Sometimes in the mornings I stop and get a cup of coffee before heading off to work; it holds me over until I can get a pot started once I get there.
Other days I get my caffeine from a diet cola; depends on my mood and the weather. At the vending machine where I get the soda there’s a button customers can push to add a blast of vanilla or cherry flavoring. It’s a nice touch, and now and then it brings back memories of my misspent youth.
Wa-a-a-ay back in the day, before e-mail, microwaves and cell phones — even back before diet soda was marketed as much as it is today — it was an after-school treat to walk up to a local hangout and get a Coke to drink before catching the school bus home. Sometimes we’d get a cherry Coke. But my favorite was a chocolate Coke. A chocolate Coke is pretty much a Coke with a squirt or two of Hershey’s syrup in it. It tastes better than it sounds. I think they’re pretty darned good.
I suppose in some places it’s possible still to get a chocolate Coke, but I don’t know because I’ve been drinking diet sodas for so long now that regular sodas taste too sweet so I don’t drink Cokes. I know it’s been possible to buy bottled and canned cherry Cokes, lime and vanilla Cokes, even cherry and vanilla Dr Peppers, which also offered a chocolate-cherry Dr Pepper for a limited time a few years back. But Coke and Pepsi have apparently never considered adding chocolate to their offerings. They really should.
If they did I wonder if they’d consider adding chocolate to their diet colas. I’ve seen lime, cherry and lemon in diet sodas, so why not chocolate?
Apparently, some folks can’t comprehend that. There’s a certain national hamburger chain that indicates on its drive-through menu board, that customers can add cherry, lemon, vanilla or chocolate flavorings to their drinks. I won’t give the chain any free advertising, but it uses a black and white checkerboard as part of its décor. So one day while I was ordering lunch at the drive through the thought occurred to me: “chocolate diet Coke. Gotta have one.”
So I ordered one. Silence. Then “Uh, we can’t do that.”
Me: Why not?
Clueless kid at the mic: “We don’t do those.”
Me: Yes you do. It says so right here on the menu board.
Believe it or not, this kid had to ask his manager if he could make a chocolate diet Coke. Apparently the manager reminded him that as a customer, I am right and I got my chocolate diet Coke.
Maybe it was the notion of diet and chocolate that threw the kid off his bearings. Some folks think the two don’t belong together. They’re wrong. Maybe he thought it was against corporate policy to do something original. Or maybe he was just too young to appreciate the adventure of adding chocolate to any kind of Coke. Doesn’t matter. I had totally flummoxed the poor thing.
And it was so much fun I came back a few weeks later and did it again!
Monday, March 16, 2009
Monday, March 9, 2009
TV Without Pity – or Guilt?
My television died over the weekend.
I knew it was going to happen sometime. It’s an old set and had served me well, but the picture was getting wavy and I knew that was probably a sign that I’ll be shopping for a new one.
Saturday I fell asleep in front of it, and when I woke up the screen was blank, which sometimes happens with a satellite dish. But this time it didn’t respond to the usual resuscitation the remote control brings.
I thought maybe it’s that stupid time change, and all the stations go blank to account for the so-called extra hour. Nope. It was DOEC (Dead On Entertainment Center).
What amazed me was how much I miss it. Although I’m hooked on Desperate Housewives and I keep up with local news, there isn’t much commercial television I like. I love PBS and I do like the cable stations. But I’m not one of those people who are hooked on TV. Not me!
I was not prepared for the feeling I had of being totally disoriented without the boob tube blaring. When I’m getting ready for work in the morning I can tell time without looking at the clock because I know what time it is by what’s emanating from the idiot box. I eat lunch with the local news, and by the time I’m ready for dinner, I’m flipping channels because, contrary to the title of the program, everybody does not love Raymond.
I say that I keep it on for “white noise,” but Sunday I got my white noise from the radio and it didn’t quite seem right. Am I hooked on TV? Oh surely not!
So I went on line looking for signs of TV addiction and to see if I need a 12-step program. What I found instead was a site called (with apologies to the late Gene Pitney), TV Without Pity. It’s a web/blog site that gives synopses of the goings on of recently-aired programs. I could feel my shoulders relaxing and my breathing slow down as I clicked on Desperate Housewives. Once I was caught up with the goings on at Wisteria Lane, I looked at other offerings. Dirty Sexy Money? That show was cancelled, but I liked it and missed the last few episodes. I can find out how that ended!
As I perused the site I could see that I’d be back to visit it. There’s a page on it that gives rundowns of shows long gone; I can revisit some old memories.
Oh, no. I’m not hooked on TV. Or the Internet. Or any other way to waste time. Is it TV Without Pity; or TV Without Guilt? I’ll figure that out once I get a new TV and things get back to normal.
I knew it was going to happen sometime. It’s an old set and had served me well, but the picture was getting wavy and I knew that was probably a sign that I’ll be shopping for a new one.
Saturday I fell asleep in front of it, and when I woke up the screen was blank, which sometimes happens with a satellite dish. But this time it didn’t respond to the usual resuscitation the remote control brings.
I thought maybe it’s that stupid time change, and all the stations go blank to account for the so-called extra hour. Nope. It was DOEC (Dead On Entertainment Center).
What amazed me was how much I miss it. Although I’m hooked on Desperate Housewives and I keep up with local news, there isn’t much commercial television I like. I love PBS and I do like the cable stations. But I’m not one of those people who are hooked on TV. Not me!
I was not prepared for the feeling I had of being totally disoriented without the boob tube blaring. When I’m getting ready for work in the morning I can tell time without looking at the clock because I know what time it is by what’s emanating from the idiot box. I eat lunch with the local news, and by the time I’m ready for dinner, I’m flipping channels because, contrary to the title of the program, everybody does not love Raymond.
I say that I keep it on for “white noise,” but Sunday I got my white noise from the radio and it didn’t quite seem right. Am I hooked on TV? Oh surely not!
So I went on line looking for signs of TV addiction and to see if I need a 12-step program. What I found instead was a site called (with apologies to the late Gene Pitney), TV Without Pity. It’s a web/blog site that gives synopses of the goings on of recently-aired programs. I could feel my shoulders relaxing and my breathing slow down as I clicked on Desperate Housewives. Once I was caught up with the goings on at Wisteria Lane, I looked at other offerings. Dirty Sexy Money? That show was cancelled, but I liked it and missed the last few episodes. I can find out how that ended!
As I perused the site I could see that I’d be back to visit it. There’s a page on it that gives rundowns of shows long gone; I can revisit some old memories.
Oh, no. I’m not hooked on TV. Or the Internet. Or any other way to waste time. Is it TV Without Pity; or TV Without Guilt? I’ll figure that out once I get a new TV and things get back to normal.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
Just another dumb government thing
Just a few more days left, and then we trade sensible standard time for daylight saving time. What a dumb thing to do.
Only Congress could show that it has a firm grasp of the obvious and mandate that clocks move forward an hour at a time when days are getting longer anyway.
Daylight saving time did indeed come from the government but it started during World War I supposedly to save energy costs. After the war was over the country went back to normal time and stayed there until World War II, for the same reason.
Did someone start World War III and forget to mention it? Why are we springing forward again? The time ain’t broke; don’t fix it. But we are talking about Congress here.....
DST is being pushed on the country because someone believes it saves energy. Studies have shown that having Indiana switch to DST would cost households in that state about $8.6 million in electricity bills each year. The reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during DST was offset by higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings. Just where is that savings, again?
It used to be that daylight saving time ended before Halloween, so it was moved up to accommodate candy-begging children who should be at home doing their homework, not out looking for a sugar high and contemplating vandalism if they don’t get the candy they want.
Some contend that auto accidents are reduced when DST is in effect. Maybe that means it’s lighter out and drivers can more easily see their cell phones to send text messages and aren’t so inclined to cause an accident.
Not that I’m condoning this, just throwing it out for consideration — patrons of bars that stay open past 2 a.m. lose an hour of drinking time and get really cranky. You know how mean some drunks can get.
Passenger trains have to stand still on the tracks for an hour to adjust their schedules for the time change.
Time change makes no difference for farmers; cows need to be milked at the same time each day, and chickens need to be fed. Chickens, cows and other livestock don’t care about saving daylight; they have their own schedules. And they make more sense.
This is just a little something to think about when you’re resetting all your clocks, the VCR, telephones, cell phones, automatic sprinkler timers, computer monitors, and the automatic coffee maker. And when the alarm goes off and you sleepily — and grumpily — realize that although the clock says it’s 7 a.m., it’s really 6 a.m., and you’d rather be sleeping that extra hour. You can, and you probably will, go to sleep an hour earlier at night, but then what would be the point of messing around with the time in the first place?
Brought to you by the same government that brought you those interesting bailout situations we’re all paying for.
Only Congress could show that it has a firm grasp of the obvious and mandate that clocks move forward an hour at a time when days are getting longer anyway.
Daylight saving time did indeed come from the government but it started during World War I supposedly to save energy costs. After the war was over the country went back to normal time and stayed there until World War II, for the same reason.
Did someone start World War III and forget to mention it? Why are we springing forward again? The time ain’t broke; don’t fix it. But we are talking about Congress here.....
DST is being pushed on the country because someone believes it saves energy. Studies have shown that having Indiana switch to DST would cost households in that state about $8.6 million in electricity bills each year. The reduced cost of lighting in afternoons during DST was offset by higher air-conditioning costs on hot afternoons and increased heating costs on cool mornings. Just where is that savings, again?
It used to be that daylight saving time ended before Halloween, so it was moved up to accommodate candy-begging children who should be at home doing their homework, not out looking for a sugar high and contemplating vandalism if they don’t get the candy they want.
Some contend that auto accidents are reduced when DST is in effect. Maybe that means it’s lighter out and drivers can more easily see their cell phones to send text messages and aren’t so inclined to cause an accident.
Not that I’m condoning this, just throwing it out for consideration — patrons of bars that stay open past 2 a.m. lose an hour of drinking time and get really cranky. You know how mean some drunks can get.
Passenger trains have to stand still on the tracks for an hour to adjust their schedules for the time change.
Time change makes no difference for farmers; cows need to be milked at the same time each day, and chickens need to be fed. Chickens, cows and other livestock don’t care about saving daylight; they have their own schedules. And they make more sense.
This is just a little something to think about when you’re resetting all your clocks, the VCR, telephones, cell phones, automatic sprinkler timers, computer monitors, and the automatic coffee maker. And when the alarm goes off and you sleepily — and grumpily — realize that although the clock says it’s 7 a.m., it’s really 6 a.m., and you’d rather be sleeping that extra hour. You can, and you probably will, go to sleep an hour earlier at night, but then what would be the point of messing around with the time in the first place?
Brought to you by the same government that brought you those interesting bailout situations we’re all paying for.
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