There was a point in my life where I was not allowed to drink coffee. As in, friends would literally take a cup of coffee away from me. I suppose this had to do with the fact that if I had a single cup of coffee, I would be hyperactive for hours upon hours on end. I would talk five times faster than I already do, and basically wouldn’t slow down for at least 6 hours. Yep, it was pretty bad…but then, grad school hit. In order to get through the mountainous pile of homework and projects, that single cup of coffee became a staple. It would still keep me wired for hours, but at the time, it didn’t seem like such a bad idea. I didn’t really like the taste of coffee, so much in fact that I would drench it in sugar and cream, even if it were flavored coffee. That eventually changed as well. By the time I graduated, it was a routine for me to walk down to the coffee shop at 10:30 at night, where the owner would already have a cup of coffee sitting there waiting for me to pick it up. I would thank him, then walk back up to my apartment where I worked for another hour or two, and then pass out. No more of the coffee keeping me up for hours upon hours, now I could just drink a cup, then go right home and pass out if I wanted to. I think, at that point in my life, I was definitely a coffee addict.

I’ve definitely cut back quite a bit since then, but I think that mentality of “hey, why not, I’ll just drink a cup of coffee” is still with me. My lifestyle has changed quite a bit since then in that I don’t stay up till 2 in the morning getting work done. I do, however, get up earlier, so I guess that offsets the staying up late. Maybe the reason I drink coffee nowadays is not because I need it to keep me up, or even wake me up, but that now it’s that I know what’s good coffee, and I like that, so I’ll drink it…so, I guess the question really is, does that make me a coffee addict, or a coffee lover?

I’m currently borrowing a crock pot from a friend, in exchange, I am cooking up close to 9 pounds of pig butt for dinner tonight. I know, I know, that’s a helluvalot of pig but I didn’t have a choice! I went to the store yesterday to get my pig ass, and the butcher was a lil off or something cuz he refused to trim my slab of meat to make it the 6 pounds I wanted. Instead of arguing and not getting any meat at all, I decided to just take the 8.98 pounds of meat and use it. Unfortunately, as I learned, at 11:30 last night, 9 pounds of meat wrapped in ti-leaves and banana leaves DON’T FIT IN THE CROCK POT! So I had to unwrap the pig from it’s beautiful wrapping job, and try my darndest to cut out the pig bone. I know I wasted a bunch of meat doing this, but I figured, hell with 9 pounds, I can lose a bit. I wrapped it all back up, and dammit it still didn’t fit!!! So I unwrapped it again…tossed the meat in and then just shoved the leaves all around it. I think that seemed to do the trick. Although I did notice at oh 4:30 in the morning (as I kept dreaming of pig from the smell) that fat was overflowing off the sides of the crock pot…I think I finally got that all squared away (easier since the meat shrunk and I could add more leaves in) and now it’s simmering in the pot til dinnertime tonight! Let’s hope it tastes as good as it smells!