The Person I've Become

I remember my first coffee drink.

It was in March 1998...I wanted to try a coffee drink but wasn't sure I'd like the coffee taste. I went to Tully's and asked for advise. I ended up with a Mocha with twice the chocolate...and yum! was it good! I think that was all I really drank for a few years...maybe the occasional latte or macchiato...but it had to be sweetened!

Then at some point, I went somewhere (probably to someones house) and they only had brewed coffee. So I had a cup (with sugar, of course) and found that with enough sugar, I liked it. Thus began my occasional brewed coffee path.

My last year of college, in 2002-2003, I went to school in Regina, Saskatchewan...there was nothing close to the school in the way of espresso stands and the only coffee shops were few and far between (especially when I didn't have a car). This forced me to become less of a specialty drinker and more of a brewed coffee drinker. There is/was this little coffee shop in the Southgate Mall that sold hand-crafted chocolates, loose-leaf tea, coffee beans, and other related items. Occasionally I would meander down to the mall and would buy a little 4oz bag of flavored coffee beans. They were ridiculously priced (about $6.00 for 4 oz) but I justified the money because that one little bag would last me about a month. I would make coffee in a little "4-cup" machine about once or twice a week. Naively, I thought this frequency was perfect and that I would never be a person who would drink coffee all day long!

At some point that year, I noticed that my "once or twice a week" was increasing to four to five times a week. It was at this point that I stopped buying the expensive 4 oz coffee beans and bought less expensive 16 oz bags of coffee.

Meanwhile, the taste of coffee has continued to woo me as I moved to Germany and then back to Washington. I find myself now a person who could and would drink coffee all day long! That mocha from my long lost past is now much too sweet and is avoided at all costs. Sure, I like an occasional latte but brewed coffee is where it is at.

There is something about having a delicious cup of coffee in the afternoon and then in the evening when allowing myself to relax. I have become the person I never thought I'd be.

And I'm okay with that.