I still say that the best job I have ever had up to this point in my life was working on the greens crew at The Oregon Golf Club for four summers. The pay was decent, the work was outdoors, the scenery was beautiful and, thanks to the rotating cast of degenerates, alcoholics and ex-felons that were hired with me each summer, my working at 25% capacity (on good days) made me invaluable to their operation. By simply not showing up to work drunk and crashing my pick-up into the side of the maintenance building (true story) I was one of the better employees on staff.

The only downside to the job was the hours. In the summer, normal start times were 5:30 a.m. or earlier. During my last full summer at the club my little brother Peter, thanks to a good word from me and a meth-free urine sample, also got a job on the green’s crew. Together we made up the most lethal watering crew the club has ever seen. Watering was unequivocally the best job on the course. It’s impossible to screw up and we got to be out on the course before everyone else and were virtually secluded until lunch. But it was also mind numbingly cold.

When Peter started working with me, he suggested we stop by Starbucks in the mornings before heading up to the club. Now I have enjoyed coffee since high school, but never did I truly appreciate it until this particular summer. During the first few days of this new ritual, I started noticing a peculiar phenomenon. In the first hour or two of the day, when it was the coldest, the sun hadn’t come up yet and I had already blasted myself in the face with hose at least once due to darkness, I was not feeling sullen. Instead, I was happy. Really happy. I have never loved being at a job more. It took me about a week to recognize that it was the coffee talking.

After a few more weeks I couldn’t go without it. I was hopelessly and happily addicted. On particularly tough mornings I’d get the Venti mocha for the added sugar boost and within minutes I was flying high again.

That fall, my beloved Giants made it to the World Series and my friend and I opted to drive through the night and buy tickets from a scalper to see Game 5 in San Francisco. An hour or two out of the city we stopped at a gas station and I have been told I scrambled out of the car like Gollum and ran to the back of the mini-mart where I proceeded to fill a 72-ounce cup to the brim with some truly terrible black coffee and then downed it within 20 minutes as my friend simply look on in horror.

That was when I knew I had hit rock bottom. A few weeks later I stopped working at the club and eventually my fix wore off. At the newspaper I will still head over to Peet’s Coffee a couple of times a week with co-workers in the middle of the day but my hands no longer twitch at certain moments of the day. Coffee had again become simply a social habit in my life.

That is until the last few weeks. Pre-Elliott, my work weeks were blissfully casual. Mondays and Tuesdays I stroll into the office at 9 or 10. Depending on how many hours I’ve worked, I often take Thursdays off entirely. Fridays I’ll come into work at 1 or 2 leading up to a football or basketball game in the evening. Only Wednesdays (when the paper goes to print) do I even need to set the alarm for myself. Thus, I was probably averaging at least 9 hours of sleep a night.

I am not getting 9 hours of sleep anymore. I got 3 the other night and felt so rested the next morning that I literally did a little dance. And with the lack of sleep I have slowly been sliding back into the abyss, making French press coffee without company over… ordering larger drinks and… on Wednesdays… going back to my old lover… the Starbucks Venti mocha. Why Starbucks? Because it opens an hour earlier than any other coffee shop in Lake Oswego. You want another reason? The sausage breakfast sandwich. This has been my morning ritual for four Wednesdays in a row now and I have to tell you: It’s fantastic.

At 4:30 a.m. I’m patrolling the internet for jobs and checking real estate markets in other parts of the country. 5:04 when I’m back with my sweet, sweet mocha? I feel like going down my address book in my phone and sending everyone a text message that says: “You know what’s great?... Life!!!” Last Wednesday this came on my Pandora radio station as I was destroying my breakfast sandwich and as the sun was coming up. I think, for a brief moment, I could see through time and caught a glimpse of heaven.

And I have reached the point again where I am craving my mochas in the morning. I don’t know what it is about Starbucks. No other mocha has the same effect on me and neither does highly caffeinated soda. During my senior year in college, while studying with some friends for an English final, I drank two mochas at night on an empty stomach. When I got home at 11 p.m. (and this is not a joke) I cleaned my entire apartment, re-read 2 entire books and a play that were on my final, packed to come home for Christmas and was even able to sleep for an hour before the 8 a.m. test.

So this long-winded entry is more than just 1,000 words to tell everyone “Hey, have you heard of this coffee thing? It’s great!” It’s instead a public service to say that you all might want to put your phones on silent next Tuesday night.