I need coffee in the morning. Two big mugs full and I’m good for the day.
We have a coffee machine at work where I can get a passable concoction for 40 cents. I prefer brewing my own at home and bringing it in a thermos, but that takes effort, more effort than I often have in the morning.
    So more days than I care to admit I find myself digging through the blue change jar on the kitchen counter as I’m flying out the door. Such was the scenario a few days back when to my surprise, my fingers touched a Kennedy half dollar. Yikes, I haven’t seen one of those in years.
    “Who put the half dollar in the change jar?” I shouted to my husband and son. Dead silence. No one could remember getting the half dollar in change.
    I continued grilling them until my 17-year-old gave me a look of teen-aged disgust and shouted, “Mom, let it go.”
    OK, maybe it was a visiting son from college who threw the coin in the jar. I’d have to follow that path later.
    When I mentioned my change jar find to Numismatic News Editor Dave Harper he told me I’d have to find out where it came from and write about it. So far, I explained, it was a mystery.
    That evening my husband trumped my find.
    “There’s a couple half dollars in the change jar at work,” he said. “Nobody wants them.”
    Oh, my gosh. How can that be?
    I still feel guilty about cashing in my stash of Kennedy halves years ago when I was a poor newlywed. But, hey, we had bills to pay and formula to buy.
    So today, my husband is checking the change jar at work and bringing home all the half dollars he can find. I’m not quite sure what I’ll do with them, but they’re not getting spent. In fact, they just may inspire me to start a collection.

I feel like we’re back in the 1950s when there was a Commie lurking behind every door. Only this time it’s the Canadians who are out to get us.

At least that’s what you’d think from a recent report on the ominous Canadian red poppy quarter. So ominous-looking was the 25-cent piece that the U.S. Defense Department issued a false espionage warning earlier this year.

It all started when some U.S. Army contractors traveling in Canada happened upon the unfamiliar coins. They filed confidential espionage reports describing the coins as “filled with something man-made that looked like nano-technology.”

Uh, no. That would be a mere protective coating applied to prevent the poppy’s red color from rubbing off.

It’s a fascinating story, which you can read in full at http://www.thestar.com/printArticle/211189.

But it’s sad, too. These weren’t obscure little coins. They were first minted in 2004, with nearly 30 million produced in honor of Canada's 117,000 war dead. Not exactly a secret, folks.

So what’s up? Are we so spooked by worldwide terrorism that we question everything we’re not familiar with? I sure hope not. Life is not meant to be vanilla.

I learn something new every day. And it's easy. I sit in the middle of a group of numismatic experts. Yup, there I am. Me and my collection of Indian head and Lincoln cents. I am the novice among them.

But I am learning. I used to call them pennies instead of cents. Now I know better.

The collection of Indian heads was a gift from my grandfather. He had neatly glued them to pieces of cardboard (I know, I know. Do not emulate this method.) and had neatly marked the year in pen below them. He stored them in the basement near his workbench, and when I was about 7 years old he pulled them out one day and gave them to me. I was thrilled, and official coin folders were soon purchased. I had taken my first leap into the coin collecting world.

The next few years were busy scouring through tins of pennies, grandma's pocketbook and every cent received in change at the store. My collection grew, but then stopped when I became a teen-ager and found more interest in looking out for boys than for coins.

Over the years my grandfather also passed on to me a few silver dollars and Kennedy halves. I regretfully admit that as a newlywed I used those coins to help pay bills.  We were young and poor and lived in a drafty old house that might as well have burned dollar bills for fuel at the rate we were paying to stay warm.

But the Indian heads and Lincoln cents stayed in their folders and now sit on my bookcase at work. I've entered them in My Portfolio on the NumisMaster site, and although they won't make me a rich woman, it's fun to check on their value as the market changes.

Someday I'll pass them on to a grandchild, who may be spurred to collect something else; perhaps the new Presidential dollars or Buffalo nickels. And when he or she takes them out to admire, I secretly hope they'll think of me. Just like I still think about Grandpa Art.