I’ve decided that it’s not a good idea to take pharmaceutical grade caffeine on a regular basis. However, a single cup of merely mortal coffee isn’t doing the trick either. Enter John’s official “hair-brained scheme of the day.”

The idea goes something like this,
Pills deliver too much too quickly and a cup of joe (as brewed by my office mates) delivers too little too slowly. So, I’ll brew my own special blend. However, being a frugal civil servant I don’t want to invest in the kind of capital that self-brewing “right” will require. So, I’ll do a little experimentation on the cheap with “Folger’s Coffee Singles.”

My little false start can be blamed on the marketing folks at Folgers. The color green generally means “go.” It’s the color of springtime, of fresh new beginnings, and of growth. Red on the other hand means “stop.” It’s the color of warning, of danger, and of “turn around and go back.” When I’m tired, or in other words, when I most need coffee as God intended, I gotta go with the green baby. It’s go time. Only, it wasn’t, not with a “green” coffee single. In Folger speak, green means DECAF. You know how I feel about decaf, so I’ll spare you the censored obscenities. Fortunately I noticed my error before I left the house.

Which means I’ve probably used up my quota of good fortune for the week. Good thing it’s Friday.

At work I took my little red packet of magic, read the instructions, then did something else entirely. No, I didn’t rip open the package and swallow the grounds whole. The instructions called for soaking the bag of grounds for fifteen seconds. So, I figured a minute and a half sounded about right.

So far, so good. I’ve never been so fleet of finger on the keys.