I am a Coffee-holic. There. I said it. They say the first step in deal­ing with an addic­tion is admit­ting there’s a prob­lem. The thing is though, I like this addic­tion! I love the taste of cof­fee and my mind seems much sharper once it’s in my sys­tem (could be the depen­dence though haha).

The prob­lem is, more than any­thing, I really love the taste of Star­bucks cof­fee. It’s partly the romance of it — the mar­ket­ing genius, the feel/ambiance of their stores, the elit­ist atti­tude of much of the clien­tele, but it’s also the taste. Blends like House, Kenya, Colum­bia, and Ital­ian make my taste buds jump for joy! And not only are there Star­bucks stores within 7 min­utes of me 99% of my day, the cof­fee pots at home and church (home #2) both have Star­bucks beans ready to brew at any moment.

Here’s the dilemma though, it costs over $2 now to buy a grande cup of Star­bucks cof­fee.  And as I found out two weeks ago, a cup of medium cof­fee at McDonald’s is only $1.60 (although I saw it on sale at one loca­tion this week  for only $1.00!).  And while McDonald’s doesn’t have much romance or ambiance, it’s A LOT CHEAPER!

Another inter­est­ing fac­tor is that with Star­bucks cof­fee, I usu­ally really enjoy the first half of the cup, but the sec­ond half is hard to fin­ish because it’s so strong and get­ting colder by that point (I don’t chug my cof­fee, I usu­ally take 30+ min­utes to drink one cup).  With McDonald’s, I really don’t like the first half (too hot, and tastes watery), but I really enjoy the sec­ond half!  So I endup hav­ing a good mem­ory of the cup of McDonald’s and a more neg­a­tive mem­ory of the Star­bucks!  In fact, I’ve often found myself try­ing to con­vince myself to stop for Star­bucks because the last expe­ri­ence was so bit­ter!  And often­times, I end up get­ting Lattes or Frapps instead of the cof­fee — but that dou­bles or even triples the price and adds sugar.

So, I’m at the point now, that if I’m going to stop some­place and buy cof­fee, I’m going to force myself to be con­tent with McDonald’s.  In fact, I’ve decided that unless I’m meet­ing a friend there (cou­ple guy friends I fre­quently meet up with and Star­bucks is a great place for it), I’m NOT going to Star­bucks.  It’s just not worth the extra money — whether it be $0.40 or $0.80 or even more!  So unless I need a LOT of caffine (like dri­ving all night or have a ton of work to do) and get a Black Eye (cof­fee + two shots of espresso), I’m a McDonald’s man.

Did I just type that?  I’m really get­ting old.  One day I’ll prob­a­bly be blog­ging about the great Senior dis­count I’m now eli­gi­ble for at McDonald’s.…!

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