirrel handling nitro glycerin.

I have come to like really good coffee, the kind that I can't get here at work. Back before I was a coffee drinker I got some 100% Kona and even back then I knew it was good stuff. Now I drink the local industrial kitchenette variety, rough and tumble with a finish like licking a rusty fender. But I guess I shouldn't complain, it's hot and carries the requisite load of caffeine I require.

Coffee is a funny thing, isn't it? We take some beans, dry them out and roast them and grind them up and run hot water through them. Then we drink the resulting brown liquid. Who ever dreamed that up? Did they try it first with a range of really nasty and sometimes fatally poisonous beans and seeds, only to decide by default that only coffee did the trick? I'm sure the coffee plant has been bred by humans to be more tolerable over the years, the early, natural varieties were undoubtedly harsher and more primitive. So it must have been one wicked-tired adventurer that first dreamed up that brewing process. I'm sure the rest of the tribe looked at him like he was out of his mind. I'm not so sure he wasn't.

But crazy or not, thanks dude!