Tea for Me ... And other work related topics

Chick Pea Mystery Solved

I spoke too soon when condemning my colleagues for being fridge-raiders. On Thursday, one of my coworkers walked into my office with a sheepish expression and asked, "Were you missing some chick peas?" It turns out that one of my other coworkers had invited him to eat some of his hummus. Second coworker, not being indoctrinated into vegetarian/Mediterranean eating, had to be told that hummus was made of chick peas. When he later went into the fridge looking for it, he found my chick peas and ate them, only realizing his folly when talking to the first coworker a few days later.

Less than a month after posting my scathing comments on coffee, I am changing my tune.

Well, sort of.

As my dad commented, "Coffee is the programmer's wonder drink. I don't see how you can hold out on the nectar of the cyber gods."

And heck, I'm a programmer! At least, that's what my friend told me, though I'm technically still more of a designer.

In any case, I seem to have a developed a legitimate need for caffeine. Every day, about 45 minutes after I finish my lunch, I am overcome with an overwhelming need to sleep. No matter what I eat, be it a bowl of edamame or a cheese sandwich with all the fixins, come about 1:30, it becomes an epic battle to keep my eyes open. This doesn't happen after breakfast. I would consider skipping lunch entirely, but then I just get sleepy from lack of food instead.

So my solution? Iced tea. After deep deliberation, I concluded that despite my health reasons, I still couldn't stand the taste of coffee. And the hassle of making it (since I work in one of the few offices I've ever seen where the coffee isn't free—or even available at all!) wouldn't be worth the returns. But powdered iced tea would put me at zero risk of burning my tongue, still impart some caffeine into my tired bloodstream, provide the added benefits of antioxidants, and be quick and easy to prepare.

So I invested a couple of bucks in calorie-free mango green tea packets and let the experiment begin. It was more successful than I ever dreamed.

My iced tea packets, I discovered after buying them, only contain about 25 mg of caffeine per cup, while real tea boasts around 50, and coffee is known to contain around 120 or more. I thought for sure that my purchase was a complete waste, until I ingested my first packet and discovered that even 25 milligrams of caffeine is quite enough to wake me up, and then some.

Within a few minutes of having a few sips of my tea, I am so ready to work, I jump from task to task like a jumping bean. I find myself inappropriately euphoric, thinking thoughts like, "I'm so excited it's Wednesday!"

I'm a little high-strung by nature and it's not uncommon for me to have to forcibly reign myself in, but when I'm caffeinated, my stern self-reminders that "It's OK," and I should "Calm down!" are delivered with excessive enthusiasm, before I have even begun to panic.

I'm sure that this extreme result only comes from the fact that caffeine is such a foreign substance to my system, and I'm sure I won't have quite such a response after a few weeks of being a tea drinker, but in the meantime, it sure feels better than slogging my way through a dreamworld every afternoon.