We just got back from the store and I bought some decaf vanilla-flavored coffee beans. I don’t believe in those flavored creamers or going to Starbucks, so this is as close as I’ll get to those experiences. I frothed up some milk to go with it, ground the flavored beans, brewed up a cup, and it’s really good. I like it much better than adding a flavored syrup to my coffee, although I have some flavored syrups there in Colorado.

One of them is a sugar free peach syrup, and there is a story behind why I bought it.

When I worked at Micromedex the company bought the USP database (USP as in that label you see on drugs and aspirin). It was formerly some kind of government thing and then they didn’t want to support it any more so it went private. Along with it came this really fat woman who supposedly knew all about the data so they moved her from Maryland to Denver. She was in such bad shape she couldn’t walk from her desk to the bathroom without pausing to rest, and you could hear her wheezing and blowing from a long ways away. I’m sure the altitude got to her, as well as weighing 300 pounds. She did some traveling for work, and I couldn't imagine how she managed to get through airports, maybe she got a wheelchair.

I went out to lunch with her a couple of times and she was very proud that she belonged to Mensa, and a lot of other things. When she wasn’t bragging about her IQ level, she was bitching about how restaurants discriminate against fat people. Her favorite restaurant was an middle-eastern one near us because she claimed to have lived in the middle east at some time, and men there like very large women, according to her. (Oh I believe her, don't get me wrong there.)

One good thing was I felt skinny next to her. Then, she had gastric bypass surgery, got the company health insurance to pay for it. And she started losing weight.

She always wore this cheap-looking cloudy stone ring that she claimed was an engagement ring from some guy she’d met at Mensa and been ‘engaged’ to for more than 10 years. But we never saw him, she found some fat guy on an Internet dating site and they got married. The weight started to come off after her gastric bypass, and she told me all these horror stories about how she was only supposed to eat a tablespoon of food at a time, and so on. She needed to have plastic surgery to take off the extra skin and flab on her arms and other places. I don't know if you've ever had a fat friend who lost a lot of weight, but that's all a lot of them talk about - their ongoing struggle to keep it off, and it gets really old.

One of the last times we went out to lunch, and I swore to myself the last time, because I never enjoyed my lunches with her very much, we’re pulling into the parking lot at work and we see this guy who sat near me outside smoking. “Oh, there’s Marc Musato,” she chirps. “He’s a smoker. Do you know how I know? Ask me how I know. Go ahead, ask me.” I had no idea, and didn’t much care to guess. All I could think was that they’d had sex and he smoked afterwards (not likely knowing he was chasing after this hot chick who had 4 kids by four different men and one of them was his kid). Finally, she crowed: “Because I’m a smoker, too! I started smoking again! We're smoking buddies!” I couldn’t believe it, that someone who had quit smoking for several years (and was supposedly so smart) would take it up again. She was so proud of it. (And this is not a slam on our MyBloggers smoking friends - this isn't about you, honey.)

Anyhow, (too late to say long story short, isn’t it?) I was in Cost Plus Imports one night and they were having a sale on those syrups that people buy to put in coffee or whatever else. She comes up and starts going on about how wonderful the sugar free syrups are, and the peach in particular, and so many uses. Finally I asked her exactly what does she do with it, thinking peach in coffee doesn't sound so great: she pours it over ice cream.

Well, I sort of lost my mind there, was dazzled, or the peer pressure, or some depraved need to impress her, so I bought a big old bottle of that peach crap, and 7 years later I still haven’t used it up because I don't eat that much ice cream, and the syrup is too thin to be appealing to me on ice cream.

Maybe next time I’m home I’ll just dump it out and reclaim the space it has been taking up in my cupboard. If you go there sometime and want to take it home, it’s in the laundry room either in the cupboard over the sink or under the sink, a tall bottle. There's a shorter bottle of almond flavored syrup, take that, too if you see it.