Confessions of a Coffee Addict

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 200º 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.

Binary Minds

I'm not as stupid as I look. I'd like to think that my brain is more complex than a computer CPU, and certainly has a little more mystery.

The folks at Nabisco, or Hershey's, or General Mills, I'm not sure exactly where, are, however, not of the same mind.

Apparently my brain, much like that of a computers, understands a basic language of Ones and Zeros, and builds on everything else from there.

Why do I mention this? Because apparently EVERYTHING from here on out must be broken down into 1-0-0 calorie packs. Can my brain get around 150 calorie packs? 90 calorie packs? Could I resist a 123 calorie pack? NO! Of course not! I have a binary brain, obviously! And OBVIOUSLY if it says ONE ZERO ZERO Calories, it MUST be good for me.
I'm sure by now you've figured out that I'm not really serious about the binary thing. My problem is this: where does the hundred calorie pack madness end? It was a great idea - at first - a few crackers or chips seemed like a good idea for those that wanted the snack without the excessive snacking. But it has gotten quite of out hand.
I swung into CVS this afternoon - I was having a terrible day, and I needed a beverage (no, not that type of beverage, though it would have been useful), and, should I find one, a snack.
What do I find? A box of 100 calorie pack REESES PIECES SNACK MIX.
Naturally, I couldn't resist. There was a box with 7 supposedly delectable snack packs (a nice, even number, so i figured it could get me through the rest of the week). I love peanut butter more than just about anything (save for life, liberty, wife and football, in some order... strike that), and I love fake-reprocessed-delectable-quasi-gelatinous-hard-candy-coated-peanut-butter nearly as much. Not only did the packs promise reeses pieces though, but also some form of crunchy peanut-buttery cereal, some wierd, round, crunchy, peanut buttery... uhm, other cereal... and I'm pretty sure the point is that its basically cap'n crunch & reeses pieces.
So by now, you are asking two questions:
How much do you get for 100 calories?
and
Where can I get mine???
The answer to the first? about 1.2 ozs. Yup, 100 calories doesn't get you what it used to. Which gets me to my final (have I made one yet?) point: where does the madness end? When do we stop bagging everything into what seems like healthy portions, even when it was never healthy to begin with?? I'm looking forward to a 100 calorie bacon package... the 100 calorie big-mac portion, well you get the idea.
And of course, now that the un-healthy experts have started finding that healthy marketing means people will buy your product, we can only expect more. The best part of the whole equation? Because you think you are eating better, you're more inclined to eat more - if one is good, isn't two just as good? You get to pay more money for more packaging and less food, only to want to buy more.
Strangely, I think this whole argument has come around to a subject that is near and dear to someone that is near and dear to me - eating better via more organic food, and saving the world by reducing the extra packaging. In my opinion, and yes, this is my opinion, let's stop the madness, and start packaging our own food - I can handle it if its actually 114 calories - and stop needlessly throwing money away towards crap like this.

Oh, and as to where you can get yours? YOU CAN'T! Keep your grubby hands off my peanut butter!!!

Sublog: Food I Ate Recently - Part I: DD In Falmouth

Ok, I'm immediately starting to regret the decision to name this sublog "Food I Ate Recently"... at the time it was catchy because it was the antithesis of all of the other sublog names that I came up with on the fly (but worked quite nicely), however on its own it rates at about a -12 on the originality and interestingality scales. I'll take suggestions for new names for it, but right now I'm already leaning towards "The Double Bacon Cheeseburger of Regret".

At any rate, I want to discuss my coffee. As I think I've mentioned in this space before, I have somewhat of an addition to my coffee.

I won't recall the entire affair, but essentially a couple of summers ago the Saturday/Sunday am dunkies run replaced getting up at the ass crack of dawn to go out on the boat... back in the day I saw dunkies as a great excuse for a chocolate milk and a muffin. Coffee never really entered my routine. This is roughly the same time that I was working 11 hours a day answering phones for Fidelity... though the pay was low and the hours were bad, they did do one thing for me - provide free coffee. Usually 2 16 oz coffees would get me though the morning. I only wish i were kidding.

Well, the need for coffee transferred to my weekends when we'd make the dunkies run. I started getting an iced french vanilla. This was quite good. I was, well addicted... but only on the weekends.

We'll get into my now daily stops at dunkies on the way into work later, but this is really where the dunkies addiction began. You might notice that this particular location gets a "One Star Out of Five"... i'm not entirely sure its that bad, but it doesn't make the best coffee in the world. It was this weekend however the white trash capital of the world, I was a little scared.

Just a little background - this is the only DD for a few miles around. It is PACKED on the weekends - sure, lots of dunkies are packed, but this one is especially nasty because its usually annoying vacationers that aren't patient because they a) have a large order as they seem to travel in large packs and b) they want to get to the beach. A side note, on the far left side of the map, below the Rt. 28 symbol, is the location of the old Jakes Tap. I never went to this fine establishment, but you'll all be glad to hear that it is being replaced with a large, state of the coffee, drive through DD that is sure to clog the road into eternity... but I promise you I will face it its general direction every time I get on my mat to kneel and pray.

Well, that's the general story about the dunkies. I know that you usually come to this place for my witty and irreverent humor, and I haven't really come through for you on this post - but know one thing. I take my coffee seriously. It is no joking matter.

That's why I'm so disappointed with DD for ruining my experience by joining forces with the evil one... no, not George Steinbrenner, Rachael Ray. I mentioned it the other night, but in case you didn't realize how disheartening this could be, take a look at the photo I took while in line... this could ruin any good coffee: