As a struggling university student with no remarkable study habits to begin with, it is obligatory to say that coffee is kind.

Although, on nights such as tonight, it must be said that coffee can sometimes be cruel.

A wheedling request and some well-placed extolment had my father setting a steaming, fragrant mug of instant coffee with all the works within my designated dinner table quadrangle. I've long learned from typical Vancouver semi-winter conditions to gulp the precious stuff down while still hot, and that I did in between frenzied tales of last night's Valentine's celebration at my friend's church. Julian commented that wow, my stories were so facinating *smell sarcasm here*. Mom had put on that pokerface reserved for my spontaneous moods to spew out frenzied tales. Some more daughterly finagling had my father accepting my mug to wash as I bounded upstairs to (supposedly) study for tomorrow's late morning midterm. But alas--it was not meant to be.

Coffee is the driving force behind these words at the moment, and the so-called influence in the DUI of an attempt to suppress my focus into a straight lane of the road of tonight's intended goals. Coffee is the octo-mom of prepositions. Coffee is the increasingly suspect suspect of scattered emotions converging around a mean of random generation.

See, why else would 2 minutes worth of conversation suddenly matter so much in the face of so much work needed to be done? Conversation with an individual who was supposed to have no influence on affecting influence on the influential tides of this person's ego/pride/maybe-even-feelings, at that. Coffee is a magnifier, oh yes. Except, there are times when what's magnified is not entirely expected, or helpful. It's like how what you eat seems entirely directed to your thighs, and you get a lovely pear shape despite the desperate stationary biking.

Oh coffee. You are the most polarizing discovery in the discovery of the New World, inspiring the tortured pleadings of students everywhere (or maybe just in this room) for that study frame-of-mind they were hoping for in the ingestion of you, as well as twitching extremities, as well as wordplay that can never be replicated, nor fully appreciated or understood. Props.

Onwards!