I need the holidays to be over and why Starbucks is evil

I can see your confused reaction to the title of this blog post. What do I mean that I need the holidays to be over? It's only the day after Thanksgiving, the real start of the holiday season. It's only just begun, and I need them to be over already?

Well, yeah, and there's a reason for that. And the reason squarely lies with Starbucks, otherwise known as the Evil Empire.

No, not for the reasons you might think and why some people think Starbucks is evil.

In my case, it's because Starbucks is too damn tempting.

Let's go back some, about a month or so. I saw that Starbucks had pumpkin spice latte. Hmmm, that sounded good, so I decided to give one a try. Based on a recommendation, I had it without whipped cream, which turned out to be a good choice since it would have made the drink even sweeter. I thought the pumpkin spice latte was ok, nice pumpkin flavor, but it was a bit too sweet for my taste, so I was glad I tried it, but I'm not sure I'd have it again in the future. Or at least if I do, I'll have to ask them to put less flavoring in it.

And then a couple weeks ago, I noticed that Starbucks had a gingerbread latte. Uh oh. For reasons that are too involved to get into, I discovered a couple years ago that I actually liked gingerbread cookies, so I thought that the gingerbread latte might be pretty tasty and gave it a try.

Evil. Evilness, I tell you. O.M.G. It was delicious. Perfect taste of gingerbread, even with the whipped cream. It was gingerbread you could drink!

Now, you have to understand that I'm not a Starbucks nut. I'm not a coffee snob, and I don't have it that often, and even when I do, I don't have to go to upscale places. When I have coffee, it's usually at places that coffee snobs would disown me for visiting. But it's precisely because I'm not a coffee snob that I can go to those places, because I'm not that discerning about coffee anyway, so spending money on expensive coffee is mostly wasted on me.

But on occasion, I will decide to splurge and visit a name-brand coffee house like Starbucks. And that's the problem. Because I go there on occasion, I know when they have special seasonal coffee flavors, and also because there are Starbucks locations everywhere, and on any square inch of real estate where there doesn't happen to be a Starbucks, there's some kind of ad about what Starbucks has as a seasonal flavor.

So now, I know that Starbucks has the deliciously amazing gingerbread latte. And it calls to me, like a siren to the sailors. And like them, I have to fight the urge to resist the call. Today alone, in going to only two places, I encountered three Starbucks locations where I could have dashed myself against the rocks and gone in and gotten a gingerbread latte. But I resisted. There are so many reasons why I shouldn't be having a gingerbread latte everyday. But, while I won today's skirmish, the war isn't over. They will have this deadly gingerbread latte available for the next month at least. And they are everywhere, beckoning me. I do know that I will have to go into a Starbucks at some point in December because I will need to buy a gift card for a friend. And I won't be able to resist getting a gingerbread latte, since I'll be there already.

And today, I was told by friends that they also have a peppermint addition for the holidays, and a peppermint mocha sounds intriguing enough to try.

How am I going to make it to January?