Icey You Baby! Washin' Those Hands!

So I was in Kmart the other day eating dinner at the Little Caesars in there and studying for my history final. My friend Beth works there so I got one hell of a discount on a large soda and a large order of cheesy bread. I think it was just over $4 if I'm not mistaken. I owe you one, Beth.

Anyway, so after I ordered my food, I turned around from the register and walked down the aisle immediately behind me. I walked past the soda machine to my right and 2 tables on my left before I sat at the third table, facing the register so I could still see Beth but I was far enough away to probably not bother her. There was a mother and a daughter sitting at the second table in the aisle, the mother facing me and the daughter facing the register. The daughter was really short so every time I looked up, there was a good chance I'd make eye contact with her mom if the daughter was at all leaning to the side or forwards. It was kind of awkward when we would make eye contact. I felt like she thought I was checking her or her daughter out. She seemed almost creeped out.

In any case, there I was thoroughly enjoying my cheesy bread, drinking my Diet Coke, when this whale of a woman with an oxygen tank (bad blowhole?), wheeled up in an electric wheelchair because whales, after all, can't walk on their own. She must've consumed all of the plankton in the ocean, because obviously she was getting food at Little Caesars. She ordered a pizza and a soda with her friend (who was probably secretly a dolphin), and went over to the soda machine to fill up their cups.

Now I was watching them the entire time because I didn't want to get grease on the flash cards I was using, so I figured I might as well stare at them. Whatever. Anwyay, after they filled their cups, Shamu was like, "Hang on, I just want to get some ice," which puzzled me, because she no longer had her cup. She lunged forward a little to better reach the ice button then put her other hand under where the ice came out, which kind of grossed me out because she touched the rim of where the ice came out. Who nows what she touched? Apparently I wasn't the only one concerned with that. She then took the ice that was dispensed and began to commence wriggling them through her fingers, using them like a bar of soap, letting her dirty finger debris fall saturated into the drip tray. I wanted to puke.

Now, for those of you who don't know me, when caught off guard, I wear my emotions on my face pretty badly. I was caught off guard, to say the least. My jaw dropped, my eyes widened with a look of disbelief, and I'm sure a few wrinkles appeared in my forehead. So I looked away and I made direct eye contact with the mother for what felt like an eternity. I had enough time to think the following to myself,

"I can't believe that lady just did that!
I that lady must be grossed out too!
That lady doesn't appear to be as grossed out.
I don't think she saw it at all.
Oh my god, I'm making a face a her."

It was pretty horrible. I looked away as soon as I realized this. I didn't look up after that until she left. After she left, my friend Beth decided she'd be awesome and stack the pizza boxes she finished folding, as high as they'd go. She failed. I had to get out my phone for that one:

The PERFECT Thermos (Illustrated Blog! Kind of, anyway)

Ok, for YEARS now, at least 3, I've wanted to buy a nice coffee thermos. Honest to God, I would walk by them in the store and stop and look at them. I'd pick them up, turn them around and look at the sides, the handle, the lid, and other stuff like that. Now, I don't drink coffee. I actually really think it's pretty disgusting. It smells GREAT... but kind of tastes like dirt.

It all started when I worked at Auntie Anne's in the summer of 2005. It was there that I first really made an attempt to be addicted to coffee. Call me crazy, but I definitely thought it was cool to drink coffee back then. Everyone else in high school was downing liquor like it was going out of style. I wanted to drink coffee... I must've been sooo popular in high school.

Needless to say, the coffee thing didn't work out for me. I couldn't really get past the taste, no matter how many packets of sugar or creamers I put in it. Plus, I feel like that when people look at other people drinking any kind of hot beverage, they think to themselves, "Wow, look at that person drinking that coffee or whatever. He looks pretty cool!" I've come to realize that makes as much sense as the theory that smoking makes you look cool. But honestly, if anything in the entire world were going to actually have an effect on your level of "coolness", it'd be coffee.

So why do I want a coffee thermos, you might ask? Well, it's very simple. I like hot chocolate, and there's no rule that says I can't drink hot chocolate out of a damn coffee thermos. So after 3 years of contemplating coffee, I've decided that I will most likely always be a hot chocolate fan. I have hot chocolate pockets and stuff at home, sure, but I don't have anything substantial to drink it out of. I have a tiny coffee mug I got at Universal Studios that has "Phil" on the side of it. It's kinds dorky (which normally I'd love), but it's also really tiny. I always use 2 packets of the hot chocolate mix instead of 2, and it's difficult to mix 2 packets of the stuff with the water in a mug that's that tiny.

On a recent trip to the Borders Cafe', however, I found exactly what I was looking for. THE PERFECT THERMOS! Now before you go off and say "Duh Phil! Check the fucking coffee place for a coffee thermos!"... I did. Quite a few times. I didn't really like what I saw much before that. It had to be seriously perfect. In retrospect, it was probably there the whole time, I just had to fall in love with it, which I did.

Anyway, the whole thermos thing didn't work out as well as I had liked. Since the thermos was substantially bigger than my coffee mug, I figured I would add a third packet of sugar. I realized the next morning, however, that that was a terrible idea. I got SO sick, it was ridiculous. Never again, will I add 3 packets of anything to anything.