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Pay heinous sums to get hold of decent beans... here (Denmark), prices are strictly 'what the market will bear', so even cheap and crappy comes fairly dear. The good stuff is priced as though it were gold plated.

I also tend to sacrifice a goodish bit of luggage space to bring back good, not-insanely-priced coffee beans from NYC and various Italian cities.

But there isn't anything as demanding as even one child in my life, so I know I have it fairly soft.

My little sister is a barista in my home town 2 hours away; every time she visits I have her bring a sack of beans from the shop! THEY'RE AWESOOME! They roast them in house and I can smell my coffee cubbard right now....mmmm....

ps: MichaelNatkin; your 3.5 y/o is so cute!

@brooke29 - Well, when the weather's nice I picnic at lunch and drink my coffee in the morning ... but during the fall and winter I rather enjoy a brisk walk, followed by a warm cup of dark coffee and some time alone with a book and an armchair! It's a nice break!

I wake up in the morning pretty much exclusively for the sake of coffee!

Coffee. My drug of choice. You really don't want to know to what lengths I will go to get it. I'm sure I can compete with any bigtime street junky. It's definitely ugly. But what happens when I don't get it is even uglier. All I can say is, GTF away from my coffee.

The first time hubby took me to meet his family, we stayed with his mom. I did not know she drinks decaf. And, since she made the coffee before I got up in the morning, I did not know she was serving me decaf. By day two, I was in bad shape, both physically and psychologically. And I was taking hubby down with me. The good thing was quickly figuring out what the heck was going on. The bad were (1) the discovery that there was not a single coffee house in his small town, not even a Starblechs, and (2) finding a diplomatic way of explaining my need for caffeine to this woman who was already sizing up this big-city girl with a huge amount of skepticism. Fortunately, she likes my down-to-earth bluntness, and I adore her old-fashioned country ways, so we quickly became thick as thieves. Now, she always makes sure there is *real* coffee around when I come to visit.

dunkin donut's. everyday on the way to work. they don't even ask me. i pull up to the speaker. she asks do you want your ice coffee ? i just say yes please and go on my way to idiot ville.

I pay $3.65 for a triple grande skinny vanilla latte.

I live above Starbucks and am in college. Those two fact alone fuel my caffeine dependence.

my workday routine:

i buy green beans, roast them in the evening before bed. wait two days for them to degass. this is a continual process, but if i forget, or run out of beans, I have fresh Mischa beans from Old Town on stand-by.

I weigh out my espresso, tamp it, and end up making about 10 oz of the good stuff with my francis francis. then, into the fridge (i know, the horrors) for fresh coffee the next morning.

wake up, get ready, make iced coffee: in my guinness pint glass (i used the same one every day), i pour in the coffee, add some low-fat milk until my desired color consistency is reached. I then shake it up with ice in a cocktail shaker for uniform deliciousness... Pour it out. I then froth a ton of skim milk.. Drink coffee until there's room for a cup of foam. Top coffee with foam, leave house at 430am. Every day.

on the weekends, ironically, when i have time, i just make a double macchiato. with extra foam.

Walk to the dining hall. We got Seattle's Best in our coffee machines this year, which, while no prize, is so much improved over our previous tepid brews that there are crowds and elbowing around the coffee machines. I have a one-cup, conical ceramic brewing thing (you set it over your cup and pour hot water into it) for when I feel like coffee in my room.

Some of the best coffee in Austin is at Jo's Coffee on S. Congress.

*sending virtual bowls of soup Perky's way*

I'm with you, Michael--will get up early to fix my coffee even with a 4-month-old waking me up once or twice a night. And my 6-year-old knows not to bother me with any questions requiring any complex cognitive functioning before I've had my coffee. And I will drink no one's coffee but my own, because nobody else knows how to make it "right". All I need is my one cup in the morning, but I must have that one cup, and it had better be good! Oh, and I order my beans from a little coffee shop in a coastal town about 2 1/2 hours drive away from me, because they are better than anything else I've tasted (even 100% Kona coffee ;) ).

What havent I done for coffee? As a soldier I have been to some pretty strange places but have NEVER been without coffee! I remember one time in Korea, the Colonel, made his driver go all the way back to our camp, some 100KM away, becuase he forgot his coffee. Coffee, winning WARS since 1776. What a great slogan, think I can get a royalty?

I'll second huneybumper's comment - at my last job it was understood to ask me if I'd had coffee yet if you approached me before 9 am. If the answer was yes, you were relatively safe to proceed with your question. If the answer was no you were best coming back in a half-hour to an hour (and checking again, just to make sure).

Take a 2 hour bus to sit in a coffee shop and sit for a few hours, drinking coffee, and pretending I'm back to my US routine.

4 am - coffee pot goes off. I'm up at 4:15 for the first fresh brewed cup. I did panic though when Hurricane IKE targeted us. I normally grind my own beans. But then I figured suppose we lose power (which we did for 6 days). So the day before I went to the store and bought 3 bags of Starbucks ground up. Everyone else was buying bottled water, diapers and canned soup. I then pulled my French Press out, cleaned it and waited for the storm to hit and the power to go off. And it did just as predicted - it was interesting standing on the front porch, with a hot cup of coffee watching (and feeling ) the storm blow in with 95 mph wind gusts. We have a gas stove that continued to work along with running water.

With all the damage was not a moment to cherish. But the coffee was a small comfort in a time of great turmoil.

coffee = personality
I can't fake it. I am zombie-like without coffee. I can shower, get dressed, slap on make-up so I don't scare small children or grown men, but without coffee don't expect me to contribute much to society.

As for what lengths I've gone to ensure I have my coffee:
The last time I made the 10 hour trek to my sister's house from Indy to NoVa, I knew from past experience that good coffee would be hard to find enroute. So the day before, I brewed triple strength coffee in my French press, mixed with a little sweetened condensed milk, and poured into 4 small, lidded bottles (I'd shopped for two days looking for something suitable) and froze two and put two in the fridge. The next morning (at 4 am), I put the homemade vietnamese coffees in my little cooler with the snacks and bottled water and hit the road and drank my coffee. AWESOME!

Now that the power is back on, I'll admit that I missed coffee most of all.

To paraphrase Meatloaf: I would do anything for coffee, but I won't do that.

I am a coffee person and I love a fresh hot cup(maybe 3) cup everyday.I love my coffee and if it went to 5.00 a cup I would buy.

I don't leave home without my stainless steel french press. On business trips this means sacrificing suitcase space, but it is more than worth it. Thankfully I was driving to my last business trip, so the extra space wasn't a big deal. I don't have to do much to get my coffee, but I do buy my beans from a local shop/roastery which runs about $12-13/lb. Considering that buying our coffee each and every day from a shop quickly hits ~$300/month (between prices, tax, and tipping), $13/lb is cheap.