I just had to say it out loud! I know it’s such a cliche’ but I really do just love Starbucks! Everything about it… somehow if I start my day off or take my mid-morning Starbucks trek, my whole day is happier, brighter and more jubilant that other days.  I really don’t know for sure what the magical power is there, I didn’t even drink coffee my entire life before Starbucks.  My 6th grade daughter introduced me to the heart attack waiting to happen Caramel Frappuccino at the Safeway Starbucks in our town eight years ago and I’ve been hooked ever since.  I’ve changed orders to a Venti Iced Caramel Macchiato 1 pump non-fat with a caramel swirl drink most times.

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I’m just NOT a hot drink person unless it’s really REALLY cold out and it rarely is in Colorado.  It used to be an exciting Holiday tradition that I’d share with my theater daughter and all of her friends when the Gingerbread Latte’s came out on November 1st.  We’d arrange a meetup and thoroughly relish our first taste of this scrumptious holiday treat.  Starbucks this year however, ruined that for us by changing the entire formula and as far as I’m concerned RUINING the drink.. what the heck ARE those little foreign objects they decided to sprinkle on top?? YUCK!! They call them caramelized ginger sprinkles, but they tasted like nasty dead gummy bear pieces…  I did twitter @starbucks my dissatisfaction with this change and hopefully other’s were upset with the changes as well, we’ll see come this November. I also miss their

7 layer bars that were discontinued awhile back.  My usual bakery treat is either the Cranberry Orange Scone or the new Oatmeal cookies that have the raisin cranberry fruit mix that they use for their oatmeal optional add-ins now.

Even with this faux pax I still just love my Starbucks times.  I don’t know what it is, the colors, the lighting, the smells, the sound of the coffee makers, the hustle bustle of the other Starbuckians as they come in.  I love it when the servers start to know your order and when you enter you are greeted by name, I love that they finally give customers some free internet access while you are there… it’s a bit tricky to figure out at first, you have to purchase a gift card, register the gift card, sign up for the service and then use the registered gift card at least every 30 days (hello! not too hard to do in my case.. more like every 30 hours) and then you get 2 hours of internet access a day, and it’s

decently fast internet access too so that’s cool!

My favorite Starbucks location has several umbrella tables in a corner a bit protected from the wind on two sides and surrounded by crab apple tree’s and perennial flowers… the little birds show up looking for dropped crumbs, people bring their dogs, our Starbucks provides a water dish for customers four legged friends and everyone is just happy there, I guess that’s why I love it there.  They have also ruined me for other coffee drinks… If it doesn’t taste pretty close to the Bucky version then I just have iced tea or something else.

For some reason the noise and the atmosphere provides a great place for me to work.  When I’m working from my “home office” I can always get distracted by chores to do, things to put away, phone calls, etc. but at Starbucks I seem to get LOTS of work done.. that is unless friends come by which happens often, but that is also one of the reasons I like my Starbucks office is that I get out and among people.  Working from home sounds great! but one of the drawbacks is the isolation factor.. so that’s probably one of the reasons I can be so productive there.

However work isn’t the ONLY thing I like to do when I go to Starbucks… it’s also one of my favorite spots to read.  I belong to a wonderful ladies book club and always have at least one book I’m reading and I usually end up at the last day before our meeting to discuss it with several chapters to go so it’s the perfect excuse to get away from my distractions, find the cozy comfy chair in the corner, or the patio chair outside in the sunshine and finish my assigned book.

My husband was told that his cholesterol was high and I’d heard something about coffee being bad for your cholesterol.  Now I could get him to eat some chicken instead of burgers, do more cardio instead of only weights but take away his morning coffee??? that was NOT going to happen so I started to research the subject.  It seems that non-filtered coffee does indeed raise your cholesterol.  This makes NO sense to me since you think of cholesterol issues being caused by meat/milk products, but here is what I discovered.  The latte’s, macchiato’s, frappachinos are all made with espresso which is EXPRESSED from the coffee bean much the way french press is made, these drinks are all bad for your cholesterol if you have those issues.  What you CAN have are Misto’s.  Misto’s are simply brewed coffee with steamed milk.  They taste pretty much the same and you can also have them flavored, hot or iced and they are also a little less expensive than it’s latte counterpart.

I am getting to the end of my free two hours here so I’m off to a great start today! What’s your favorite thing about Starbucks? favorite drink?

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