Coffee
Matt Seinberg

Pretty much everyone I know drinks coffee, including my wife, Marcy, and my younger daughter, Mellissa. Marcy will have at least two cups in the morning, while I'm usually satisfied with one. Sometimes on Monday mornings, after I go the chiropractor, I'll stop at Dunkin' Donuts (DD) and pick up a large cup of French Vanilla or Hazelnut.

During December, DD sells booklets of coffee coupons for $12, which gets you 10 cups of a large coffee. Normally, those are around $2.50 a cup, so it's a nice savings. I'll pick up 3-4 booklets for Marcy and myself; we use them throughout the year. I always have some on me, especially if we're traveling into New York City.

Have I mentioned in the past that I used to work for Starbucks for about 8 months; it was among the worst jobs I had? I also didn't enjoy their coffee very much, since at that time they roasted everything they had pretty dark. They now have what they call a blonde roast, but just on principal, I try to avoid them.

At work, coffee drinkers surround me. My employer provides free coffee to employees and customers, but I think its god awful, cheap coffee. Marcy actually bought that brand once and it was still so awful I threw it out. Some people will go out and get either DD or Panera coffee just to avoid the swill we have.

We have a DD calendar at home and every month there are different coupons. This month I used the 99-cent large iced butter pecan flavored coffee. It was all right, nothing spectacular. I got it light, with no sweetener in it. Maybe that's what it was missing.

I don't see how people can drink one cup of coffee after another all day. I once had an extra-large ice coffee. I finished it in 10 minutes. My heart was racing and I was jumpy for much of the day. Does everyone react the same way, or is that just me?

There is so much advertising on television for coffee it's ridiculous. Between

DD, Starbucks, Keurig, Gevalia and Nescafe, most every commercial break has coffee in it and other than fast forwarding on the DVR, there is no way to avoid it.

One of the best gifts Marcy and I got was a Keurig pod coffee maker. Her parents had one and we must have expressed an interest in it. For our anniversary last year, that's what we got. The best part is that Marcy gets boxes of coffee pods cheap at work, so a $20 box may only cost her $2 or $3, as these are returns, which may be missing a cup or two or a damaged box.

I don't like all the flavours she brings home, but sometimes I'll try them only because they were cheap. I like anything with caramel flavoring, nuts or vanilla. Again, I don't like dark roasted, only light to medium.

I'm not a coffee snob. I know what I like, as do most people. Don't judge us by the cup of coffee we're carrying.