I've gone off sugar for awhile, and have dropped my favorite Starbucks drink, the Grande Mocha Latte, all in an attempt to sort out my brain chemistry. I've switched to unsweetened, or lightly sweetened straight up coffee with milk. It's been a couple of weeks mochaless, and now when I have anything with sugar, it just tastes far too sweet. Starbucks has been advertising a new mocha with sugarfree chocolate syrup. I generally have a problem with artificial sweeteners (with the exception of xylitol, made from trees), but I guess I forgot that and decided to give the skinny mocha a whirl.

Oh, god, it was awful. It tasted bad from the get-go, bitter and bit alcoholy, but I still managed to suck half of it down for the caffeine before giving up. Bad move. I quickly developed a splitting headache, which I still have, 12 hours later, and after 4 advil. I can't sleep because of it, which is why I am here now, blogging. Who consumes this crap on a regular basis? Who even thinks artificial sweetener is actually sweet?

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I went to Denny's after I got off the bus from my writers' group. As usual, the manager decided to hover around me and talk story. Turns out the guy has a) lived an incredibly interesting life, or b) is a fantastically creative liar.

He asked me what I do for fun, and I said I'm a writer (which isn't necessarily what I like to do for fun, but I wanted to remain vague). His eyes lit up and he said that he started to write a book once (who hasn't). His wife threw out the manuscript when they were getting divorced so he gave up (tragic!) She threw it out because she was in it - it was his autobiography of his time living in Zambia, as a millionaire restaurantuer, married to Thai royalty, rubbing elbows with presidents and refugees alike.

Now, as much as I may find the idea of a Denny's manager being a former African millionaire (albeit, of Hawaiian origin, with a thick Pidgin accent) a bit, um, fictional, I have to remind myself of how people treated me when I worked at the bookstore - there really is a class system in American based on what you do for a living at the moment - people often don't see you beyond job function. Also, I believe the guy because of the little details in his story. He described the trays in his restaurants (wooden planks divided into two divots, on one side went the meat, on the other veggies and starches. The meat side had a runnel carved in it leading to a hollowed out area to collect meat juices). He described how he bought his first car in Africa, how he could see the road through the floor, how it didn't have windows or lights. He described his trip to a game reserve his first few months in Africa to dig for diamonds (he didn't find any, but got malaria, and describe that in great detail). He described how the guards at the gate of the entrance to the reserve made kung fu jokes at his expense because of his Chinese ancestry.

Maybe he was just well researched and full of it. But I tend to think that everyone has a story to tell - maybe not as colorful as his, but everyone has done at least one thing that's interesting and different in life. I told him he should write up his stories again.