My son woke me up several times last night. Around 6:30 this morning he just wouldn’t go back to sleep, so I got up to make him some breakfast. Before I could have my morning tea he decided that he needed to tell me a few things. I set up the recorder so that I could share my caffeine-less conversation with my 2 year old(s). He did most of the talking.

We had a fantastic President’s day weekend – definitely nice to have that extra day. On Saturday we went to our church’s pot-luck, on Sunday was church and naps, and on Monday we went roller skating with Rachel and the kids. All of the kids started off pretty shaky, but by the end they were doing amazingly well. Especially my son, who ended up falling asleep on his Aunt even with all the crowd noise and loud music.

With improved memory, decreased fatigue, improved mental functioning and sped up reaction time – Superben Returned on Monday with a pot of Wintry Blend coffee and banana/date breads laced with dark chocolate M&Ms.

This sudden intake of caffeine had a profound effect. It started out as a few simple shakes, and then turned into an ultra fast vibration. This vibration caused my body to become super aero-dynamic – allowing me to traverse the distance between my mug and coffee maker at light speed. Talking about light speed, the vibration also had an effect on my sight – I was able to see faster than the speed of light! This gave me super zoom vision, seeing far distances, around corners, through walls and slightly into the future.

So, in celebration of returning to the land of coffee, chocolate and caffeine:

Food/drinks and the milligrams of caffeine they contain:

• Espresso coffee, brewed, 2 fluid ounces: 126
• Coffee, brewed, 8 fluid ounces: 85
• Red Bull (8.2 oz): 80
• Coffee, instant, 8 fluid ounces: 62
• Lemon-lime soda (Mountain Dew), with caffeine, 12 ounce can: 55
• Tea, brewed, 8 fluid ounces: 47
• Cola, 12 ounce can: 37
• Dark chocolate, semisweet, 1 ounce: 20
• Milk chocolate bar, 1.55 ounces: 9
• Hot chocolate, 8 fluid ounces: 5
• Chocolate milk, 8 fluid ounces: 5
• M & M milk chocolate candies, 1.69 ounces: 5
• Coffee, brewed, decaffeinated, 8 fluid ounces: 3
• Tea, brewed, decaffeinated, 8 fluid ounces: 3
• Coffee, instant, decaffeinated, 8 fluid ounces: 2
• Tea, herbal, brewed, 8 fluid ounces: 0
• Lemon-lime soda (Sprite), regular or diet, 12 ounce can: 0
• Ginger ale, regular or diet, 12 ounce can: 0
• Root beer, regular or diet, 12 ounce can: 0

Important links:

• Faqs.org – Caffeine
• Wilstar.com – Caffeine Content Of Popular Drinks
• WebMD – Pros and Cons of the Caffeine Craze
• Ask the Dietician – Caffeine
• Ask the Dietician – Healthy Body Calculator
  My results for suggested calories:
  During my cleansing I was running: 1500/day
  Winter: 3000/day
  Biking-season: 3400/day
• Wikipedia – Caffeine

My family and I went to Martha’s Vineyard with some really awesome friends for the Thanksgiving weekend. It was a great adventure, except that I had to work on Friday, and Erica caught strep throat.

We drove down Wednesday afternoon, parked the car, took the bus, then the ferry, then the minivan, then a nap, then some coffee. Erica brought ingredients for her awesome spinach lasagna, and Ted brought a lasagna that he had frozen – so dinner was delicious – so was the coffee.

On Thursday the crew worked all day preparing the turkey and all the fixins. The turkey spent most of the day in the oven, then moved out to the grill – it was awesometastic. After dinner and dessert and all-day coffee, they drove me back to the ferry. I took the last ferry, back on the bus to my car, two hours of driving, three hours of sleeping, then to work at 5AM.

By noon Friday we had made over $76M with no site failures of any kind, so by 1PM it was safe to leave. Another two hour drive, then a bus and a ferry and a minivan and some coffee. Back on the island by 4:30PM. And then some coffee.

On Saturday we had some coffee, and a couple really nice walks. We got out to the beach, which was amazingly pleasant for a late-November day. On Sunday we had coffee, then packed up. Somewhere along the line Erica caught a nice case of strep throat, so, we had some coffee. Then got in the car, on the ferry, in a bus, back to our car, and a two hour trip home. I took off Monday and Tuesday to take care of her and the kids.

So, now, how about the coffee? Oh, and the food?

Things started to get bad when Halloween hit, but now combine that with Thanksgiving and you have a disaster. For the past month I’ve been overeating all kinds of bad stuff. I managed to gain about 7 pounds – bringing me up to one pound under my goal weight (okay, so I shouldn’t complain). I’m at 154 now. I’ve also completely overdone it with coffee. I started to get to the point that coffee wouldn’t wake me up anymore, and only helped get rid of the headaches.

So, starting this past Monday, I started a 21 day cleanup routine. I’ve dropped coffee and soda – replaced it with a little green tea when I really need it. I’ve also gotten back on plan with eating. I’m not counting points, but just using the common sense I learned from losing 50 pounds. I’m also upping my exercise to daily, alternating biking/weights with biking/abs. I’ll keep you all updated on my progress to cleandome.

So, between watching Donnie Darko and Heroes I think I’ve got this whole time travel thing figured out. One can create time, or at least the illusion of time, by simply not sleeping.

Let’s see, after work yesterday around 5pm I went home, put more memory in my Ubuntu, then went to church for some churchy pizza, beer and spiritual parenting. The class was happy and good, and we of course stayed after for the chatting and stuff. Then we went home, and of course the kids don’t fall asleep in the car anymore, so we had to put them to bed. I think I finished that around 11:30pm.

I went down to the basement and did a shorty exercise routine – 20 mins on the bike, 1 set of weights. Went upstairs brewed some coffee, put it in my thermos and headed of to work around 12:15am.

I drank the coffee.

I worked from 1am to 3:30am, then headed home. There was no way I was going to sleep. So, I installed windows xp inside a vmware virtual machine in my Ubuntu. Then I installed office, mainly so I could get the two apps running that I can’t get running in Ubuntu, publisher and access. I don’t much like them programs, but I still need to be able to open the publisher files and the openoffice database can import tables from access, but not the queries or the forms and the stuff. Wow, I’m out of it – does it show?

So, I headed to bed around 5:30am.

Then I done woked up at 7, tooked a shower, and then I woked up at 7 and … uh, I woke up, then I made some shower and a breakfast and woke up the childs and. Did I mention that yesterday between work and churchy I dropped of a roll of film at the 1 hour film development at the CVS? So, this morning after the waking up and stuff, I went to drive my daughter to school, we stopped at CVS to pick up our 1 hour prints. I was told that I had filled out the wrong envelope, and should have filled out the identally looking 1 hour envelope, and that my film was in the pile to be sent out to a lab. Thankfully it was still in the pile, so we took it out and put it in the 1 hour pile – so, I’m giving them another 8 hours or so to pick up my photocd and prints. This is why I don’t do the film.

Ok, then we started the drive to school – taking the backroads as usual to avoid traffic. But, there was a big accident, so the odds had switched, and my commute time trippled, and thinking I had left early – ended up arriving 20 mins late.

We listened to some from the top podcasts in the car – and there was this one with these two 12 year old piano playing boys. The music was fantastic, but the interview even better. One of the boys said the best invention ever was food. The announcer bunny said the best invention ever was the thermos. I agree. He said that it keeps the cold things cold and the hot things hot, how does it know the difference? Fantastic.

Oh, I forgot to mention that my daughter fell in love with the blue dress barbie at the CVS, and I had to tell her that she can ask Santa for it and she can’t have it now. She cried because she said that someone else might buy it in the meantime, so I had to tell her the truth about Santa:

Santa and his elves have their own factory, and can make any toy in the world. Mommies and Daddies and Grandmas and Grandpas have to buy toys in the regular stores made in regular factories, and sometimes they run out of the right toys and it is very hectic especially the day after Thanksgiving. But Santa doesn’t have to worry about that, because he can custom fabricate anything.

My daughter had some other concerns though. She wanted to know how Santa knew which house was hers and how would he deliver the blue dress barbie to the right place. I had to explain, that when I was a kid, this was a serious issue, and lots of mistakes were made. Everything was done manually, not very efficient. But, in recent years, Santa and his elves have completely modernized. They have integrated systems for tracking kids, houses, etc. He gets updated data on his cell phone, which integrates with the sleighs GPS system. He knows who’s been naughty, whos been nice, how much time you’ve spent watching TV, using the internet, he also knows if you are at your house or at grandma’s, and delivers everything to the right place. He’s got bar code scanners and RFID tags to track the exact position of all presents at all times, it is really quite cool.

I’m going to go get some more coffee. It is 9:25am.

PS – When I walked in this morning they gave me a big pen.

I had a great weekend! I swapped out my workout routine Friday night. Getting up early to work out (as opposed to biking) has just not been working for me. I’ve been out of energy and feeling craptastic all of the time. So, I figured I should do what I did last winter, work out at night after the kids go to sleep. And, pack in both workouts at one time, and only do it every other day. So, I popped in a DVD (watched Donnie Darko again), hopped on the bike trainer for 30 mins, then did weights.

My parents came up to visit Saturday – we met for lunch, then they took the kids while I got a chance to go for a bike ride (a real ride, in the out of doors!). Perfect weather, did a nice leisurely 28 miles – up through Sudbury towards Concord, jogged over past Acton and stopped at Bill’s in Maynard to say hi. Then I headed home through Hudson and on to the bike trail to Marlborough.

Saturday evening was a pot luck dinner at the church, another great time as usual. Lots of awesome food, beer, dessert and church coffee (which I don’t understand why Brent uses that term in a negative way – our church has awesome coffee). Then my parents took the kids for the night.

I actually managed to get some sleep, in fact I woke up late and ended up having to run around like a chicken with its head cut off in order to get to church, get the recording equipment all setup and still make choir rehearsal on time. I did cheat a bit on my way to church, stopped at Ariba coffee in Hudson for a grande dark roast. I’ve been trying to not buy coffee at all, so much more cost effective to brew it yourself – but I was totally dragging this morning after getting too much sleep. In any case, Ariba is awesome! Free wifi, they actually have food (like sausage egg and cheese on a croissant), awesome coffee, modern starbuckian/panera breadian atmosphere, and the local/non-chainism appeal.

In any case, got in some good churchin, then came home, put all the kids in bed, bought some steaks at the supermarket and made a fancy schmancy dinner with wine and bread and real metal utensils. Put the kids to bed and then it was workout time again. Finished Donnie Darko and started up Matchstick Men. I’m going to need to get Netflix going again – and I need to get my DVD recorder fixed, craptacular POS. Had to record Heroes on (yikes) VHS last week. Anyone want to donate a subscription free or lifetime Tivo?

Yesterday I had a bad coffee day. I didn’t get a chance to make my usual morning coffee at home, so I decided to make some at work. The only grind I had sitting around at work was an “espresso” grind. The packaging actually says it should work in all coffee makers, but, it is a very fine grind.

So, after loading up the coffee maker with 10 cups worth of grind and water (figured I’d share), I let it run. I let everyone know that the coffee was brewing, and then after 30 mins went back to check on it. It was everywhere. Everywhere except in the coffee pot. It appears as though the grind was not letting the water through fast enough, so it overflowed over the basket – getting all over the outside of the pot, the coffee maker, the counter, the cabinets and the floor. Now keep in mind, I still haven’t had any coffee – so cleaning this up was especially effortfull.

Meh.

In the afternoon I was reminded that I had a secret stash of coarse grind for my french press. I brewed that and, although it didn’t result in a disaster, didn’t result in very good coffee.

Brent brought in a nice baggie of starbucks today. He threw it at me, and thankfully the ziplock held. We’ll have to save it for a rainy day (or Friday), as I brewed some pumpkin spice at home and brought it in.

A few days ago a rep from Rockstar energy drinks was in our office giving out product. Everyone I knew was taking several samples (especially Mr. NeoGeek, with his SuperDrink Mentos Power Punch) – so I grabbed some too.

I tried the low-carb, then the diet. They’re okay, but I never really cared for the super drinks for their taste. Today I tried the non-diet Juiced Guava. This one is 70% juice, so it actually had a kind of natural consistency, and wasn’t ultra carbonated. It was pretty high in calories (I think like 180 for the 2-serving 16 oz. can) – but also high in CaFfEinE!

To top it off, I found some of my leftover biking Clif bars in a drawer this morning, so I had the caffeinated Peanut Toffee Crunch clif bar along with the rockstar, making a clifrock snack. I was doing a lot of high action activities, like sitting in meetings and writing code – so I needed all the zap I could get. It was fantastic, everything was vibrating.

Mrmmmph. This happens every year, right around this time. Summer is over, biking is over, sunlight is over. There is little daylight, and my internal clock just won’t reset. Maybe it will improve when we change the clocks at the end of the month.

So, right now my day starts after I put the kids to bed. It is dark out, and I am ready to go. So, I do some work, watch TV, have some snacks, and then bang! It is like 2am. So I force myself to go to sleep, knowing that full well I should get up at 6am.

Well, it doesn’t get light out until like 7:30, so, I can’t get up. 7:30 rolls around and I am already late, need to get up, get cleaned up, make breakfast, pack lunch, wake up my daughter, get her ready to leave, leave. We are supposed to leave at 8 – but lately it has been 8:20, takes 20 minutes to get her to school, where she arrives late at 8:40.

And then I get to go to work. Must have coffee.

After work we’ve got activities almost every night of the week. So, either run home and make dinner then go, or sometimes they have dinner there. Then get home late, put the kids to bed and start all over.

artwork is ColdRain by Skybase

I’m part of a small team that is part of a larger team which in turn, is co-parts of a sub-small team and is divided between the two teams. In any case, there are three of us and we have to share pager duty.

One of the joys of pager duty is being called at 4am on Sundays so that we can identify that we should in fact not have been called, and who in fact, should have been called.

The other joy is that when on pager duty, it is your responsibility to provide coffee on Friday morning. This usually consists of a box of coffee from either Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts, and sometimes involves some type of baked good, like banana bread, muffins or donuts.

In my recent plight recently to spend less money, I brought in an extra coffee maker and finally got around to trying it out this Friday. I brought in some Starbucks grinds and a pint of half and half. We have a store of sweeteners, cups and stirrers from all the previous Fridays. I brewed up a pot, and here were the results.

It came out tasting like Starbucks coffee! Yay me!

I did have several technical issues though. Starbucks needs to brew strong, they call for two tablespoons of grind per “cup.” This is twice the amount of most other coffees. The filter basket is just not meant to hold that much – so I either make less coffee, or risk grind overflow. I risked it – made a full 12 cups.

So, had a good sludge of grinds at the bottom of the pot. Everyone had to make a comment on it of course, at least most of the comments were after I had my caffeine. My friend made use of the goo and fed it to his plant. He asked if I wanted it for my plant, which has been dead for quite a time, and I didn’t think it would help.

Later in the day I made a second pot just to prove that it was so much cheaper to do it yourself that I could do it twice a day. This time I cut it down to 10 cups, but the grinds were still pretty close to the top of the filter – still had the same issue. Next time I’ll cut it down to 8 and see how it does. Alternatively, we could use a different brand of coffee with normal measurement requirements.