The benefits outweigh the negatives for coffee

I don't drink as much coffee as I used to--maybe 1.5 cups a day, and that in the morning. I'm thrilled that there have been so many benefits reported in recent years. I got a Starbucks gift card for Christmas--so it also brings warm feelings. Here's some details reported in Inkling Magazine. Coffee. . .

• may protect against Parkinson's disease
  
• seems to protect and fight against the development of Alzheimer's disease
  
• long term coffee drinking may lower the risk of developing type-2 or adult onset diabetes
  
• can protect against liver cirrhosis
  
• is an age-old asthma medication; caffeine is related to theophylline, a compound that helps relax and expand asthmatic lungs
  
• lowers the risk of developing kidney stones, because you urinate frequently
  
• increases alertness and mental performance by blocking adenosine, one biomolecule responsible for creating that feeling of drowsiness.

There. Feel better now?

Are leg warmers back?

At the coffee shop today I saw a young lady--probably high school age and very fashion conscious--wearing white leg warmers, over her blue jeans, with shower thongs, a black and white stripe long wooly neck wrap, carrying a huge shiny gray purse/bag.

A woman at the table behind me was busy multi-tasking. She had two boxes of Christmas cards she was addressing while talking on her cell phone--and it was 6:30 a.m.

She doesn't want to meet me in the dark

We usually greet each other briefly--she's working the cross word in the Dispatch and I'm reading the WSJ. Today I asked her if she biked to the coffee shop (she's a bit more bundled up than most, for our warm weather, and quite thin). She told me she bikes to our suburb from Victorian Village, a near down-town neighborhood south of the OSU campus. It was raining, so I suggested to her that people like me, who don't see well in the dark, might have trouble seeing her (it was about 6:15 a.m.). "Oh I can see you," she chirped. Oh honey, you just have no idea how much we can't see you, I thought.

Amazing sight

A youngish 20-something man wearing a pair of jeans that fit! He could walk across the room holding a hot cup of coffee in one hand without hitching up his pants with the other. I hope this is a trend.