So—how’s it going? Yes, it smells like smoke in our neighborhood and air quality has been very bad, which is why we were indoors for most of the weekend, except for one sojourn out to a canyon to do some hiking—something we’ve been meaning to do for several years but never gotten around to, and since it’s ten minutes from our place, we figured “what the heck?”
The point of this story is coming, I promise. On the way to the canyon, we stopped at 7-Eleven to get some bottles of water, and because I decided that I hadn’t had enough coffee yet, and since it was still before noon, I wandered over to the coffee station, which I swear used to be a pot of regular coffee and a pot of burned decaf with an orange handle that looked like it hadn’t been changed in a week. And, I’m not just talking about one 7-Eleven here—I’m talking about every 7-Eleven I’ve ever been in since I was a kid.
Anyhow, as it turns out, there’s no such thing as “regular coffee” or even “half decaf/ half regular” coffee at 7-Eleven anymore, or rather, there is now so much choice over there at the 7-Eleven now, you barely know where to begin. Flavored coffee (don’t even get me started—so gross), green tea, and, the thing I found most hilarious of all—apparently America is not quite over-caffeinated enough, because now instead of just regular, maybe strong coffee, 7-11 has like, four different kinds of super, SUPER strong coffee. When I later told Stephan about the unnecessarily huge variety of coffees in 7-Eleven now, he said "wow-- I had no idea all that was going on in there. That kind of freaks me out."
Now I’ll take a moment to say the following. If you need “fusion energy” coffee that’s also infused with ginseng, guarana, and yerba mate, you might actually want to see a physician about your narcolepsy problem. Also, I don’t even want to think about the pooping that’s going to go on after someone drinks this coffee. There are no bathrooms in 7-Eleven, ok?
That’s not even the most awesome part, though. In addition to the “fusion energy” variety of coffee, 7-Eleven also has “extra bold” coffee, AND if that’s not enough, they also have a little bucket of what looks like creamer, until you realized it’s EXTRA SHOTS OF CAFFEINE for your already ludicrously caffeinated super Franken coffee. The extra shots are 40 mg apiece, and there’s a WARNING on them that says “don’t use more than two of these per day!” like you’re actually thinking clearly if you’re grabbing some of those bad boys and adding them to your coffee.
While I was in line waiting to pay for the small cup of innocuous half-caf I managed to finally procure for myself, I noticed that the guy in back of me (who, incidentally, had painted black nails, a pockmarked face, and dyed black hair) was holding a really large cup of what I can only assume was FUSION ENERGY COFFEE, and in his other hand—three of those 40 mg caffeine shots.
A few minutes later the same guy sped FULL SPEED past us on Barrington and turned into an apartment building. I think you can guess why he was in such a hurry.
