I sometimes find the conversations I have to have with Dunkin Donuts employees to be the most unbelievable experiences of my life. This may not seem like a big deal to you, but I quite frankly enjoy (read: freak out if I don't get) my daily coffee. I've probably written about all of this before, but in an effort to be a little more "healthy" (whatever that is) I've cut back to only one medium coffee a day. So I'm a little short on brain power. Stay with me though, it gets funny, I promise.
Meghan and I went up to Dunkin Donuts after hitting a couple buckets of golf balls on Sunday. As she details, it was about 200ยบ outside, with 150% humidity (these numbers are slightly rounded). I needed my coffee.
As usual, something had to go pear shaped.
I drove up to the seemingly innocuous speakerbox device, and ordered in the least confusing way possible:
"I'll have a medium iced, extra skim, two splenda". DD - anything else? "Yeah, a medium iced coconut the same way". (I always managed to suppress the gagging noise that reflexively comes to me when I order Meghan a coconut coffee, but I mention it here for effect).
I'm beckoned by the disembodied voice to hither to bring myself to the magically slidey window.
Now, Meghan's dad has a term for our order - he says we order coffee with lots of "words" in it. This may be true in a sense (yes, I've used the term "iced mocha latte lite" before, but never have I used the word moccachino while ordering), but the kind orange shirted folks at DD never seem to be frazzled by too many words (just a certain lack of understanding of the english language as a whole, in some instances). And as I mentioned, it was hot - sunny, muggy, nasty hot. So I had my sunglasses on.
Yet as I pull up, I notice that one coffee, perched temptingly on the ledge like a warm apple pie cooling in the breeze, is regular extra-skim infused-colored, that is to say it is mostly dark with a hint of milk, and the other one is startlingly only-Michael-Jackson-is-whiter-than-the-cream-in-this-coffee white. I stare at the girl who's about to charge me for an erroneously made coffee and ask her what is in each - she looks down and reads the crayola chicken-scratch on the side and informs me "this one is the coconut (the one on her right) with skim and splenda, the other one is skim and splenda".
Meghan almost had to jump in at that point, either to speak with the girl, take the wheel, or both. As Lewis Black would put it, "the left side of my brain looked at the right side of my brain, and said 'its cold in here... and we may die".
I recovered within moments (I realized that Meghan was having the same brain issue, or was trying her hardest not to laugh in the poor dumb girl's face, I'm not sure which), and informed her that there was NO WAY the coffee on her left, which I'm fairly certain was white enough to reflect 99.7% of the visible light spectrum, was made with skim milk.
She looked down. It was as if I had given her a new pair of eyes, as she realized at once that I was correct. And I would forgive her her transgressions, save that she had had to look down and discern everything about the maker's handwriting, written on a transparent plastic cup, but didn't find a way for point A to connect to point B. Again, these are conversations I shouldn't be having. All I want is my freaking coffee... now.
Tuesday, July 22, 2008
Saturday, July 12, 2008
Big Day
So its 9:28 ET and Meghan just pointed out that it was a big day.
And then I realized, wow, it kind of was:
7:30 - Up, but not to happy about it.
8:15 - On the bike for 7.2 miles of Cape Cod.
11:00 - Meghan and I took the boat out, just the two of us, up to Falmouth harbor and back. Nice, nice ride.
1:30 - Lunch, pool at Grandma Dot's
4:30 - Meghan & I hit up Falmouth Country Club and walked nine holes.
7:30 - Dinner in power-less East Falmouth - steak and shrimp on the grill.
Ok, so it doesn't look like much when I put it in a post, but that was a LONG day, and a very very good weekend day, and the power is back on, so I figured I owed you, my curiously loyal reader, an update.
So what's on the docket for tomorrow? I don't know if we can top that... but anything to take my mind off of work on Monday would be great!
And then I realized, wow, it kind of was:
7:30 - Up, but not to happy about it.
8:15 - On the bike for 7.2 miles of Cape Cod.
11:00 - Meghan and I took the boat out, just the two of us, up to Falmouth harbor and back. Nice, nice ride.
1:30 - Lunch, pool at Grandma Dot's
4:30 - Meghan & I hit up Falmouth Country Club and walked nine holes.
7:30 - Dinner in power-less East Falmouth - steak and shrimp on the grill.
Ok, so it doesn't look like much when I put it in a post, but that was a LONG day, and a very very good weekend day, and the power is back on, so I figured I owed you, my curiously loyal reader, an update.
So what's on the docket for tomorrow? I don't know if we can top that... but anything to take my mind off of work on Monday would be great!
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Road Closed
There are times I really, really, really hate Canton. It doesn't happen often, as a) I don't spend much time there, b) its a relatively nice place and c) it isn't Stoughton (ok, Stoughton isn't that bad, but you have to agree it rolls off the tongue kind of funny). Last night I was furious with Canton though, because of its sheer stupidity.
As we were driving down Washington St, Meghan and I came up to some road work that has been going on since about 1998. Most nights, I'm coming home from work, so this road work is on the other side of the street and only inconveniences me so far as to force me way to the right of the rather narrow lane, in order to avoid hitting a construction worker or police officer.
Well last night was a little different. I had to go TO work at 9:30 at night, to write a couple last minute emails. We're down the Cape for five days, and I had a final exam at Brandeis last night, so I rather hastily ran out of work. Heading to work, we ran into the construction, and a rather helpful sign:
ROAD CLOSED
Not, DETOUR, with some helpful hints as to where to go. Not that I don't know Canton that well, but I don't just travel in random 1930's neighborhoods for no reason either. So I made my first attempt to go through the neighborhood and loop back to Washington St, only to hit Washington St. right where another police officer was standing, only all to glad to tell me that I couldn't turn in the direction that I wanted to go, waving his little orange stick and telling me to turn left.
Ugh. I hate Canton. So I went back to the original road I had turned onto, traveled a good mile to a mile and a half out of my way, and then finally made it to the highway.
Is it that hard for one of the 5 police officers that manage to scam detail off of this job to maybe put up a couple detour signs? How can you just close a road? I'm pretty sure in most civilized towns, cities and nations, they give you a hint as to the best way around.
(Red is the road closure, blue is my original attempt to get around it, green is my eventual route. Its a complete coincidence that its labeled with green dots, because going all the way around because they don't know how to close a road properly isn't very "green" at all)
As we were driving down Washington St, Meghan and I came up to some road work that has been going on since about 1998. Most nights, I'm coming home from work, so this road work is on the other side of the street and only inconveniences me so far as to force me way to the right of the rather narrow lane, in order to avoid hitting a construction worker or police officer.
Well last night was a little different. I had to go TO work at 9:30 at night, to write a couple last minute emails. We're down the Cape for five days, and I had a final exam at Brandeis last night, so I rather hastily ran out of work. Heading to work, we ran into the construction, and a rather helpful sign:
ROAD CLOSED
Not, DETOUR, with some helpful hints as to where to go. Not that I don't know Canton that well, but I don't just travel in random 1930's neighborhoods for no reason either. So I made my first attempt to go through the neighborhood and loop back to Washington St, only to hit Washington St. right where another police officer was standing, only all to glad to tell me that I couldn't turn in the direction that I wanted to go, waving his little orange stick and telling me to turn left.
Ugh. I hate Canton. So I went back to the original road I had turned onto, traveled a good mile to a mile and a half out of my way, and then finally made it to the highway.
Is it that hard for one of the 5 police officers that manage to scam detail off of this job to maybe put up a couple detour signs? How can you just close a road? I'm pretty sure in most civilized towns, cities and nations, they give you a hint as to the best way around.
(Red is the road closure, blue is my original attempt to get around it, green is my eventual route. Its a complete coincidence that its labeled with green dots, because going all the way around because they don't know how to close a road properly isn't very "green" at all)
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