I'm a Buisnessman with Standards

In the past week and a half I have created a masterpiece that will be marveled at by film students for years; realized that I am seemingly addicted to Starbucks in particular, and not just coffee; proven that while unlikely, it is possible for me to enjoy things that everyone else enjoys; discovered the meaning to life...again; and most importantly: rediscovered the extreme and imminent threat that zombies pose to our every day lives. Yup, must be spring break.

So for me, I think Spring Break started last Wednesday. I had a huge assignment due for my Theatrical Cinema class, and seeing as it's one of only two things that get graded in the class, it was half my grade! Needless to say I was up all night doing it, but I'm pretty sure I pwned it. It was easy...but long. So after that class was over, so was my week. Well, school wise at least. I had three classes on Thursday, but nothing difficult happened in any of them. In my Film Production class, we finished our first movie which was no easy feat. Rather than using video cameras, we have to use old 35mm film. Meaning we're literally shooting thousands of still frames and playing them back fast enough so that it looks like they're moving. Which is pretty awesome until you realize that since you're using film, you always have to worry about overexposing or underexposing your film. That's something I always thought I would leave behind in Photography class. Damnit! Despite a few difficulties, the film is hilarious or at least what we've seen of it. We're still waiting for the last roll to be processed.

When I got out of school on Thursday, I had only one thing in mind. Zombies. Or black people to be more specific. You see, Resident Evil 5 was to be released in just one day! I remember 5 years ago when re4 was released and I had to get my mother help me buy it because they wouldn't sell it to me. Good ol' mum. Unfortunately, they're gradually replacing zombies with weird mind control bug monsters, and the people being mind controlled are in Africa. Not half as scary as zombies, but it's still been 5 years since the last one!

Unfortunately, Starbucks seemed to already have taken control of my soul for the next few days...bastards. I worked Friday from 7 in the morning till 4:30. What the shit? That's like...the worst shift imaginable! It felt like I was there all damn day! At 4:30 I rushed over to GameStop where I bought my fancy special edition that totally wasn't worth the extra 40 bucks but I just had to have it! I went home and started playing immediately. And I continue to play for the next several hours until at around 10 I realize I have to open the next morning. Goddamnit!

I jump in bed and close my eyes. When I open them again, it's 3:30 and I have to wake up. Ugghhh...if I didn't work at a coffee shop, I wouldn't survive early morning like that. I worked that crazy Saturday morning shift until 1:30 when they let me escape. Same story as the day before. Resident Evil 5! Nick and I managed to beat the game by 6 or 7 I think. Which pissed me off. It was way too short! What the hell?! Damn you Capcom! We moved on to play a minigame we unlocked until it was 10 and I realized that I have to open the next morning. Deja vous?

Repeat, except this time I'm completely exhausted and have no motivation for surviving long enough to get home since I already beat it. Ack!

The next few days were all relatively similar. I ended up closing like every night this week, so I got to be a night owl again. Which is usually fun and games, until the diner stopped being open 24/7! Now what do we do?! C'mon diner! You're killing me! That's like...all there is to do at night! Well that and re5!

On Wednesday night I was tracked down by 3 fellow blog members and informed that I would be going to Philly the next day. Apparently Ms. Big-Shot-City-Lady Anna Matthew was planning a trip to the Butterfly museum or something along those lines. Hey, whatever! Woke up early on Thursday(yesterday) which is exactly where this food blogging starts!

I departed around 9 or so to pick up Stacey and Dan. Since there wasn't a Starbucks in the area, we had to stop at Wawa. It was either that or Dunkin Donuts and I'm not allowed to drink their coffee. From there we went to the train station where we rendezvoused with Amie. We expected to meet Kate Romanova on the train, but apparently she forgot to fix the clock on her iPod and was still an hour behind the rest of life.

After we got off the train we played Twister in the station until Anna Matthew came and found us. From there she took us off to her fancy pants apartment, and let me just tell you, the elevator in that building is HUGE! She got an umbrella (ella-ella-eh-eh-eh) from her room and then we headed off to the museum. Of course it was raining and nobody had any idea where the museum was! Figures! Thankfully Anna used her city-senses to guide us in the right direction. We met Kate at the door to the museum and proceeded inside. We walked past the dinosaur exhibits and other fancy things; all the while, Amie was absorbing knowledge like a sponge. I was cautious of going into the "Africa" section of the museum thanks to the life lessons I learned from Resident Evil 5, but I gave in. Thankfully no zombies.

We finally got to the butterfly room and it was hot as hell! A nice change from the freezing wet outside, but hot as hell nonetheless. There was a moth that apparently had just hatched and was bigger than my hand. Good god! We left the butterfly room and eventually the museum to go have something to eat. Kate led us to Terminal Market which looked exactly like the Farmer's Market in Newtown. I was dying to go to the chocolate store place when I first saw it, but I guess I forgot to head back there on the way out. Damn! I had a vegetarian cheesesteak. No, I didn't think they existed, and yes everyone already made fun of me for it, so you can all shut up.

After that we went to....STARBUCKS! Finally! My god! I had been dying to go the whole trip...what the hell is wrong with me?! On my days off I can help but go to get some espresso! Why?! I can't stay away!! The Wawa coffee did nothing! AHH!!! The Starbucks in Philly was cool, and I'm pretty sure Dan and Anna marked down my numbers so they can 'jack my employee discount. Bastards.

We stayed there for awhile until we eventually headed home. Anna bid us farewell and retreated to the hustle and bustle of her city life. The train ride home was uneventful as we were all tired. We all got in the car and I went to drop Dan off. He dissapeared inside his house, and I got halfway down the street before I got a phone call. Oh look! Dan! Apparently he was bored already, and our shenanigans weren't over yet! Picked him back up and headed to Target for some reason. This was gonna be the starting point of a scavenger hunt or something...I don't really know where that plan was going...but we instead decided to just see a movie. Three guesses as to what.

If you guessed Watchmen, then you're right! Now I was going into this movie ready to hate it like I do with everything that everyone gets excited about. I was just bubbling over with criticism! But turns out it was really good. Go figure! That makes 2 good movie-going experiences in just under a year! High five! I recommend it to whoever is looking forward to it. Wasn't the best movie I've ever seen, but it was pretty good.

Breakfast/Lunch/Dinner: Coffee

Hunted

ALRIGHT ALRIGHT, I'll blog!!! Sheesh! Actually, the amount of harassment I've been getting for not blogging has been minimal if anything really. You folks need to step it up! You need to get MAD! You have to accept the food blog as a family member, and when it is ignored, you have to seek vengeance. That's why I've been testing your love for your cousin Blog, and you've all disappointed me! This was a test of the emergency blogging alert system. This is only a test.

So geez, let's see. What has been happening exactly? Hell, I don't even know! I had a 3 day weekend or so from Starbucks after another one of their crazy murder plots they pitted against me, and therefore my past week has been (almost) coffee free! ALMOST!

Classes started the other week. Did I talk about that in my last blog? I can't even remember that far back. I think the blog is dying! Soon we'll have monthly posts each about what we've eaten for the past 30 days! Good god man! This is madness!!

Well in any case, classes DID start. And even if only in the past week, they've been taking up more time than work has! I tried to group all of my classes together on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but naturally there were a few stragglers. On Monday I only have 1 class, and it's a night class. It's also boring as sin. Video Studio Production. We've been learning how to use a camera for the past 2 weeks. I'm going INSANE! It's a 4 hour class, and since it's a night class, it's filled with old people and druggies who don't really care. I swear, some of these people must be retarded. The one kid doesn't seem to have any sense of time or relation to what's being discussed in the class and has (on two separate occasions) randomly blurted out "My favorite movie is Mrs. Doubtfire." This other guy who's like 40-something feels that it is of the utmost importance that everyone in the class knows he's a clown on the side. He must have told me this fact at least 3 times.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays I have Comp and Media and Society early in the morning. We haven't done much in either of these, but in Media and Society I have my editing teacher from last semester which is awesome, but I can't see him teaching a class with real material. He had us make "tribal art" the other day as a homework assignment....yea, that was just bullshit!

I have the Art of Theatrical Cinema on Wednesday and my teacher is a doctor in Film, which I didn't think was possible. She's also absolutely insane. Now, I don't say that about teachers, but this lady is nuts. I wish I could post impersonations here on the blog (without it taking more time than writing) because you really have to see her teach to understand what I'm talking about. Let's just say that she gets very into it. On Thursdays, I have Film Production 1, where we actually use really really old film cameras. It seems interesting, although right now we're learning the same basics we're learning in my other two film classes, which are the same basics that I learned in Photography!!! UGGHHH!! It hasn't been a very exciting semester so far.

Yesterday, I actually got out of work early and thus got to school before class started, so I was in the cafeteria on my laptop killing time. This is when a horrifying thing happened. I noticed somebody watching me. He had passed by several minutes before, but it seemed like he backtracked to get a better look at what I was doing...All I could see was a big red figure and a rolly-backpack following behind him as he circled my location. I could tell I was being hunted. After seemingly passing me by at least 3 times, this person sat down at the other end of the table I was sitting at. It was at this point when I realized who it was.

Ray Cancilla.

Shit! Thankfully, I looked busy enough that I could avoid conversation for awhile. You could tell he was trying to get my attention though. He kept moving and changing seats. Slowly getting closer and closer. Closing on my position rapidly, he was moving in for the kill. I couldn't really think of a way out of this one. If I broke eye contact with my computer monitor and started putting stuff away to get ready to leave, he would take the opportunity immediately. So it was a standoff. And for a good 5-10 minutes, it remained at stalemate. He got up to "throw out his trash" once or twice, but it was really just so he could step in my line of vision. Eventually, I caved, and he pounced immediately picking up where our conversation left off a year ago when I last saw him. He told me about his mother, and how he still works at the library, and how he made movie slideshows of his favorite disney channel shows to High School the Musical songs...all stuff he's told me before. This time I actually learned that his father works at the Tastycake factory in Philly, which was new information. After him ranting on about how he wants to move up the ladder at the library, and obtain the highly sought over position of circulation desk, he showed me a CD he was listening to. The Carpenters. He gave me their history from their birth onwards and then told me to borrow their albums from him, which led into him giving me his number for the 12th time. It was a fun time.

Come to think of it, I've been running into a lot of people I never thought I'd see again. I almost feel popular. Almost. I've been starting to play Chess again too which is awesome! I'm in a class with Michelle Harven, and right afterwards we each have like an hour long break. She just learned to play chess recently, and as a result of which, she carries a chessboard around and plays everyone she talks to. So what to do in an hour long break? Damn straight we play chess. But on that note, I'm gonna go ahead and push the Publish button and then go do something else. Sorry for the late post. Hope my mother's photography has kept you occupied!

Breakfast: Poppy seed bagel with cream cheese, and coffee. MmmmMmm!
Lunch: Can't quite remember. I'm pretty sure it was something as I remember walking into the cafeteria with people to get it...
Dinner: Seeing as I just woke up, I haven't really had much drive to get dinner. I had some fries, and predict a diner trip later on tonight.

Small Adventures

I woke up this morning at 10:25 on the dot to the sound of the alarm on my phone going off. That annoying beeping that was so cleverly rearranged in the form of a catchy jingle so it doesn't disturb you any more than it already is. I made a valiant effort to stretch my body longer than it actually is so that I could reach my phone without getting out of bed, but unfortunately bodies don't work like that. Who designed those things? They're so awkwardly symmetrical. Why can't I just have one extra long arm? Now I'm sure there are about a thousand reasons as to why that would suck, but at the time it seemed useful. I got up, hit the volume button thing on the side of the phone hoping to shut the damn thing up, and got back in bed. Of course, nothing can be that simple, and the alarm went off again 5 minutes later. I always hated the "snooze" option on alarms. If I wanted to wake up at 6:05, then I wouldn't have set my alarm for 6:00. The second time my alarm went off, I was awake enough to question why in the hell the alarm on my phone was set. And in order to answer that question, I'm going back in time one day.

~In the past....~

It's Sunday night. I just got back from work, and am just getting settled back in my room. All is fine and dandy until I'm contacted by Mr. Ray Feeney. He wants to partake in some shenanigans and since I didn't have work until late afternoon the next day, I agreed. This of course means we went to the diner and then back to his house for video games. However, unlike most nights, these Shenanigans were taking longer than usual. Before I knew it, we were playing Portal trying to find the cake at 6 in the morning and...hey! He fell asleep! Sonofabitch. Ray! Wake up! Take me home! Damnit!

And so it was...I was stranded. Times like this I wish teleporters were real. That, or I had a car. I tried to get some sleep, but to no avail. I can never get to sleep at other people's houses. I laid around and complained to myself about how by the time I got home the next day, it would be time to go to work and I would be exhausted. Then at 9, Ray woke up and informed me that he had to take his dog to the vet at 10:45 and that I would likely be accompanying him. Whatever, I had already been awake since forever. He took my phone and set the alarm for 10:25 (cutting it a bit close I thought), and it's been going off at that time ever since. I have no idea how to make it stop. Can anyone help me with this?! I hate cell phones! Make it stop!

~Back to the present...~

And so, all of that being out of the way, I woke up way earlier than I wanted to. I stayed in bed for a little bit, but couldn't fall back asleep. KHAN!! Needless to say, I was very tired from the day before. I never imagined that I would end up at the vet's office, but by the time I got home I only had a very short window to catch up on sleep. At around noon, my phone started ringing. I was reluctant to answer it since it's usually Starbucks, but it was a number that I didn't have in my phone. I picked it up, and it was none other than the most notorious stalker these parts have ever seen.

Robert Curry.

Now, he had been calling me all of last night trying to do something and I had very wittingly avoided him. But since he now knew I was still alive and at home, I understood that there was no avoiding a visit. I had a few hours of doing nothing at home before I was visited by Danny D, and Robert who had surprisingly shaved his beard and no longer looked like a homeless person. We tried to make a movie, but that only ended up with me being carried around by Robert who had painted his face with shaving cream and let it dry out like a mask. I don't know what I was expecting.

After we realized the movie was going nowhere, we watched Easy Money and it was the most boring hour and a half I've had in awhile. Ughh. After that we headed over to Dan's brother's new apartment where we played Dreamcast. Oh, Dreamcast! Those controllers are so ridiculous! Once we were bored of that, Dan's brother cracked out a new movie he had bought called "The Room." And ohmygod...it was the best 99 minutes of my life! Troll 2 now has some competition as the best worst movie ever! It was SO BAD that it was genius! The director of the movie was so oblivious to his own trade that he didn't know the difference between a 35mm camera and an HD camera, and rather than figuring it out, he just decided to shoot using both cameras simultaneously! And they showed this process in the "Behind the Scenes", where you saw that he literally had two giant cameras attached to each other! He was also the main character in the movie, and was an awful actor. I bought the movie off Amazon within minutes of getting home.

After "The Room," we went back to Dan's house and watched Seinfeld, Jay Leno, and Conan before calling it a night because nobody we knew wanted to do anything. Bastards! Ah well. It was one of those Rob Curry type adventures. Beforehand, I dread it. During, my mind is numb. But afterwards, I realize that I loved every minute!

Breakfast: Goddamn cellphone alarm....
Lunch: I made a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and French-pressed some of my fancy new coffee.
Dinner: Coffee and a donut...I know I'm going to regret being honest about that because my mother will lecture me shortly after reading this.

It's a Starbucks Christmas!

Well after taking a short break from NOT talking about work, I'm moving back to talking about work! And since I'm one of the only bloggers who hasn't given holiday wishes to the blog, I think I'll start my blog on the night of Christmas Eve.

Twas the night before Christmas
and all through Newtown
the rich people were gathering
something to do, they had found.

For all the bars were closed
and the drunks were out of luck
but the one place still open
was Newtown Starbucks!

Starbucks was surprisingly hopping on Christmas Eve, but I guess that was because folks were finishing last minute christmas shopping, and wanted coffee. Thankfully we got out early, so we closed the store as quickly as humanly possible and headed home. As fate would have it, I was on my way home to a party of sorts! I walked inside and was immediately bombarded by my aunt who wanted me to take a picture of her family. Shortly after that I was surrounded by other family members all making the same joke about why I didn't bring them coffee. By the time I made it to the dining room, I got a call from Fat Dan who was in the kitchen. It would be another 5 minutes until I made it there, but when I did, I found two blog members! It's a blog Christmas! Apparently everyone else had OTHER family stuff to do. Losers. The Christmas bash lasted well into the evening, and was rather enjoyable. But it soon came time for me to go to bed.

My alarm went off at 5 am the next morning. Goddamnit. I got up, took a shower, got dressed, and headed off to Starbucks. Seriously guys? I have to close on Christmas Eve and open on Christmas?! Who does the scheduling? Well I got in and we were actually having a pretty dandy time. I figured that Christmas morning would be dead. How could it not be? Well rich people proved me wrong once again. We opened our doors, and almost IMMEDIATELY there was a line at the register! Seriously?!! I'm not exaggerating here! I turned away so that I could cover the pastries, and when I turned back they were there! What the hell? Everyone stopped in and got coffee for their families or something. To make it worse, there was a new girl on staff who kept dumping all the coffee, which led to mass coffee shortages!

But in all fairness, it was fun. We got awesome tips, which I am looking forward to picking up today. And I got off at around noon. When I got home, we had Christmas morning and then went over to my grandmom's house for some family BS. It was boring, but House was on. Friday and Saturday were uneventful. I closed both nights even though I wasn't supposed to close on either of them. They made a deal with me. If I closed on those nights, then I didn't have to open on one of them. I'd close 4 nights to not have to open one day! Oh wait...how ironic:

I got into work on Sunday at around 10:30. I clocked in, and all was well. I was expecting to go home at 5 and have a fun night! But nooooo! One of the closers called out sick. And since everyone is fired or on vacation, they couldn't get anyone to cover! The solution: find someone who isn't closing but working earlier that day, send them home an hour early, and have them come back and close! Who was that? Me. It added a new definition to being at work all day....because I was there ALL DAY! Fortunately, it was pretty fun. My back hurt towards the end of the shift, but I was working with a lot of fun people and we had live music, which was awesome. It turned out to be an easy close.

Today...I'm going to work...to close...again. There's the irony! 4 times so that I didn't have to open on Saturday. With no day off in the near future, and having been scheduled on New Years Eve and Day, this truly is turning out to be a Starbucks holiday! Merry Christmas and Happy New Years bloggers! We've made it through another exciting food filled year!

Breakfast: Something? I can't remember. I think a croissant!

Lunch: A multigrain bagel from the pasty case. We had to mark out all of the am pastries, so I got it for free.

Dinner: Pizza! During my hour off of work, I went home and had pizza with my mother and brother as we watched the History channel. The French Revolution and then something about the Universe and the Speed of time...I didn't see the correlation either.

Funeral

Well today, I DIDN'T go to Starbucks.

Wait. Hold on. What did he just say? He didn't go to Starbucks? Not even as a customer? Does that mean that this blog ISN'T going to be about coffee? Wow, that's the first time that has happened since he started working there!

But seriously folks, this is the first day in forever that I haven't been to Starbucks. Hooray! The occasion? A funeral. Huh...maybe it's not such a joyous occasion. But ah well! It's a different topic nonetheless!

So I woke up this morning at around 11, and was hoping to make my way over to the photography lab at Bucks so I could work on my final. Unfortunately, this didn't turn out to be the case, as I was reminded that I had to attend a funeral for my uncle's father. I can't say I really knew him, but from what little I recall and from what I hear, he was awesome. So I got up, dressed all fancily, and headed over to my grandparent's house where we were going to go over to the church together.

Wait...CHURCH?! I have to go to church?! Goddamnit! I hadn't been in a church since longer than I can remember. And with good reason! I don't know what I'd do if I had to go to church every Sunday. Just sitting through an hour of listening to the preacher was awful. Thankfully, I was with the pope of Dolism, and we were able to amuse ourselves by making fun of everyone there. We thought about adding Dolisms to the blank pages in the backs of the bibles that were provided for us, but then we realized that there aren't any Dolisms in the DOLIST bible, and so we refrained.

Afterwards they had food and drink upstairs, so we met up with our cousins and headed up there. They had coffee there, but it wasn't that great so I didn't drink all that much. I also couldn't really eat anything, because they only had roast beef and ham sandwiches. So much for the feast. We ended up staying for at least an hour after the ceremony, but it was alright. Nobody seemed very sad, but instead they all told stories and laughed about what it was like when he was still alive. I think that's how a funeral should be...I guess my mother's views have rubbed off on me to some degree!

But quite possibly the most amusing part of the whole thing was when the priest was talking about Jesus. He was saying that Christianity was the best religion, because our savior came down to Earth to help us out. Alright, understandable. The bad part about it was that he then used an example to emphasize his point. He said, and I quote, "Allah would not come down for you. Buddha would not come down for you. Only our Lord came down to help us." Alright, now hold up! Buddha? Really dude? Buddha was a man! He lived on Earth! He was just a man who reached enlightenment. Not a God. Not only that, but it was kinda low to attack the other religions like that.

By the time I made it home, the photo lab had closed, meaning I couldn't work on my project at all. Ugh...ya know, I thought photography would be somewhat of a joke, but I do more work for that class than any of my other ones. Hell, it rivals the workload of Zoology; and my scientific partner New Bill can attain to how much work was involved in that.

So I spent my time eating dinner, drinking tea, and watching the Harry Potter movies that have been playing on TV. I was never particularly fond of those movies. I always thought they made the story seem more childish than the books really were. But re-watching them now, they're not that bad. And I'll admit, the last one I saw in theaters was pretty good.

And on that note, my day is complete. I'm going to bed shortly, because I'm opening tomorrow...back to Starbucks. Fortunately, it's my last morning shift until Friday. Dandy! So we'll see what I get into before I find my way to my bed. I'm sure it won't be interesting enough to put off blogging for, so that's all for now. Till next time!

Breakfast: Sweet dreams of sleeping in.

Lunch: A cup of coffee and a piece of strawberry shortcake.

Dinner: Stuffed shells in all of their delicious goodness. Cup of Chai tea on the side. Made the whole day of not eating better.

Fatigue

Alright, well I guess I should get my act together and post for once before I get fired! If things keep up the way they've been with me and blogging, then I might be expected to make another "Longest Post Ever," and Dole knows the last one took me like 3 hours to write! So here goes! I'm all for this whole reboot thing, and I'm dedicating the next hour of my life to this blog, whether or not it takes that long to write.

So what's new in the world of the Honorable Doctor Ian Gillies? Well, nothing really. I'm sure you could look back at my last 20 blog posts and see that I've been working a lot. Pretty soon they're just gonna clear out the basement, give me a bed, and just have me live there! But if nothing else, things are settling down at the coffee shop. We have a manager now, so that's a good thing! He's starting to get everything back in order, or at least trying to, and it looks like the people we've got on staff now are going to stay where they are.

But I'm getting off on a tangent again! The last thing I want to do is bore you with my first post in forever. Let's see, where to start off? I got home from work at about 12:30 last night and went straight to bed knowing fully well that I wouldn't get much sleep. Sure enough, my alarm clock went off at 4:30 as I expected it to, and I drug my half-numb body out of bed to get ready to go back to work! I went to take a shower, only to find that the water was freezing cold. Good God! Apparently, the water heater was turned off, but I would only figure that out later. So much for a hot shower to wake me up. I guess I'll move on to the second best thing...coffee!

As fate would have it, I had just purchased a half pound of "Aged Sumatra" coffee the night before. Now for those of you who don't know Starbucks, Sumatra is one of our boldest coffees. Apparently, 5 years ago they took a ton of Sumatra beans and put them into storage. Now, after that extended period of time, it was finally ready to be sold to the world at twice the price of regular Sumatra! All I know is that all the coffee nerds at Starbucks have been in a frenzy about it! It's the most exciting thing that's happened to us since Pumpkin Spice! And so I broke down last night and bought a pound.

So back to my story; I made some of the Aged Sumatra, eager to taste it's bold, fancy, goodness for the first time and then of course brag to everyone at work! It turned out to be pretty good! Two thumbs up from me! And not just because of the cool tiger design on the bag. In any case, I had a cup of that, and set out to work the early morning shift. Things started out pretty easy going, but at around 8 in the morning, that changed.

I don't know what it was, but there was a constant line from then until well into that afternoon...and I emphasize "constant" because it did not die down once. I don't know where these people come from! As soon as one leaves, another two come in! The line stretched from the register, all through the cafe all day long. From 8 in the morning until 3:30 when they let me escape. And I guess everyone was feeling guilty about the weekend, because everyone was getting their drinks with nonfat milk! I a'int never seen such a shortage of nonfat milk at Starbucks!

While I did spend some time on register, they threw me on bar for the majority of the day. It's actually not as bad as it used to be. I think I've gotten so used to the rushes, that I've become numb to the stress of it. Angry customers mean nothing to me anymore! It's so easy to just give them what they want and blow them off now! I've also learned that if you look like you know what you're doing, then people will trust you more. You don't get 800 people asking if their drink is next in line because of course I'm getting to it. You don't get those people who ask you to make sure that their drink is non fat, because of course I know that the drink is supposed to be made that way. It's almost a rewarding feeling. Almost.

So I got off at 3:30, which was at least an hour later than I was supposed to be off. Ended up getting home around 4, and went straight to bed. Days are too long, and I didn't have nearly enough sleep for that much work! I only got a few hours of sleep before the pope of Dolism kicked open my door and said "Pterodactyl," which usually means that dinner is ready. I was half asleep, but I'm pretty sure that what I was eating was pizza.

Rather than go back to bed, I decided that I would use the rest of my night to my conscious advantage. Since I have ungodly amounts of stuff due for Photography every week, I went out with my camera to shoot and do whatever. I ended up at Starbucks. Goddamnit. Thankfully, I was on the other side of the bar this time. They have live music playing every Sunday night, so that was a lot of fun to just kinda hang out there and talk to people. It was very interesting, because I got to hang out with all of the regulars who came to see the show rather than just talk to them from over the counter. They got to see what I looked like without the green apron. I also ended up playing Resident Evil at Sam Toder(I know you all know her by like 5 different nicknames, so I'll just use the real one), and since Resident Evil is always awesome, that was a good time to be had.

And so that was my Sunday. I honestly can't think of anything else that might be interesting to write about, so I think I'll just leave it at that. I've got three(two...) minutes till midnight, so I'm gonna go ahead and publish this before I've officially missed my night again! Seeyas!

Everything's Going to Hell, and We're Still Serving Coffee!

Today I woke up much earlier than I should have considering the time that I went to bed the night before. Staying awake for a full 24 hours proved to be much more difficult to do than I thought it would be. Yesterday I had what is known to be the second worst shift possible--the 4am-1pm shift. Ugh. This time slot literally hurts to look at when one looks over their schedule. The only shift that's worse is the 4am-1pm SATURDAY shift, because hell rains down upon any barista that works on Saturdays in Newtown!

I remember back in the beginning of the week, when I saw my schedule for the first time. Looking at my schedule has become almost painful lately. Walking down the death row and into the back room with my pumpkin spice latte in hand, I tried to brace myself for impact. I looked for key times like 4am or 12pm to help me get a better idea of when I would be working. Of course I knew in the back of my mind that none of these times were really concrete. I was sure that in a day or two I would get a call and have to go in on the day I have off. I was sure that I wouldn't really be getting off at 3, but rather at 5. Such has become normal. I have more hours next week than any other barista, and even some of the supervisors!

The worst part is, I really don't know why it has gotten so crazy lately! I can't seem to figure it out! I mean...yea sure, some of the hype can be attributed to the fact that we remodeled the store and everyone wants to check it out. But we re-opened a good 3 or 4 weeks ago. Probably even longer than that! Surely the hype has died down a bit! It's like there's a never ending line, and you never get a chance to catch a breath, let alone prepare for the next wave of coffee-hungry rich folk. There has to be something else that's going on! Unless the population of Newtown increased by like a thousand in the two weeks we were closed.

Another two people quit today. One of them was a supervisor who had been with the company for over twenty years, but just couldn't handle how crazy its been. That makes at least 6 or 7 people who quit in the past 2 or 3 weeks. I can't say for sure what the count is up to now, because I've honestly lost track. And of course every time someone quits, it gets more hectic for the rest of us! Not to mention that both the manager and one of the two assistant managers is leaving the store to go somewhere else!

We now have a list next to the cash register of things we've run out of, so we don't accidentally charge someone for something we can't make. Strawberries, Frappicchino Creme base, Apple Juice, Mango Juice, bananas, oatmeal and even the mix for the new hot chocolates that we're advertising like crazy! The list gets bigger every day, and of course the order that comes in never seems to have what we need. Who knows, we might be down to serving only coffee soon! A Starbucks selling coffee? Unheard of!

But alas, complaining gets me nowhere. If nothing else, I'm making a lot of money lately. I made at least double the money in tips this week than I normally do. It's always nice to see the rich people are still pouring in by the dozens! And the assistant manager who is sticking around seems to be trying to take control of the problem. He was at the store today from 7am until midnight. Dole bless him! I think I would probably die from that!

Other than that, I can't think of anything to really blog about. Sorry again folks for talking about work...it seems to be the only thing I blog about anymore! Between school and work, I'm certainly kept busy, which hopefully explains why I skipped my blog last week...and yesterday! It seems the food blog is also losing a little bit of momentum lately, so I figured that despite the fact that it's almost 3am, I would write something real quick rather than skip again!

Oh yea! I almost forgot! I went to Neshaminy homecoming today with my good pal Erik, and it was a blast and a half! We didn't stay very long, but it really wasn't as exciting as other years seeing as there weren't very many familiar faces floating around seeing as we're graduated. Whew! Run-on sentence! We did run into a few special guests like Hank Curry, Mrs. Donahue, fellow blogger Meredith, the Troll(ugh), and of course Dr. Hensel!! We checked in with everyone and headed home remembering those good ol' Neshaminy moments. I had to go to work shortly after, but I already got into that so I'll just stop here!

Breakfast: Sleeeeeeeepppppppp

Lunch: Something? It was definitely something...something along the lines of funnel cakes and cheese fries, and other assorted homecoming goodies.

Dinner: The assistant manager at work lost his mind seeing as he had been there since 7 in the morning, and consequently he got us all pizza. Pretty good pizza too!

Till next time folks!

Just Too Busy...Sorry Folks

Sorry bloggers, I'm much too busy to make a post that's really worth reading. I'm not typically one for passing, but I think I'm gonna have to this time. There's just not enough time...I've gotta get my Theory of Sleeplessness approved by the board of fancy-pants scientists or whoever it is who would approve a theory relating to whatever it relates to.

...I did eat pizza today.

The First Step is Always the Toughest

Approximately one year ago, I was getting myself settled in my dorm room, and slowly coming to the sad realization that the person I had to live with for the next year was an idiot. But amidst the pending excitement of moving in and the looming dread of what was to come, I was sent a link to a strange website which I had never heard of before. It appeared to be a blog. It was nothing extraordinary; the design was pretty basic and there only seemed to be two posts, but there was something about it that caught my interest. Maybe it was the interesting personalities of the writers, or perhaps the food-based content, but for whatever reason I felt compelled to keep a close eye on it. Despite a shaky start, the two bloggers seemed to brave through the rough, each posting on alternating days to keep a steady flow of writing. Day after day I returned to this website, seemingly compelled to check in on it’s progress. And then something happened that I did not expect. I was invited to join the team.

Now a year later I can only look back in awe of the progress of the site, and in admiration of the two brave souls who ventured into uncharted territory and formed this wonderful blog. While I do take pride in being the first person outside of the founding duo to be invited into the blog, I have to admit I was not blogging since day 1. But I have seen the food blog evolve. I have watched it from day one as it grew into something that nobody could have predicted. I have seen and welcomed each and every new member to the blog as they came. I watched the crew grow from 2 to 9.

But that is exactly where the success of the blog came from. The people. I can safely say that each and every blogger brought with them their own unique style of writing and their own thoughts and ideas. Each and every person contributes to this blog in a way that cannot be mimicked or imitated by any other person. It’s the people that have brought the blog this far. It’s the people that keep me coming back every day to read.

So let this date stick in the back of all of our heads. Let’s take this time to think back on memorable entries and give our thoughts on the progress of the blog thus far! I’m surprised it’s come this far, but being here on this 1 year anniversary makes me proud! We’ve come a long way, but this is far from the end. The little blog has grown a lot in just one year, and one can only imagine how much it will continue to evolve in the year(s) to come! So thanks to everyone for their contribution. Thanks for giving me something to read! And now, let me get to the point. Food.

Breakfast: Breakfast kinda merged into lunch today, so I think I’ll just write it in the lunch section!

Lunch: For lunch today I was at IHOP, which was very exciting! It was kinda like being at the BFD, but with really good food! I got a giant cheese omelet with a side of hash browns and coffee. It was a pretty awesome brunch.

Dinner: Understanding the size of my lunch, it’s no mystery that I wasn’t hungry around dinner time. For that reason, I had a late dinner that my dearest mother prepared. 3 of the best damn pancakes I’ve ever had. Plenty of butter and syrup, and I’m good to go. Of course the syrup had 34% less sugar, which irked me. First of all, syrup is basically sugar, and second of all…34%? Why? That’s such random number.

(You didn’t think I could go an entire blog without complaining did you?)

Pumpkin Spice, and Everything Nice

Ah yes, Pumpkin Spice! The very sound of that makes me excited beyond belief! It may seem a little early for some, but in my mind there is no bad time for anything pumpkin. It's the sweet sweet reminder that Autumn is beginning. My mother got me addicted to pumpkin(as well as coffee) at a young age, and I think it's safe to say that I'm happy to have held on to that addiction throughout my life! Pumpkin Pie, Pumpkin Muffins, and even Pumpkin Seeds! But today was the day that one more glorious pumpkin substance has been added to my palette. That's right...the Pumpkin Spice Latte!

Yes, today was the grand unveiling of the Fall lineup of beverages at Starbucks. Of course, we've known about them for a week or so already, but we've had a very restricted supply(if any) of the fabled lineup! Needless to say, today was very exciting! But what exactly is the new fall lineup you ask? Well, since I get paid for it, I will tell you! I'll start off with the boring stuff, cause nobody really cares about that. First of all...protein lattes. It's a regular latte with a scoop of protein powder to make it taste like shit. Supposedly it's got protein in it or something but I've yet to see any proof of that. Next up we have our "Signature Hot Chocolates". This was described to us as a more "sophisticated, adult hot chocolate". Don't ask me what the hell that means, because I have no idea what makes it any more worthy for adult taste buds than the other hot chocolate, but whatever! I don't think they really thought that one out! We've also added a new "Morning Nourishment" section to our pastry case in order to help our customers wake up the healthy way. Ironically, one of the Morning Nourishment items is a chocolate cream cheese muffin!!! Seriously, this thing is a beast. I've never seen anything look so unhealthy in my life. It's a chocolate muffin, with chocolate chips in it. As if that wasn't enough, it's hollowed out and filled with cream cheese icing. Jesus Christ, it should just be labeled as a heart attack. Next up we have, and I do quote, our "Perfect Oatmeal". Now, I've yet to have this oatmeal, but apparently it's the best that oatmeal can possibly get! I'm actually kinda looking forward to trying this stuff! It looks pretty damn perfect. We make each thing of oatmeal individually and specifically for each person, so it's not like it's coming out of a big container of month old oatmeal. This also means that we've got another job on our hands. You can also pick either the brown sugar, dried fruit, or nut toppings. Yummy.

And finally...the best for last...the pumpkin drinks. Oh my Dole, I have never been so excited about making drinks in my life! You all have to try one of these things! It is my new favorite drink! I've had like...4 Pumpkin Spice Lattes today! Of course, if you're not in the mood for something hot...you can get it iced! Hell, we can put the pumpkin syrup into a frappachino and you can get a pumpkin smoothie! Hell, there's no excuse for NOT getting a pumpkin drink anymore! I think I'll get pumpkin in my oatmeal! I want you all to go out and get one of these drinks! I mean...I put A LOT of extra pumpkin in there, so the spice taste may not be as potent in the regular pumpkin spice latte, but goddamn, they're good!

Unfortunately, that was pretty much the highlight of my day. I don't have any school on Wednesdays, so I was class free. Newtown Starbucks is closing down for remodeling shortly, so everyone's kinda excited about that. Today we had to move all of our stuff from the back into the haunted basement. Creepy. I believe we close on Sunday, and then I get to work in the Oxford Valley Mall Starbucks for 2 weeks. Actually looking forward to that. But if you want a free cup of coffee, drop by the Newtown Starbucks from 7am-10am, and they'll be handing them out while they're closed down! Pretty awesome if you ask me!

I got back from work and watched House that Stacey so kindly lent my family. I hate television, but House is an awesome show. It is my exception! Since each episode of that is like an hour long, that took me well into the night. And now I'm blogging! Which is in itself a miracle! I can't remember the last time I blogged on time. But here I am! I think we need to give the blog a jump start again! It's been slacking recently, and I say that knowing fully that I take a lot of the blame! Seeing as the 1 year anniversary is coming up...whenever that is...I say we get back in gear! We should do something special for the anniversary. Like have everyone blog that day so we'll all have plenty of interesting stuff to read! I dunno...we've come a long way, and we should celebrate! Well, get back to me on that anyway! Otherwise, here's what I ate!

Breakfast: Starbucks Peachy Rasberry Yogurt that wasn't good enough to sell, but good enough to send home with the employees! Mmm...yummy!

Lunch: Pumpkin Spice Latte

Dinner: Pastina! For those of you who are unfamiliar with this awesome food, it's like little star shaped pasta, and it kicks ass! Big bowl of that left me full. Pretty bland list of things to eat, but you get the idea. I was too excited about the Pumpkin Spice!

I'm sorry bloggers

It seems that work and fatigue have gotten the best of me these past 3 or 4 days, and while I started blogging, I've been unable to finished.

I respectfully step down, and pass my turn onto New Bill.

Today I ate a bagel with cream cheese.

That's How I Run My Shifts

I awoke this morning to the sound of me being awake. That's right...go back and re-read that sentence a couple times, but I assure you it won't make any more sense than it did the first time you read it. I don't know if anyone has ever had this happen to them...but it happens to me all the time. I went to bed last night exhausted, and yet found it very difficult to sleep. After tossing and turning for several hours, I realized that it was, in fact, well into the morning! This gave me the illusion that I did not sleep at all last night, but upon further inspection of the phenomenon I noted that I was missing several hours, and there was no way I had consciousness for that long. And since the evidence was against what I, until then, had believed to be true, I was forced to accept the fact that I did actually get a few hours of sleep.
If this has ever happened to you, then you're sitting there right now going "Yea! I hate that!"
If not, then you think I'm insane and I suggest you ignore this paragraph and just keep reading.

I headed downstairs cause it was insanely hot in my room and I couldn't stand laying there for another minute. Thankfully it was cooler down there, and I had two happy pugs to greet me. I headed to the kitchen where I made myself some Ellios Pizza(which just may be one of the best inventions in the world) and a cup of Darjeeling Tea(thanks to the recommendation of Fat Dan). The tea was great, and so was the pizza and I was starting my day off pretty good. I decided to take this free time to work on some of the crap that has been stressing me out this past week or so.

I swear...these past 2 weeks have been very stressful on me, and I suspect that it will only get worse as this next week nears! This is easily the busiest time frame I've had all summer, and I can't wait until things go back to normal! This Thursday will be the end of my woes, and mark my words I am looking forward to that! But alas, I cannot keep looking to the promising future, because the only way to get there is to do the work on my plate right now! Oh yes, it'll be a fun 5 days.

But that being said, I must get on with my blog. My day wasn't very eventful. The knowledge that I would be working later that evening was hanging in my mind; preventing me from doing anything crazy. Therefore I regretfully announce that the topic of this blog will again be work. Not that it's not interesting at Starbucks, it's just that I'm sensing that my blog topics are becoming stale. There's only so much you bloggers can take!

Today at work, my personal favorite shift supervisor was on duty. She's definitely one of the more interesting and fun people who work at Starbucks, and there's rarely a dull time when she's working. Tonight was no exception. She was sick at the beginning of the night, as a result of which she called in an extra barista to pick up the slack. She ended up feeling better towards the end of the night, and we had 5 people (which is 2 more than usual) working the closing shift! Not only that, but they were all fun people! Because of this, everything got done in record time, and we found ourselves with little to keep us busy.

But that doesn't mean we didn't have fun! We had a live performer today in the front of the cafe. He was really good, and played the majority of the night. He played a version of that "If I only had a brain/heart/nerve" song from Wizard of Oz that was very good! But naturally, after he left, we had to turn our music back on. But rather than the typical classic/jazzy soundtrack that Starbucks had, we kicked it up a notch and put on a little more "modern" music. While this did mean the occasional rap song, we had mostly upbeat hip-hop songs playing, which we were of course required to dance to. It was around this time, that the shift supervisor came out from the back room with her hat on backwards and exclaimed "That's right people. I'm playing rap music in Starbucks! That's how I run my shifts!"

As groovy as that ended up being, I went home with the dreading knowledge that the next two days are going to be ridiculous. Tomorrow I work until midnight at Yarley Starbucks, and then I get to wake up promptly at 4 am the next morning and do the morning shift! Dear lord. I am not looking forward to that!

I'm afraid that's about it for this blog folks. More to come next time.

Banana-Mania

Oh dear...what is there to say? I think I can safely say that this is the first blog of mine in awhile where I am left with absolutely no direction. I don't know where to start, and I'll probably just end up rambling pointlessly for a few paragraphs. But hey, that's how my posts usually end up anyway, so it's all good.

It seems like I've got quite a bit on my plate as far as the next 3 or 4 weeks go, and I'm starting to think I may have bitten off a little more than I can chew. I would divulge, but I doubt any of you are interested, so I'll keep it short and sweet. One day at a time! I'll check back with you all in a month, at which time I'll either be a master at time management, or have reached an all new level of failure known to mankind. Whichever of the two happens, I'll just try to stay classy, snazzy, and jazzy.

Ugh...I can already tell this is going nowhere. I probably just didn't have enough caffeine at work today. Ah! Work...there's something to talk about. Dear lord. I think today was probably my busiest day at Starbucks thus far. I attribute this to two key reasons. Number one, it's free Ice Coffee Wednesday. People love to come in and flash their "Free Iced Coffee" coupons like some sort of award, and then proceed to cram as much additives and syrup to their coffee as they can before the mixture is no longer coffee. I swear, I don't think the people even drink the stuff they order, they just want to get as much free stuff off of us as possible. Factor number two is that yesterday was the release of our new Vivano beverages. If you're sitting there asking yourself what the hell a Vivano is, then you're in the same boat as me seeing as nobody ever really explained to me how to make the damn things! But I have drank several of them and let me tell you right now, you do NOT want them! It's a blended beverage with bananas and either mocha sauce or mango juice, and lets put it this way...I went home and threw up after drinking the mango one. The chocolate one isn't so bad. Let's just hope its a seasonal thing. But all day I had people asking about what the hell these things are, and getting blank stares at my failure to explain the godawful beverage to them. Now that I'm off the time clock, I can give my honest opinion. Don't even try them.

But if there's one thing that has sparked my curiosity about the beverages, it's that all the baristas are thrilled at the concept of a new drink. It's like getting new toys at Christmas. They all want to try mixing the bananas with different things and creating their own specific drink. They'll just sit at the blender shelling out different drinks for hours.
"This time I'm gonna put in lemonade."
"This time, let me try using chocolate chips."
"Here, put in the Macho Powder."
For those of you who don't know, Macho Powder (or Matcha Powder, I've seen them both written and don't know which is real) is a green powder that instantly and magically makes any delicious Starbucks beverage a nasty green color with large clumps left floating around. In my opinion, it should be banned along with Decaf coffee, but the fact that I get to sing "Macho Man" every time I use it makes it a little better.

IN ANY CASE! Getting back to my day. It was nuts. I don't think there was a point in the day where there wasn't a person standing at the cash register. It was literally a constant flow of people. I stood at that register so long that my back was killing me. The counters and the floor were a complete mess because there was so much shit going on that we couldn't help but spill everything. And since there was always a line out the door, there was very little time to clean up. To top it all off, there was never enough coffee to feed the savages who were clawing at our throats! Well....scratch that. There was plenty of coffee, but none that was "Up to Starbucks standards". Apparently we can't serve coffee that has been sitting for over a half hour. It used to be an hour, but someone made the executive decision awhile back that coffee sitting out for an hour isn't good enough. I mean, it sounds like a good plan to give the public fresh coffee, but god damn. Those coffee timers go off at the WORST times!

But all in all, just another day. I didn't get my break until an hour before I was supposed to leave. Which I thought was odd. Then I lost track of time and ended up staying like...20 minutes overtime. I figured they'd send me home when it was time for me to leave, but apparently they thought I was staying a good 4 hours later than I actually was. Then for some reason or another I agreed to switch my closing shift with someone's opening shift. Guess I'm waking up at 3 in the morning again.

What else is going on? E3 was running all this week. Which is a video game geek such as myself's dream. Unfortunately, E3 totally sucked this year. Nintendo announced Animal Crossing for the Wii, and that's about it. Don't get me wrong, it'll be awesome...but come on. That's it?! Also the Dark Knight is coming out this week. Which is going to be the best movie of all time until it actually comes out and people realize that it's not half as good as they expected. I understand that a good many of you will yell at me for saying that, but I've seen it happen many times. Hollywood is dead to me. I wouldn't be surprised if I never saw another movie in the theater again. Not including Wes Anderson films of course. I'd gladly take the time to see those!

And on that note, I'm just about done. Hopefully my ramblings have entertained you all for the duration of this blog. It is what I live for. I am but an entertainer.

Breakfast: Slept through it. Mmmm....sleep.

Lunch: I made Ramen, but after making it, I realized that I wasn't really hungry. I forced myself to eat half of it, because it took so damn long to make.

...you know you're impatient when you complain at how long it takes to make instant ramen.

Dinner: I had a slice of pumpkin loaf at work, which held me over until I got home. Then my dearest mother made me a Boca burger. I still don't know what those are made out of, but before you all make fun of me for eating them, I assure you they taste just like regular hamburgers!

There is no such thing as sleep

What is today? Saturday? Ok...that means I was supposed to blog on Friday. Got it! This whole week has been a blur, and I think it's safe to say that it has been the first case of my losing track of time and being completely out of it this summer. Hell, I'm surprised I made it to work when I needed to! But yes, enough banter...lets set back time to yesterday!

I woke up yesterday with the fact in my mind that I would be working later that afternoon. That's never a happy feeling, but it's always better once I get there and actually start working, so I just ignored it. I got up and came downstairs to get breakfast as I typically do before work. Of course it was just about lunch time, so it might not even count as breakfast. Ah well...whatever! When I talk about getting ready for work, it never sounds very interesting so I'm gonna try to phrase it in a more self-gratifying way. In the hours before going to work, I was helping provide better sanitation standards, upholding the law against indecent exposure, and helping solve world hunger. All in a day's work.

And speaking of work, that's exactly where I was headed. Now normally they have me working until close, which can get kinda tedious. But today I had what must have been the easiest work shift in all Starbucks history. 3-7! A good 4 hour shift, which no additional "opening or closing" duties! Just man the deck! I got there to find quite a few people who I had yet to meet. I've been there for like a month and still haven't met everyone! Unfortunately for my socialization, it was very busy and I found myself working in cahoots with some guy I had never spoken to before! And introduction would have to wait until AFTER coffee was served.

It was a pretty uneventful day. I am starting to pick up on some of the regulars. For example, I'm almost 90% certain that my 7th grade teacher Mrs. Andrusko comes in every day and gets a Chai Tea Latte and a Non-Fat Latte, both with no foam. I mean...I'm not completely sure, but I'd put money on it! Also there's this one guy who comes in like every half hour. He has a registered Starbucks card or something, so all of his coffee refills are free. On top of that, he brings his own mug, so I don't think he even buys the original coffee, but rather just leeches off of free refills all day! And I mean all day! He gets coffee (he only likes the bolder stuff) and he goes and sits outside till he's done. Then he gets more! I seriously want to know what this guy does other than drink coffee at Starbucks! He's there all day!
Well I got home from work at 7 and brought my dear mum her Chai Tea Latte. Thankfully they gave me Saturday off, but that was probably only to give me time to prepare myself for my unholy 4 AM shift on Sunday. -shudder-

I got home just in time for the ordering of Pizza. We got it from Pizza Hut. Wow, is that place a rip off. We got 2 pizzas, and good thing! The box is about half the size of any other pizza box I've seen, and the pizza only takes about half the room in the box! Come on! It's not even real pizza! It's like half grease! I just don't see what the hype is about Pizza Hut.

So that was our dinner. And I'm sure that all of you know...wherever there's food, there's Fat Dan! Fat Dan made a surprising guest appearance conveniently in time for pizza. The plan was to play Chess, but we instead ended up playing Starcraft. Which of course attracted more leeches! A band of men fresh out of a con-fangled heavy metal concert decided that they wanted to stop by and play Starcraft. I don't know how they can all go, as Erik so wonderfully put it, subject themselves to bantering noise as long as they did, but to each their own!

A game of Starcraft quickly escalated into about 4, and for any of you who know how long a Starcraft game takes, you'll understand why that lasted until 3 in the morning. And what could we possibly do at 3 in the morning? Well the diner of course. Once we got to the diner, I think our brains were so full of fatigue that we all went insane for a little bit. I remember talking about Dinosaurs and the meaning of life and artificial sweeteners and all sorts of interesting tidbits of information! I also remember explaining my theory of sleeplessness, which is a theory I came up with some years back that a human could become immune to "tiredness" by slowly administering themselves with slightly increasing amounts of "tired" over a period of time. Eventually, you'll never need to sleep again! You would be immune to "tired"! Think about all the extra time you would have that gets wasted on sleep! Fascinating theory I think...if you want, I can go into depth, but the government has strongly urged me not to. The trick is Immunity before Insanity.

Well we got home at like...4 or so and it took an hour to get Ray and Fat Dan to leave, so by the time I was free to blog, I didn't really feel like it! I'm sure you all understand and I hope I have made up for it with this latest adventure.

Breakfast: Toaster Strudel! Strawberry and Cream Cheese flavor. Those things are like crack.

Lunch: For lunch I didn't really eat anything, but I did reap the benefits of unlimited free drinks at work! Iced Venti Caramel Macchiato! Delicious, I suggest you all try one!

Dinner: Pizza Hut in all its greasy glory. I think I had like 3 pieces which, ignoring the great pizza eating contest of 07, was the most pizza I've ever eaten in one sitting!

Diner: hehehe...dinner...diner...ha! Sorry, that's some of the insanity of last night leaking through. I had a root beer and cheese fries. A nice 3 in the morning snack.

Free Coffee Comes at a Price

Well, it'll be tough to top the quality and edge of your seat action of my last blog post, but as a certified food blogger I have to try damnit! You may all be wondering what I've been up to lately. What exactly happened last week? Well, while my last post caused every neuron in your brain to simultaneously fire with excitement, it did little to explain what I've been doing. How ironic that I think I got more comments on that post than I did for any other post I've ever written! And that includes "A Grand Return to the Writing Community", which still reigns as the longest post in the history of this blog! Ah well...best not to question it I suppose.

Well if you haven't yet figured it out, the title of this post has quite a bit to do with the topic to which I am writing. Go figure! But what phenomenon could validate such a mind boggling paradox as paying for free coffee? Work. Yes, for those of you who have not yet heard, I've recently been employed at Starbucks! And it has been quite a hectic start (what job doesn't have a busy start?) so I'm sorry to say I've been losing track of the food blog. But here I am. Back and writing better than ever! Gather round folks, for today you will hear the incredible story of the first few weeks of my employment!

It all started about a month ago, when a great many of us set off on a job hunt. Grabbing applications from anywhere from Einstien bagels to Barnes and Nobles to "Golf Adventure" to some Chinese restaurant, the Onions covered nearly every base to be covered! Now, I do have to come clean with you people. I didn't actually apply to the last two...only Erik and Fat Dan had the courage to put their lives on the line trying to apply to the Chinese restaurant! But among the places that I did get an application was Starbucks. I put it off for a day or two, but eventually filled the whole thing out and was ready to go! I actually had a good laugh at one of the questions on the application. It said: "What do you like about coffee?" Haha! What DON'T I like about coffee?! I replied "Insufficient Space".

I was actually on the way to drop off my application, when I got a phone call from a dear friend of mine, Ray Feeny. He informed me that Starbucks was actually holding walk-in interviews at the Neshaminy Starbucks in a few hours! Ha! Sounds good to me! I went against my mother's recommendation and held off on turning my application in.

5:00 rolled by and Ray, Ryan, and myself all headed to the Neshaminy Starbucks. We enjoyed ourselves as they took us over for interviews one by one. I was first. I was interviewed by two people, and they asked me a flurry of questions which I responded to as best I could. I thought(and now know) that it had gone very well, and the fact that they took the time to start explaining the benefits and dress code to me reaffirmed my high hopes. Ray was next, and also seemed to have a very good interview. Ryan didn't have as much luck, as he was only going to be home for the summer, and they weren't looking for seasonal folks. His interview lasted a good 30 seconds.
The man who had interviewed me called the next day.

Apparently I was training at Oxford Valley Mall Starbucks and actually working in the Newtown one. I felt like a soldier being trained in one place and then being shipped off elsewhere to serve the greater good. I'm actually under the suspicion that Starbucks is building an army. And then one day in the near future they're gonna call us all to arms and take over all the coffee plantations in the world, forcing everyone to pay unheard of prices for coffee. All I need now is evidence!

Well in either case, I had my first day of training at the mall two weeks ago. It might actually have been later than that, but I have no sense of time. I got there my first day to find out that my learning coach was not there. Figures. Not that it really mattered. I didn't learn much the first day, so the manager just took me under her wing. The manager just so happened to be one of the two people who interviewed me, and I would find out later that night that she was my mom's friend back from when they were kids! Ha! Small world.

I went in my second day to find that my learning coach was a man named Jeff...and wait a second...I used to work with him at Accura!! Ha! Small world. I believe I met him through my mother as well. I swear, my mother has left a legacy in this world. She paves a path wherever she goes, and I feel like I've only seen the beginning of it!

Training was pretty straightforward. Actually...scratch that. Training was confusing as hell! Supposedly there are 15000 (yes, there are 3 zeros there) different drink combinations!! 15000!! Dear lord. They started me off on Espresso bar A. This iwas just the basics. Lattes, Mochas, Cappuccinos. Oh, and of course coffee. I swear people are forgetting about coffee these days! Then I moved on to Espresso Bar B. Adding on to the basics. Triple Caramel Machiatos and all that fancy jazz Then cold bar. Frappichinos (Or as Fat Dan says: Frappa-whappa-chinos) and other iced drinks. Apparently we got a crapload of those at the mall because those damn mall rat teenagers don't get real drinks, but rather stick with the milkshakes. And then finally register training. I would also like to add on that training pretty much kicked ass. The only way to learn how to make drinks is to actually make them. And once I was done making all the drinks, there was nothing to do but drink them! So I would come home on the biggest caffeine rushes I've ever experienced!

Oh right and somewhere in all that, they had me go to a Starbucks class in Montgomoryville. I don't even know if that's what it's actually called or that's how it's spelled, but it was really far away! Goddamn! A guy named J.J. who was a shift supervisor that had yet to take the class gave me a ride down. I don't think I need to elaborate on how awesome that was, but lets just say he has good taste in movies. He reminded me of that one comedian guy who was making fun of George Lucas...I wish I knew his name. But if I didn't know better, I'd swear they were the same person! Maybe his name is JJ...ah well! The class was made up of 4 people...and 3 of them were from Oxford Valley! Why the hell didn't they just have the class there?! They showed us a movie and told us that we had to fill out our "coffee passports" within 3 months of employment. A coffee passport is a little book they give you, and every time you try a new type of coffee, you have to make notes about it! It's one of those things that are cool unless its mandatory. Then its just a pain!

So I finished my training on Friday, and am now a certified barista! Hell yea! I still don't really know what I'm doing, but I'm gonna get a cool pin for my hat! I said my goodbyes, got my free pound of coffee, and made my exit! On my way out of the mall, I actually ran into another friend from Accura, Guy! I think I actually met him at Sesame Place, and then ended up working with him at Accura later on! First thing he asked me was how my mom was. There's her legacy again!

The next day, I started in Newtown. Holy-Shit. Newtown is a good 100 times busier than the mall! Good god, I have never seen a more intimidating line in my life! And to make it worse, they were all Yuppies with their spoiled children! I think the human race needs to evolve and get less annoying. Goddamn! Yes m'am, I did hear that you wanted your milk to be 1% instead of 2% and you only wanted 2 and a half pumps of syrup although I'd bet 20 bucks that you can't tell the difference anyway. Sorry I asked you to repeat yourself sir, but maybe if you weren't so busy looking important while talking on your bluetooth, you could make the effort to speak clearly. But I guess as long as there are Yuppies, there will be spoiled children and as long as there are spoiled children, there will be future Yuppies. An endless cycle.

So I walked in and was ignored for awhile. They told me to go chill for 7 minutes, which I did. Then I came back and got my first job. What was that you ask? Well I got to watch a girl in the backroom who was having an allergic reaction and make sure she was breathing, and if she wasn't I had to let the supervisor know! Not that I knew who the supervisor was, or who the girl was for that matter, but that was what I had to do. So I'm standing there in dead silence with this girl sitting on a chair a few feet in front of me having difficulty breathing, and I could already tell Newtown was crazy. Thankfully the ambulance arrived before she died, and she gave me one request before being taken off to the hospital: to get her cup from the back. Unfortunately, I failed as I'm fairly certain there was no cup in that room! She was probably just delusional.

So I get out and some bitch tells me to do 800 things and then seemed to be annoyed with me cause I didn't know where anything was, who she was, what the drink was, or how hot I had to boil a children's hot chocolate. I later found out that she was the one who gave the girl the allergic reaction by giving her milk instead of soy, so maybe she was just having a bad day. But at the time, she was a total bitch! Things were a hundred times busier then they had ever been at Oxford Valley, and nobody had acknowledged the fact that I didn't know what I was doing. Fortunately, things died down a bit, and people started acting a bit more nicely as the day went on. I met this really cool artist guy named Tim...I want to add on to that thought, but I think I'll just leave it at that.

My second day was a little easier and I met another Ian who has been working there for a year. Not gonna lie, he was the coolest person there. It must be something about the name! He genuinely reminded me of Mike Scarfone. It was like it you combined me and Mike Scarfone, but only took my name and everything else from Mike Scarfone! I had more fun on day two.

Today was my third day. Now duly note that I've been working for the past like 6 days in a row, which is why I have failed to blog for so long! Work is also the reason my last blog wasn't more than it was! Busy busy busy! Today one of them asked me if I could make frappuchinos. Ha! Bitch please! I come from Oxford Valley! Don't YOU ask ME if I can make frappuchinos! Jeff done trained me right! I left them in awe at the sheer talent of my cold beverage making abilities, and they kept me on cold bar for awhile.

And that's that! Tomorrow is the first day I have off in like...six days, so I'm looking forward to sleeping. Who'd of thought going from a daily bedtime of about 4 in the morning and jumping right into work would be hard on my body?! But I apologize again for the late post, and I hope that you understand the toll that the Starbucks experience has had on my abilities to write. Even ask my mother, I've been in the process of writing this blog for the past 3 days, but have been unable to finish it! Ah well. You should all come to expect it from me. I'm gonna go drink some coffee.

Breakfast: Nothing.

Lunch: Nothing? Yea...still nothing!

Dinner: One of those inch long pizzas they sell at the Pizza Hut at Target. And a bowl of Ramen with a cup of coffee. I drink too much coffee...

It's a Trap!

The Diner

Well you all know that the diner is my home away from home, and I write about it very frequently. So what makes this post so important to make it deserve the title of "The Diner"? Simple. The intense frequency of diner trips since I've been home! The fact of the matter is, I think I've been to the diner at least once each day since summer break has started!
Waste of Money? Yes.
Waste of Time? No.

In fact, I think all the money I got from selling books back at the end of the semester was spent at the diner alone! Then again...that's not saying much, as I only got about a tenth of what I originally paid for them. Ah well. C'est la vie. I'm sure you've all noticed how terribly late this blog post is. Apologies, but its been late night after late night for me this week, and I've hardly been in the mood for blogging. I know that's no excuse, but to make up for it, I'll give you the gist of a few of the more memorable diner trips this week! Here we go!

I believe the first diner trip of my break was with the usual crew, and many of our fellow bloggers. Erik, New Bill, Meredith, Jesse and my brother. It wasn't a very eventful trip, but it was nice to be back in the BFD I love so much!

It was either later that night, or the night after the first diner trip but I got a call from my good pal Ryan. Sure enough, he wanted to go to the diner. We went to the Golden Dawn (as it is his preferred diner), and got coffee. Turns out...the Golden Dawn gives you free bread sticks every time you come nowadays! Although they jacked up the prices of things, so I guess they're not free after all. I ended up running into a few other people I hadn't seen in quite some time including Robb Gimello and Dan Dickerson. Dan ended up dissapearing halfway through the trip, but it was fun.

A few other uneventful trips happened, but nothing worth mentioning. This next one takes place on Wednesday. New Bill contacted me and suggested going to the BFD with whoever we could scramble up. We only managed to get Erik and my brother, but that's all we needed. During this adventure, I got a mysterious phone call. Who was it? Robert Curry. Ack! He found me! I guess Dan Dickerson told him I was home. There goes the summer!

Later that same night, Tyler called me and wanted to...go to the diner! Big surprise. If you haven't yet realized, this post is going to be very redundant. We not only got New Bill and Mer to join us, but also Jake Sanders, Dan Dickerson, and Steve Magnir! Oh boy! Cramming all of us into a small booth, we spent the better portion of 3 hours there drinking coffee and listening to the JukeBox which is largely ignored by most diner-goers. After that we headed to Jake's house and watched my favorite movie, The Darjeeling Limited. Good stuff!

But wait! There's more! At around 4:30 or something like that we all headed home. Tyler dropped me off at my house and left. I walked up to my door and low and behold....I'm locked out. Damnit! I should really have a house key!! After trying (with no avail) to get into my house through alternate entrances, I finally gave up. I was trying everything in my power not to wake my family, as I'm sure none of them would be very pleased with that. I looked at my watch. 4:45. Welp...they would be waking up in a little more than an hour...I'm sure I could kill that much time!

But where could I go? Surely there must be some holy residence which was open 24 hours a day! Somewhere where I could get coffee to keep me up for the next hour or so! Ah! I got it! The Blue Fountain Diner! Ah, my home away from home! I walked up to the diner and ordered breakfast! Ironically I got the same waitress that I had not 4 hours ago. I don't think she noticed though...either that or she just ignored the fact that I just left a little bit ago.

Its funny...the morning diner crew is completely different from the diner goers at any other part of the day. They all came in with exact change as they seemed to know what they were getting and exactly how much it cost. They all knew the waitresses by name, and even knew each other! It was like they were all family! Hell, one guy even tipped the waitress before he ordered! Crazy stuff!

Fast forward to today, where I will get on with my post!

Today I slept a lot. I was absolutely exhausted as I had been up very late last night. Unfortunately I had to wake up at about 9 in the morning. At least I think it was 9...I was kinda out of it. Figures I have to mow my grandpop's lawn before it rained. Damnit. I stumbled out of bed and performed my duties to the elderly. It took longer than I thought it would, but when I got home I immediately went back to bed. I remember not even feeling like I had fallen asleep. I'm sure you all know the feeling. When you close your eyes and open them and suddenly 6 hours have gone missing.

Well when I opened my eyes, I looked at my clock, which was conveniently blocked by a glass. Now its time for a bit of a science course! Through the glass, it looked like the alarm clock said 11:45. Hmmm...that's strange. How could it only be 11:45? That would mean I just finished cutting the lawn a little bit ago! I got up out of bed to verify this. Upon moving the glass, it came to my attention that the clock did not say 11:45, but rather 3:45! Apparently the glass had refracted the light from the alarm clock, and made me see something different! Don't ask where I got the 11 from, I was just as confused as you all are right now. Science is confusing.

Looking back at what I wrote, I probably could have done well without that little story, but understand that it was a very important part of my day! I vividly remember exactly what was going through my head at the time! I went downstairs, and was just in time to watch a movie! Rushmore! Good movie! My mom brought to my attention that the star in Rushmore actually played one of the 3 main characters in Darjeeling Limited! He looks so much older now, that I hadn't recognized him!

After Rushmore, we started watching Lost in Translation. Another classic. That reminds me, I have to hang my Lost in Translation poster up on my wall now that I'm home! About halfway through the movie, Tyler made a surprise guest appearance, as did Fat Dan and Jesse a few minutes after Tyler got there. Where did we go? If you guessed the diner, you were right! But if you guessed the Blue Fountain Diner, you were wrong!

We decided to switch things up and go to the Golden Dawn, mostly because I had been living at the Blue Fountain all week. I can only take so much!! Unfortunately, it proved to be a poor choice, as the prices at that place are extremely excessive! Good god! The food was alright. We ended up running into a few good buddies of ours. I think we all go to the diner too much...

Ah well. After the diner, we played Brawl. A good time was had by all. Today probably represented the end of my diner spree, as I'm fairly certain I'll be spending the better portion of my day tomorrow job hunting. Then on Tuesday I have a dentist appointment which will finally kill the tooth that's been tormenting me for about a month now once and for all. Good riddance to it! Toothaches suck.

Breakfast: A donut that my grandparents forced me to eat. I swear, you can't say no to old people...they'll just keep bugging you until you do what they say!

Lunch: Unless I ate in my sleep, I skipped lunch. But the blog will never know, now will they?

Dinner: While I home I had a piece of Garlic Bread. Not too much. Thankfully the diner filled me up. I had French Toast! The French Toast at the Dawn isn't as good as the BFD's French Toast, but it was alright.

The Diner...what a crazy place!

And as a side note, I'd like to point out that fellow blogger Stacey Gerlach was born 19 years ago as of yesterday! Everyone wish her Sappy Birch Trees! I figured she brought the blogger's attention to my birthday, and I should return the favor.

Ice Cream Day

Well folks. Today is Ice Cream day. Now you would expect to find a holiday with such a promising name to be on every calender. But why is it then, that no matter how where you look...you will be unable to find it? Well that's because I made it up. Okay, so I just made the decision to declare this a holiday, but so what? There's no law against making your own holidays! So naturally, my food palette today was based around the need to eat as much delicious ice cream as possible!

But why today? What drove me to make TODAY Ice Cream Day? Well...as fate would have it, today is also the world premiere of my new short film entitled, "Ice Cream". Ice Cream is a short film made especially for the food blog and all the bloggers that make it what it is! In other words, I was bored. That's right. I made a holiday to celebrate the release of a movie that was made for the people that the holiday effects. How's that for a mind loop?

So immediately following my blog there will be a screening of the film, which makes you bloggers the very first to lay eyes on it! I hope you all enjoy, as I spent a lot of time editing it. But of course, do not let the intense desire of watching the video drive you to skip over the actual blog! Food blogging comes first, and I plan on giving you all the gritty details of my ice cream filled day.

So I slept in very late this morning, as my body was worn out all of last night. You see, it was the last day of fencing and I went all out! Not only did I succeed in defeating my arch nemesis (15-6), but I also nearly beat my head coach (15-13), which is an incredible feat! I scored more hits on him than anyone had scored on him all semester! I was congratulated many times, and was proud. But going all out like that wore me down and I slept in.

Waking up was annoying. Just like always. That sounded very depressing, but it really is a chore having to get up and get ready for a day where you know nothing important is going to happen! First thing I did when I got out of the shower and dressed was head to brunch. I had to make up for the missed breakfast! I was headed there on my own, but ended up running into my good buddy Marcus Jerome Henderson Jamal Benjamin Bernard Bishop! I'm sure most of those middle names are made up, but he's quite the character so I'll let it slide! We headed to brunch together and spent the good portion of an hour and a half there.

Brunch: Belgian Waffle topped with...Vanilla Ice Cream!! Of course! Not the healthiest of toppings, but it's ice cream day! I also had these strange potato things that were covered in something...but whatever they were they were really good! There's no such thing as bad potatoes! For dessert, I had...an ice cream cone! Fudge Swirl. Good stuff!

After brunch, we headed back to the dorm and went across the hall to play some video games. Unfortunately, I got caught up in a Guitar Hero competition. One song. Medium difficulty. Not too bad...until they picked the song. Cult of Personality. My dear sweet Dole, I hate that song! Maybe I wouldn't hate it so much if I didn't have to hear 6 different people play it back to back! Geez!

After that we played some Rockband (which is always interesting), followed by Brawl. I was wiping the floor with them as Snake, who just might be the coolest character in the game! So we played video games....all day. Wow. That's kinda sad...but time flew! So we headed off to dinnah! This paragraph made it sound like my day sucked.

Dinner: Pasta. It's just about all they had. Disappointing. Ah well. Had a big plate of pasta and a bowl of cereal...but that was really only to prepare my body for the ice cream I was about to eat! Vanilla ice cream with chocolate sprinkles! And then after that, a Strawberry ice cream cone! Ice cream day is such a great day!

After dinner...I have no idea why...we started climbing trees! Hey, don't ask me! We went from tree to tree seeing who could climb highest on each one. I've always been good at climbing trees...probably because I'm so skinny...so there wasn't much competition. I swear I'm half monkey or something. But I did manage to cut my palm. Stigmata anyone?

Which brings me to the end of my day! And now...the moment that you've all been waiting for. The world premiere of "Ice Cream"! Sit back, turn off the lights, get a snack, and relax! Hopefully if the upload works, you'll be watching it in a matter of seconds! If not...then I apologize and I'll do what I can to fix it and get a working version of it on the blog in no time!



ADDITION: Sorry for the late blog people! I had a very difficult time getting that movie online and had to go through like 5 video hosting websites. In the end, iMovie finally managed to get it on YouTube. Yet another reason why Macs kick ass.

Earth Day

Well folks, the title says it all. Today was Earth Day. The one day of the year where people (pretend to)care about the Earth's well being! Everyone puts on yet another mask and acts like they're concerned about how screwed up our planet is, when in reality they're too busy thinking about their new cell phone or about whether or not they're gonna have any new comments on Facebook tonight. I really would have liked to see what this planet looked like before mankind screwed it over!

But whatever...this one is for you Mother Earth! We may destroy your forests, kill your animals, litter you with garbage, and destroy your ozone but by Dole you're still kickin! Thanks for being the only planet in our immediate solar system capable of supporting life! Thanks for not being closer to the Sun! And thanks for keeping the human population in check with your natural disasters! I don't know how many more people I could put up with! We love you Earth!

...But of course, leave it to American Politics to steal the limelight away from the planet. Today is also the PA Primaries or something along those lines. Which...probably means that this blog will once again turn into a political battleground. Feel free to use this post's comment section to discuss that, but just throw in a little compliment for Mother Earth as well!

I know you're all dying to find out what I did on Earth day, but I regret to announce you'll probably be disappointed. I worked. A lot. I did more work today than I ever remember doing in one day. Which is ironic seeing as I have no class on Tuesdays. Today is probably the busiest week I've had all semester...which is fitting seeing as its the last full week of classes. And to top it all off, I've got a tooth infection! I didn't even know there was a such thing as a tooth infection! It hurts to eat...but for the sake of the blog, I made sure to get at least 2 meals in me.

So I woke up this morning to find my roommate was still asleep. Nothing new. He only wakes up to text message people. And he only stops text messaging to go eat. I haven't seen him go to a class in like two weeks. I got a shower and went to lunch, since I'm not allowed to take my tooth medicine on an empty stomach.

After a quick lunch, I headed over to the "Club De Ville" to get my fix. I swear, I live there now. I've become a regular! Since I didn't think coffee would be very good for my tooth, I settled for Tea. Just as good. I sat down and worked on my English paper, and my Speech. And I continued to do so....all day!

At around 6:30, I went to dinner. The dining hall had it's Earth Day thang going on, so they turned out the lights and encouraged people not to use trays and to only use one napkin. Halfway through dinner, I guess they had enough of the no lights deal, cause they turned em back on. Proof again that if it's inconvenient to humans, it's gotta go! I headed back to my room and...worked...on...my speech. I'm tellin ya people, this isn't getting any more interesting!

Breakfast: Dreams...okay that was stupid, but I slept through breakfast. I had like 5 dreams, and all of which involved me having no money. Hmmm...interesting.

Lunch: For lunch I had a grilled cheese sandwich and mashed potatoes. Nice and soft so as not to hurt my tooth. Afterwards I had a bowl of cereal and that dirt pudding that I simply cannot pass up no matter how much it hurts my tooth!

Dinner: Once again, my food choice revolved around my tooth! Pasta with Italian Sauce. Soft foods don't hurt when you chew them! I also had these little potatoes that they made, but those hurt to eat so I didn't eat em!

And now, I'm off to go...work on my speech!! Taking speech class was the worst choice of my life. It's such a waste of time. He says the same thing every class, and since it's at 8 in the morning, it feels even more pointless than it already is!

Happy Earth Day!

I made a hit play!

After spending countless hours writing an essay on small, transparent crustaceans the night before, I was looking forward to sleeping in. Unfortunately, things didn't really pan out this way, and I ended up waking up at around 9. I put some touchups on my essay and prepped myself for the day ahead. Since I didn't have time for a proper breakfast and didn't want to waste a meal plan, I headed to the "Cybercafe" where I got some coffee, some poptarts, and something else that I don't remember what it was.

I rendezvoused with my fellow lab partners around 1 for Zoo lab. I entered the classroom to discover that for the first time in 3 weeks, it didn't smell like the beach! Instead it smelled like dead animal. Hmm...interesting. I soon discovered the source of the smell...there was a dissected cat laying out on the table in the middle of the room. Oh joy! Today we were dissecting mammals! Rats and Fetal Pigs were on the menu today. The procedure went smoothly, and thankfully we were able to get out of there quickly. I went straight to the dining hall.

There wasn't much there seeing as it was before the dinner rush, so I had to settle with what they had. Primarily Apple Jacks. Why are they called Apple Jacks?! They don't taste like Apples! Silly adults. They're so stupid.
I headed back to my dorm and started watching Rushmore, which I had just purchased not two days before. Since I've had a headache practically this entire week, I was unable to watch it until this point.

HOWEVER!
Rushmore was interrupted by my neighbors from across the hall. They invited me to go eat dinner with them by the pond. Since it was a beautiful day, the fact that I already ate seemed irrelevant, and I went with. Second dinner was far more interesting than the first one. Some guy was playing fetch with his dog, and accidentally tossed the stick into the pond. The dog didn't seem to care as it dove right into the pond to get the stick. But once the dog saw the geese, it lost interest in the lifeless branch and began chasing them in circles around the pond. It eventually grew tired of this, grabbed the stick, and swam back to shore. We all clapped for the tired pooch when he made it back. Good thing he got back on shore when he did because the swans started getting curious. Those things have sharp beaks! Like knives I tell you!

I went back to my room and tried to watch the rest of Rushmore. Halfway through the film though, I was interrupted by an unexpected guest. She stayed and talked to me and my roommate(mostly my roommate) for about an hour. Does this mean I can finish Rushmore finally? No! The fellas from across the hall came over and we all had tea time! Ha! This day keeps getting better and better. We discussed the concept of existence, and talked about the validity of time and reality. -sips tea-
As always, our intellectual conversation soon turned into some intense preparation for the zombie apocalypse. I'm telling you, it's gonna happen. And when it does, I'm gonna be ready!

This lasted for about 3 hours. By this time, it was around 1 in the morning. I was getting prepped and ready for bed, when we had yet another visitor! Arrgghhh! Kyle's friends this time. Hmm...what can I do until they leave? Oh yea! Its my night to blog! Well how convenient! They're still hanging out here at the moment, but hopefully they'll be outta here shortly so I can get to bed. Or finish Rushmore. One of the two!

Brunch: Coffee, Pop-tarts, and these crazy addicting BBQ fritos. Yea, I finally remembered. I ate it while overviewing the disembowelment of a fetal pig. All in a days work.

Dinner 1: For starters, I filled my plate with sweet corn and mashed potatoes. Yummy yummy. I finished the corn by the time I made it to the salad bar, which is record time, mark my words. I got a salad and headed back to my table. After finishing the first course, I got myself 2 bowls of Apple Jacks. Yummy yummy.

Dinner 2: A bag of Munchos, and a SOBE mango drink jawn. Good stuff!

Tea Time: For tea time today, I indulged in Red Rose tea which is a delicacy of Lancaster. Top that off with some Nutter Butter cookies, and tea time is a hit.