Coffee vs. Chai

I gave up coffee for Lent way back in March. Once Easter hit, my third stop off the day was Starbucks. In an attempt to be more frugal, I tried to stick with the cheaper tea options and didn't really have a pressing need to consume my regular pepermint white mocha. As the Canucks headed into overtime in game seven of the opening round against Chicago, I swore to the hockey gods that I would give up coffee for the rest of the playoffs if we could make it past the Hawks. Then Alex Burrows scored the goal that slayed the dragon and my playoff fate was sealed. Now that the playoffs are finished, I'm finding myself still choosing chai over coffee. Could this be a case of PSCPLD (Post Stanley Cup Playoff Loss Depression)? Quite possibly! Can you tell I'm distracted and couldn't think of anything substantial to write about tonight? Of course the lack of working Internet on my laptop didn't help tonight as I'm stuck typing this out on my iPhone so apologies for any typos I don't catch. Fingers crossed I come back tomorrow with something you guys would actually want to read!

Lent

Wednesday marked the start of Lent.  For those of you that aren't familiar with Lent, here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:

Lent in the Christian tradition, is the period of the liturgical year from Ash Wednesday to Easter. Lent is a time of sacrifice for Jesus. The traditional purpose of Lent is the preparation of the believer — through prayer, repentance,almsgiving and self-denial — for the annual commemoration during Holy Week of the Death and Resurrection of Jesus, which recalls the events linked to the Passion of Christ and culminates in Easter, the celebration of theResurrection of Jesus Christ.

According to the Canonical gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke, Jesus spent forty days fasting in the desert before the beginning of his public ministry, where he endured temptation by Satan.^[1][2] Thus, Lent is described as being forty days long, though different denominations calculate the forty days differently.

This practice is common to much of Christendom, being celebrated by Catholics, Lutherans, Methodists,Presbyterians, and Anglicans.

As tradition dictates, we each think of something to give up until Easter.  If you're like my brother, you'll give up things like mercy, kiwi (or anything else he doesn't normally eat) or Lent itself.  My mom tried to give up shopping one year - it was a massive fail from the start since she never specified what kind of shopping she was giving up.  My younger sister, previously mentioned for her suspicion of aliens, gave up popcorn once and would get a frightening look in her eyes whenever someone around her ate some.

This year I'm giving up eating and drinking in places that have any sort of drive-though or -in.  anyone that knows at all will realize what a big deal this is because I have an unnatural addiction to things that are bad for me.  So at the start of the month (I gave myself a head start) I said goodbye to Starbucks, Tim Hortons, White Spot, and all of my other junky favourites.  Hopefully the time away will not only leave a little extra padding in my wallet but will also help curb my addiction.

Fair warning - if you see my eyes go extra wide and just a bit crazy, run for it because you're probably holding something I'm avoiding.  I'll let you know how it all pans out next month!