Drinking a warm Dr. Pepper
Posted Sun, Feb 24, 2008 in:
I am sitting here, drinking a warm Diet Dr. Pepper, trying to relax a bit and calm myself down.
This morning, I wake up, and I’m feeling very groggy. Angie and I were out until 3:30am, and it’s not even 11 yet.
I have a little bit of breakfast, but what I really need is caffeine. Of course, we don’t have any in the house.
We have some black tea and some Oolong tea, but I want something with a bit more caffeine in it to wake me up. The only coffee we have left is decaf. Useless.
I change into some jeans, set the alarm, get in the car, and head out to HEB. I want some coffee to wake up with and some Diet Dr. Pepper to drink later.
I guess everyone must be coming from or going to church or something, because it takes 5 fucking minutes for me to make a single left turn.
I arrive at HEB and walk to the coffee section. I get myself a bag of French Vanilla beans and put them into the grinder. I set the grinder to “espresso”, place the bag under the spout, and press the start button. The machine starts. Nothing comes out.
“Maybe it’s jammed,” I think to myself. So I turn the knob to the left, selecting a courser grind in the hopes that the machine will un-jam itself. Coffee finally starts coming out, in what appears to be a fine powder. A few seconds later, the coffee coming out of the machine is smoking and the outside of the bag feels hot to the touch.
I notify an HEB employee. He says he’ll have someone look at the machine and that I should just use the other grinder. I start over again with the other grinder.
I set the machine to “espresso”, pour in my beans, place the bag under the spout, and press the start button. Coffee comes out!
A few seconds later, smoke once again starts emanating from my bag of ground coffee.
I give up on getting coffee. I realize I could get pre-ground coffee, but by this point I just want to get my soda and go home.
I give up and head for the section where the 24-packs of soda are. The soda aisle is in the middle of the store, but they only have 12-packs there. The 24-packs are in the far back corner of the store for some reason.
I pick up a case of soda by the handle-hole in the top and begin walking to the checkout area. About half way there, the handle-hole rips open, and the case of soda falls to the floor. One of the ends of the case pops open like a mail box and 21 cans of Diet Dr. Pepper roll out in to the center aisle of the store.
I start to pick up the cans and an HEB employee who has stopped to help offers to go grab another case from the back of the store for me. I tell her I can just got get it myself. She carries the exploded case away and I head back to the far corner of the store.
This time I hold the case with both arms in front of me, elbows at a 90 degree angle. I make it to the checkout without any further episodes, and head out to my car.
As I’m opening the door, some guy decides that it would be a good idea to fly past me into a parking space catercorner to the one I’m in, coming within an inch or so of removing my door as it swung open.
As I head home, I stop abruptly to avoid running through a yellow light, though I probably should have kept going since it had just turned yellow.
The next light I come to is yellow when I get to it as well. Given what happened with the previous one, I decide that I can make it through this one. I am proven wrong as the light turns red at the same time I am barely entering the intersection. Fuck, I guess I gauged that one incorrectly.
I pull into my driveway frustrated by the events of the last few minutes, still groggy and now wishing that I had gotten some pre-ground coffee after all.
I come inside, disarm the alarm, place the Diet Dr. Pepper in to the refrigerator, pull out a can.
I crack open the can and sit down at my computer to vent my frustrations to the world.
Man, this would be so much better if it were cold.