Setback in the Caffeine War

Wednesday was not a great day in the Battle Against Caffeine. I drank five 20oz bottles of diet soda at work - two in the morning and three in the afternoon. Ouch. I did have 20oz of water with lunch, but I also had some regular Coke with supper.

Just not a good day.

In my past attempts to kick the caffeine habit, this kind of day makes me want to give up. But this time is different.

Caffeine is the enemy.

Caffeine is the enemy.

The Caffeine Battle Begins

I've had mixed results so far in my efforts to kick caffeine.

On the way to work Monday morning I didn't have time to stop at the convenience store to look for Caffeine-Replacement Liquids (CRLs), so I ended up having a couple of 20oz bottles of diet soda in the morning. After lunch, though I bought a bottle of Gatorade G2 and a fruit-punch flavored drink whose name I forget. I ended up drinking three bottles of diet soda at work, which is less than usual.

On Tuesday, I backslid a little - I drank four 20oz bottles of diet soda. But on the plus side, I made an effort to drink more water. Considering I haven't been drinking much water at all at work, the 40oz of water I drank today was an improvement.

And Tuesday evening, I resisted the urge to have a can of diet soda. As if I don't drink enough caffeine at work.

Even if I don't regularly buy any CRLs, I can always fall back on water.

The Beginning of the End of My Caffeine Addition

At the beginning of 2008, I stopped regularly drinking regular soda, switching to diet soda (Diet Coke, Diet Dr Pepper, and Diet Mt Dew). That cut back on my sugar intake quite a bit, and that was a good thing. But I was surprised by the effect of caffeine without the sugar. I was hungry much earlier in the morning compared to when I was drinking the sugar-laced sodas, and the caffeine "highs" were much more pronounced. It was like in the past the caffeine burned up the sugar, each almost negating the other, and when I switched to diet the caffeine had free rein.

Even though I know too much caffeine makes me irritable and upsets my stomach, I still crave it. I look forward to getting to work so I can start drinking caffeine. It's gotten to the point that I almost always have a diet soda in front of me.

I've tried a couple of times to cut back on the caffeine or stop altogether, but I have not succeeded. I tried Caffeine-Free Diet Code, but that didn't last - it didn't taste right at all (I know a lot of people say that about "regular" diet, but I could tell a difference), and it made me feel even more dehydrated. I've tried low-sugar drinks like Vitamin Water and Gatorade G2, and I was able to make some progress with them, but it didn't last. The diet soda is too easily found; if I don't have time to get anything else, I can always fall back on diet soda - and I fall back on it I gladly will.

I need to make a change. I realize this will take some time, but I'm sure it will be worth it.

So I've started searching for ideas that will help. I did some searching and came across a posting on Dumb Little Man about How to Give Up Coffee and Caffeine Altogether. It says to slowly replace coffee with caffeinated tea and to slowly move to decaffeinated tea. I'm not sure how well that will work for me because coffee isn't my main problem. I've noticed that simply making sure that I have a bottle of water in front of me helps - I'm used to having something to drink in front of me. But I don't think I can simply switch to water because I need something to replace the taste as well. Maybe the tea idea won't work for me, but I should be able to find something that will work for me.

Tomorrow morning I will look for something at my normal convenience store that might eventually replace diet soda.

It's the beginning of the end for caffeine and me.

Double Meanings

I am sometimes dense when it comes to phrases with double-meanings. Take this phrase:

If I told you you had a beautiful body would you hold it against me?

I’m heard that phrase many times before, and I always took it to mean the person being addressed might take offense if told “you had a beautiful body.” Until now I never understood the second meaning: “…would you hold it [your body] against me?”

For all I know there are a lot of such double-meanings that I’m missing.

The only language I speak – barely – is American English. I wonder if other languages have many such double-meanings, or if English lends itself especially well to ambiguity.

In any case, maybe I’ll get more perceptive as I get older. I can hope.

The Joy of Getting Old

I’m getting old.  Do you want to know how I know that?  You’re probably thinking, “Um, this could be bad.”  Don’t worry, the answer doesn’t involve tedious descriptions of physical ailments, and it doesn’t involve mental decline (maybe it should, but it doesn’t).  The answer is “baseball.”  I knew I was getting old when I found myself enjoying watching and following baseball, specifically the Minnesota Twins MLB team.

My fondness for baseball took a long time to develop.  When I was a teenager, the only baseball I would watch was the World Series.  I didn’t know the subtleties of the game; I often thought a game, especially the latter innings, took forever, and I didn’t understand why.  “Boring,” I thought.  A new pitcher comes into the game, pitches to one batter, and then they pause the game again to bring in another pitcher.  What the hell?  Do they want the game to go on forever?

I began watching baseball regularly in 2001.  I have always preferred watching NFL football.  I have a little more understanding of its subtleties, and it was a lot faster moving, making it easier to pay attention.  But starting in 2001 I begin to watch the Twins as they started to attract attention as a contending team after years of futility.  After winning the 1991 World Series, the Twins had sunk a long ways by 2000.  But during the 2001 season, the Twins started making some noise.  The Twins had a lot of young players that had been developed in the teams farm system, and those players were driving the Twins to the top of their division, surprising a lot of people.

The Twins faded that year, not making the post-season.  But I had become interested enough to follow them, and it was exciting to watch them go to the playoffs in the following years, even though they haven’t made it to the World Series.  And in that time I’ve learned enough about the game to enjoy it.

I used to think a close game – a 1-0, 1-1, or a 2-1 game – was boring.  Now, I think such a game is exciting, like a low-scoring NFL football game between two good defensive teams.  Sure, offense is exciting, but I can appreciate a good defensive battle.  And such close games are exiting in a way that high-scoring games aren’t.

What has helped me to enjoy baseball is a basic appreciation of the nuances of the game.  Even though I’m no baseball expert by any means, I can appreciate a pitcher who can shave the outside of the plate for a strikeout, or a hitter who reaches first base on a walk after being down 0-2.  I can feel the pressure when a pitcher takes a no-hitter in the late innings.  I watched Johann Santana tie the record for strikeouts in a game; that was history in the making.  I have watched Justin Morneau and Joe Mauer come up from the minor leagues and develop into two of the best players in all of baseball.  There is still a lot I don’t understand and maybe never will, and I don’t have a good sense of baseball history, but I have come to enjoy of well-played game of baseball and to savor the 160-game season.

Don’t get me wrong, baseball is often boring, almost as bad as watching paint dry.  Those pitching changes can extend the end of the game and take away some of the excitement of a close game.  And a never-ending extra-inning game is like a boxing match between two exhausted opponents that ends when one of them gets too tired to defend himself.

I rarely watch a baseball game with my full attention.  There are exceptions, but I’m usually doing something else, either reading, working on the computer, or other activities that allow me to give the game my partial attention.  I can work on something else and keep an ear out for key events in a game, like a home run or a great defensive play.

I am getting old, no doubt about it.  But liking baseball shouldn’t make me feel old.  Maybe anything that I can be passionate about should make me feel young.  If nothing else, it helps me relax after a day at work.  Not bad for a boring game.

Twittering

I made my first "tweet" tonight. I have been very slow to jump on the Twitter bandwagon; it just doesn't have that much appeal for me. But there are more and more people who are announcing things on Twitter instead of their blogs. So I have to pay attention to Twitter no matter if I want to or not.

Twitter simply seems like a public IM (instant messaging) system. Scott Hanselman has a good post about how to use Twitter, saying "If you make Twitter into another list of crap to read, you will be sad. The sooner you realize that Twitter is just a list of crap, the happier you'll be." He also says "[t]o really get something out of Twitter you need to follow at LEAST a hundred people of various backgrounds." Ok, we'll see if I manage to follow that many people. I already have more things to read than I have time for. And I need to reduce the number of things beeping, blinking, and flashing to get my attention; I need to focus more and get distracted less. Time will tell if I find Twitter to be worth the time.