Happy 2007, everyone. I had a lot of fun last night (I'll probably write about it sometime this week), and I'm ready to meet the new year head on. It's January 1, and the dawn of a new year gets two songs in my head. First, there's a Death Cab for Cutie song that starts with, "So this is the new year/and I don't feel any different." It's a great song on a great album (Transatlanticsm), if anyone's interested. Second, the "Seasons of Love" song from Rent that repeatedly asks the listener how he or she measures a year.
A few years ago, that song got me thinking. Since one line mentions measuring a year in cups of coffee, I decided that I would try to do that exact thing. It wouldn't serve any higher purpose, but I thought it would be cool to be able to point to a number at the end of the year and say, "That, my friends, is how many cups of coffee I had this year." Their response would probably be a mixture of "oohs" and "aahs" and requests to touch me so they could be a part of the magic.
The first day I encountered a problem with my plan was on January 1 of that year. You see, my normal coffee mug was considerably larger than a standard cup. I had to make a decision, and one that would alter the course of the entire year (and possibly human history): Do I count this as two cups or do I switch the plan from "cups of coffee" to "coffee beverages"? Tough call, I know, and I pondered it for at least five seconds. After those five seconds were up, I made a decision: I would count my morning coffee as two cups. That way, I could stay true to the song and I could also pad my stats a little in the process. I realize that seems petty, but if anyone else was doing the same thing, I wanted to win.
The second problem occurred less than a week later. It was the afternoon of a workday, and I went to fill up my big mug with some more coffee for the afternoon. I didn't want too much caffeine though, so I did half regular and half decaf. Then I realized that I had never thought about whether I was keeping track of all cups of coffee or just caffeinated ones. I think this is where my plan fell apart. I decided to only count the caffeinated ones, mainly because those were the cups of coffee with a real purpose. Cups of decaf are like seat holders at the Oscars: they're physically there, but they're not nearly as special as what they're taking the place of.
I was closing in on 40 cups of coffee around the 15th of the month when I noticed a problem. I found that I kept getting two additional cups in the afternoon for the sole purpose of counting them. I was making myself finish my coffee so I could count it, regardless of how shaky I may have been from the already-high levels of caffeine in my system. It seemed this measuring was making my coffee habit significantly more pronounced, and that wasn't a good thing. So I quit. Counting, that is. I kept drinking coffee, but wanted to stop keeping a mental record of it. This was proving to be more difficult than I first thought.
I'm an odd guy, and I find that I subconsciously count things from time to time. For example, a car alarm may be going off, and I'll notice after a little while that the voice in my head will be saying, "32, 33, 34." That same voice counts stairs and sometimes even regular walking steps. So I was having a lot of trouble not counting my cups of coffee. I found a solution by playing to one of my weaknesses: math. What's one and three-fourths plus one half plus one and one-third? I can do it with paper, but over the course of a couple of days, the fractions got confusing and I totally stopped recording them in my head. Take that, me.
So, I didn't get even one-twelfth of the way to my goal before quitting. (Yes, I can do that math.) I don't mind though; it was probably a stupid thing to try in the first place. I doubt the Rent lyricist really expected anyone to do that, because who in their right mind really keeps track of something as trivial as cups of coffee over the course of an entire year? Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to take my first shit of 07. Happy New Year!
A few years ago, that song got me thinking. Since one line mentions measuring a year in cups of coffee, I decided that I would try to do that exact thing. It wouldn't serve any higher purpose, but I thought it would be cool to be able to point to a number at the end of the year and say, "That, my friends, is how many cups of coffee I had this year." Their response would probably be a mixture of "oohs" and "aahs" and requests to touch me so they could be a part of the magic.
The first day I encountered a problem with my plan was on January 1 of that year. You see, my normal coffee mug was considerably larger than a standard cup. I had to make a decision, and one that would alter the course of the entire year (and possibly human history): Do I count this as two cups or do I switch the plan from "cups of coffee" to "coffee beverages"? Tough call, I know, and I pondered it for at least five seconds. After those five seconds were up, I made a decision: I would count my morning coffee as two cups. That way, I could stay true to the song and I could also pad my stats a little in the process. I realize that seems petty, but if anyone else was doing the same thing, I wanted to win.
The second problem occurred less than a week later. It was the afternoon of a workday, and I went to fill up my big mug with some more coffee for the afternoon. I didn't want too much caffeine though, so I did half regular and half decaf. Then I realized that I had never thought about whether I was keeping track of all cups of coffee or just caffeinated ones. I think this is where my plan fell apart. I decided to only count the caffeinated ones, mainly because those were the cups of coffee with a real purpose. Cups of decaf are like seat holders at the Oscars: they're physically there, but they're not nearly as special as what they're taking the place of.
I was closing in on 40 cups of coffee around the 15th of the month when I noticed a problem. I found that I kept getting two additional cups in the afternoon for the sole purpose of counting them. I was making myself finish my coffee so I could count it, regardless of how shaky I may have been from the already-high levels of caffeine in my system. It seemed this measuring was making my coffee habit significantly more pronounced, and that wasn't a good thing. So I quit. Counting, that is. I kept drinking coffee, but wanted to stop keeping a mental record of it. This was proving to be more difficult than I first thought.
I'm an odd guy, and I find that I subconsciously count things from time to time. For example, a car alarm may be going off, and I'll notice after a little while that the voice in my head will be saying, "32, 33, 34." That same voice counts stairs and sometimes even regular walking steps. So I was having a lot of trouble not counting my cups of coffee. I found a solution by playing to one of my weaknesses: math. What's one and three-fourths plus one half plus one and one-third? I can do it with paper, but over the course of a couple of days, the fractions got confusing and I totally stopped recording them in my head. Take that, me.
So, I didn't get even one-twelfth of the way to my goal before quitting. (Yes, I can do that math.) I don't mind though; it was probably a stupid thing to try in the first place. I doubt the Rent lyricist really expected anyone to do that, because who in their right mind really keeps track of something as trivial as cups of coffee over the course of an entire year? Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to take my first shit of 07. Happy New Year!
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