Thinking about those mornings in Evanston at Einstein Bros. Jalapeno bagel with a tall coffee and boring reading. Mornings in Philadelphia, tall iced coffee from Dunkin then onto the subway downtown, more coffee waiting on tap. Sunnyvale, morning coffee with housemates and then lots and lots more at the office, lunch then cortado, then crash, and then more coffee (and the nights were for gin).

College in Louisville? Coffee at the Ville Grille, Quills, Starbucks, Einstein Bros, and it was Heine on mondays. Sabrina would order four shots in her latte and I’d do the same. I’d show up early to gag on that drink in a dark calculus classroom. Crew mornings? French press with Ryan, spam and cheese omelettes to follow. High school mornings grampa was in the kitchen sipping in silence, you’d pour yourself one for the road so that the car became a graveyard of mugs every few weeks.

Downtown Chicago, there was that machine that gargled and spit coffee into a blue Belvedere Trading mug, and on violently cold Chicago mornings, when half the office didn’t even bother showing up- that was when you put vanilla in the mix.