Lent is catholic (with a small 'c')

For Catholics, lapsed and otherwise, 'tis the season for giving up something. I stopped this practice years ago. I believe the last one was either 'no chocolate until Easter', which was a total cop out, because I like chocolate, but not that much, or 'no swearing' which was during a time in my life when I worked in restaurant kitchens, and that was a much harder habit to break. I've recently been thinking about it, though, because my friend (and the illustrator of our soon-to-be published book) Kathleen has given up adding sugar to things. She is actually still Catholic, so this may have some religious bent to it, but it's not a bad idea to use a time of year that's related to hard work, solitude, and long dark nights to change behaviors. (Better now than in summer- who wants to have a dietary tithe when there's fried clams and drinks with umbrellas?)
I'm thinking I might give up coffee, but not for the reasons you might think. I have no problem with the caffeine but I'm getting to the point where I drink it everyday and it's starting to not TASTE so good. I'm missing that satisfaction you can get from it, that feeling in the Maxwell House commercial from 1982 they still show every Christmas when Peter comes home from college inexplicably at 5 am and makes the first pot. I love coffee, and I want it to love me too, so perhaps I need to set it free and see if it comes back. Maybe 80's hair band Cinderella will prove to be prophetic: "You don't know what you've got 'til it's gone".