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Posted on 03/11/2023 9:15:27 AM PST by SamAdams76
This is one of my favorite weekends of the year - the weekend we get to turn the clocks ahead by an hour and thus regain the hour of sunlight that we lost back in October or whenever it was we had to move those clocks behind, thus plunging ourselves into early darkness every afternoon. It seems like whenever we do that, it starts getting colder each day. That hour of sunlight really makes a big difference, in my humble opinion.
So it is no coincidence that as we get our extra sunlight back starting on Sunday, it will start getting warmer again as the sun stays up in the sky later and later each day.
Just in time for spring and summer!
I was at the Dunkin Donuts drive-through this morning and of course, I get stuck behind somebody with a very complicated order. I’m just there for a medium hot coffee black but the stern looking woman with thick eyeglasses in front of me - in a Toyota - must have been purchasing items for her entire family back home.
I’m just sitting behind her, idling away, while bag after bag gets handed to this lady through the window, donuts, muffins, probably munchkins too. Then the drinks, four at a time, pushed into the corners of brown styrofoam trays with straws, napkins, and who knows what else, jammed in the middle. Probably sugar and creamer packets for the coffees.
She’s got her hair all tied up in a ponytail and she’s herking and jerking all over the front of the cabin, grabbing the items handed to her and then likely arranging her purchases on the floorboard of the shotgun seat so that they do not spill over when she takes tight turns on the ride home. It took forever, and then it came time to pay for it all. You can see her rustle through her purse, finding her wallet, and fishing her credit card to hand to the guy in the drive-through window. It’s a little bit windy and so when she goes to hand over her credit card, the guy does not grab it correctly so it falls to the ground.
Now the lady is trying to get out of her Toyota to grab the credit card off the ground but her driver door won’t open all the way because she's so close to the building and so the door is not open wide enough to squeeze her body out of the car. Now I attempt to come to her rescue but I’m in the same situation. I can’t get my door all the way open either because the drive through lane has us too close to the building.
The woman is now in some distress, shaking her head from left to right and generally getting herself into a frazzle. What to do? What to do? It is still a a mystery how this situation will get resolved. There are now several cars behind us in the drive-through lane and the line is so backed up that new cars coming in cannot even get to the kiosk with the speaker to place their order.
Finally, one of the DD employees, with a brown smock, come out of the back employee door, where they have their storage space crammed floor to ceiling with their supplies - brown boxes full of things like flour (to make the donuts with), sugar, plastic spoons and forks, napkins, and straws, etc., to retrieve the plastic credit card off the ground. The transaction was eventually completed and the pony-tailed lady, much calmer now, finally pulled away.
I pulled up to the window, flashed my DD app for them to scan, and then pulled away with my coffee. My transaction took all of 10 seconds as the coffee was sitting there waiting for me.
Now one of my pet peeves about Dunkin Donuts is that they apparently don’t have the ability or perhaps don’t want to spend the money, to procure tight-fitting lids that don’t drip. It seems that almost all the time, you get some dribbling of coffee running down the outside of the cardboard cup, sometimes pooling at the bottom of your cup holder and making things down there kind of sticky and gross. Fortunately, the cup holder in the front console of my car is detachable so that I can every now and then run it through my dishwasher at home and get it nice and clean.
Now that’s not the worst part of the coffee dribbling. The worst part is when you go to take a sip and you get a dribble on the shirt or the overcoat you are wearing. If you are wearing a white shirt - disaster. You are going to carry that stain for the rest of the day, no matter how much you scrub it with hot water. Those coffee stains only come out in the wash. However, most of the time I have my black overcoat on, which is in a way worse, because you cannot see the stains. But just because you can’t see the stain, doesn’t mean it’s not there. I could have over a hundred coffee stains on my black, wool, overcoat and not even know it. Which to me is even more disgusting then having a visible stain on a white shirt that you can see.
So I am going to have to take my overcoat to the dry cleaners to have it cleaned thoroughly but first, the weather has to get warmer so that I won’t need to wear it for a while. Maybe in April? Now that our days are about to get longer, won’t be long now where I don’t need to wear my overcoat anymore. At least not until we change the clocks back in October when it gets darker and colder again.
First world problems, they’ll all go away as we descend into the third world.
Sam,
You’re on a roll...
I’m still laughing about numerous professional (and, decidedly unprofessional) commutes on Metro North...
A fine weekend to you and yours.
Hey, I noticed that too. Right around the beginning of November, wasn't it? Dare I suggest that Daylight Savings Time causes climate change? Prove it isn't true!
oh the vanity.
Who put the "straw" in "strawberry"?
Who put the "ape" in "apricot"?
Who put the "freak" in "french fries"?
Funny
I’m in Arizona and I feel cheated.
You AND others can smell the coffee stains on both your shirt and your overcoat!
That is why I go to Shipley. Their cup-covers are tight! ;-)
I’ve taken to calling Standard Time, “Daylight Wasting Time.”
Hey, isn’t that the opposite of “Daylight Savings Time?”
"Daylight Wasting Time"
That's a good title for a country song. Maybe Morgan Wallen can put some lyrics to it.
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