OK, I was working on stealing the year-end wrap up that Boozie posted, but I got tired and went out for coffee. Before I left, I had no good blog stories, and by the time I returned to work, a solid 40 minutes later, I had no choice but to write this all down.

So I go to Peet’s and this guy with really bad hair JUMPS out of an illegally parked car and DASHES past me into the coffeeshop. He looked like Bono plus 25 pounds and with worse bone structure. We’re at the counter and, while I am very obviously waiting behind him, he chats it up with the cashier about his ski weekend and Waterville Valley and New Year’s plans and the weather while I ponder how many ways I could kill him using only his cheesy sunglasses. Finally, he notices he’s not the only one waiting for caffeine and gets round to ordering, doing so in that annoying way rich people have, where everything sounds so fancy and difficult even though it’s just fucking coffee. He gets a medium regular in a large cup, a medium decaf in a large cup and a “vanilla steamed milk – for the kid”.

I hate people who drink decaf. And order steamed milk for their kid.

Then by the time I put *my* order in, everyone seemed to have forgotten that they worked in a coffeeshop, because they were all standing around and talking while my order sat up on the screen like so much bad news. I think I might have fallen over and died before someone finally took pity on me and made my latte.

I was also starving, so I decided to pop into whole foods and scavenge for free samples. Ever since Christmas, whole foods has really been outdoing itself on the “free samples” front – yesterday they had shrimp cocktail and some lady tossing flank steak around on a skillet. Today there was guacamole and chips, the obligatory cheese display, honeydew melon, gingerbread bundt cake, and about a thousand senile old women on cell phones. Trying to get through that store with my two green apples and handful of crackers was like trying to dig through the Great Wall of China with an oil-covered toothbrush and a spade. Everyone was flailing around with their grocery carts, peering down aisles in confusion, gazing with rapt awe at the seafood counter (they just got crabs from alaska or some crap), or generally bumbling around and not paying attention to anything at all. I finally made it around to the frozen foods section and hit up the last display (robbiola due latti with blueberry jam) when this wizened old crone jams in next to me and croaks “WHAT IS THAT”.

“it’s cheese” i answer, wanting only to eat my free food and get the hell out of there.

“BUT WHAT KIND?” she persists, gesturing angrily at the offending sample.

I probably should have been polite, but instead I just walked away. I mean, the cheese was CLEARLY LABELED. DO YOURSELF A FAVOR. BE SELF-RELIANT. READ THE CHEESE.

At the registers, there was the usual cadre of seniors counting out eleven cents in pennies for their jug of skim milk and lone banana, shrieking for everything to be double-bagged, then shuffling out of the store just as slowly as they please, and in the lot two cars vying for the same parking space had an all out brawl involving much honking and gesturing.

I think that a good bitter rant is, at this point, more fitting than a year-end wrap-up, don’t you?