Joelyssa

I am getting married!

McGriddles, Hash Browns, and OJ: A Foray into the Seedy Underbelly of My Breakfasts

Yeah, I know that this is my second entry on food in a row, but I feel that I must mention my other work-related indulgence: fast food breakfasts. Like my cookie fix, I withheld from giving in for quite a long time. The problem is, once the precedence is set, I am like an uncaged beast.

Drawbacks: Fast food breakfasts are unhealthy. They are greasy and make you fat. They leave a greasy aftertaste in your mouth for the rest of the day. Also, eating everyday costs money.

Benefits: They are so good! The Hash Browns are maybe the best-- I always eat them first. And actually, fast food breakfasts are generally cheaper than fast food lunches.



Cost: Medium
Premier Item: I always go for the McGriddle--it is a syrupy, bacon, egg, and cheese monster. It takes some gettin' used to, but it is a sweet and savory sensation.
Hash Browns: Triangle
Drink: I always get OJ, and theirs is more expensive because it is from the soda fountain. On the other hand, they give you more OJ.



Cost: High
Premier Food: It's not as obvious as the McGriddle, but I like their biscuit sandwiches. BK seems to fill me up the most.
Hash Browns: Pellet form.
Drink: The OJ comes in a small Minute Maid carton.



Cost: Low
Premier Food: It's all about the same. Nothing stands out to me.
Hash Brown: Tater Tot form.
Drink: They also rock the snall Minute Maid carton.

I have also tried Burgerville, but they are too expensive, and take longer, plus I didn't think they brought anything too special to the table.

So, yeah. Cookies and fast food breakfasts. That's what I shove down my pie hole when I work.

If you give a Joel a Cookie OR What Do I Want--a Cookie?

At work about twice a week I stop by the office for a group of condominiums. They always have a plate of cookies out and they are so delicious. Here is the evolution of my relationship with the cookies:

1. I would notice the plate of cookies and look longingly at them for a brief few seconds, and then move on.

2. After a few months or so, If none of the employees were around, I would sneak a cookie and hide it in the palm of my hand and then devour it ravenously when I returned to the van.

3. After I got back from school this time and returned to this job, I reasoned that it was pretty immature of me to take cookies so I decided not do it anymore.

4. One day, out of nowhere, one of the employees ASKED me if I wanted a cookie!

5. This same employee started to suggest it every time I came in. I felt like I had turned a page in my life. It was wonderful. I would look forward to it all day.

6. Sometimes I would joke that I would get fat. Sometimes I would forgo one, self-conscious that I might lose some goodwill.

7. Months go by. Just the other day, for the first time, I realized that I was so confident in taking a cookie without even being prompted that I no longer just wanted one cookie, but that I clearly needed--no, deserved-- TWO cookies.

8. To pull off the double-cookie coup I wanted the same conditions that I wanted so long ago: namely, no employees around.

9. As I mulled this around in my head on Friday, I went in, and analyzed the situation: the coast was clear. I did my business, swung by the plate, swiped two cookies and continued walking out like I owned the place. Back in the van, I snickered in fiendish delight, wallowing in self-crapulence.


And thus we see the slow descent that comes upon me when you dangle a delicious morsel in front of me. What placates me now will be a pittance later. What will I try next? Three cookies? Four? The whole plate?

I Would Like Last Week Back In the Form of Cash

Now that it is Wednesday, this marks a full week of a monster fever/flu/thing. I have had a pulsating headache, a nose full of gelatinous snot, a throat with razor sharp edges, and a canker sore at the end of my tongue to top it off.

I'm not the type of person who asks "why me?" in these types of situations. Wait, scratch that. I am exactly the type of person to ask that. So if anyone has the answer, please tell me.

A Welter of Multifarious Consanguinity

Things that bothered me today, and today only (and ultimately really within the last hour):

1. I have a headache.
2. My right contact lens is on the fritz.
3. I took a nap and was awakened to booming music from the neighbors. Probably contributed to my headache.
4. I left my backpack in my car last night and went out to get it in my socks but of course that got my socks all wet. Yeah, I know, I deserve it, but it was annoying.
5. Before I went out to to my car I walked all the way downstairs then realized I needed my keys so I had to trudge all the way back up.

That is all.

Ghost of Christmas Future, I Fear You More Than Any Other

'Twas the night before Christmas, and I've got some blogging to do.  In the tradition of my old journals (which these blogs are a spritual spinoff of sorts) I now write my annual CHRISTMAS EVE entry.  

Christmas is the apex of the year, replete with holiday cheer, togetherness, and tradition.  Of course, it is the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ, but that never stopped us from some good ol' fashioned capitalistic indulgence.  I mean, Jesus got gifts, right?  Same thing.

One of my favorite traditions for the last five or so years is the seminal adaption of Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Scrooge.  I watch it every year and it always gets me out of my humbug "why  do they play Christmas songs so frickin' early" attitude and into the Christmas spirit.  

Scrooge is a detestable, loathsome creature...

Sometimes I in my most misanthropic moments, I remember Scrooge.  People can be really mean sometimes.

Everyone knows that Scrooge is visited by three spirits.  The first is the Ghost of Christmas Past:

My Christmas pasts have all been excellent.  I may be accused of selfishness or lightheartedness but I was pretty spoiled.  

Then, the Ghost of Christmas Present:

I love this guy.  And I like life!  This has been a great, if not rather snowbound Christmas.

Then the foreboding Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come:

This is the great variable.  What will my next Christmas look like?  What about in five years?  Ten?  Fifty?  Now I sound like some job interviewer.  

It doesn't really matter what my life will be like, Christmas is always the same.  I get to be with my family, and I get to enjoy life and give thanks for the babe born in Bethlehem.

Merry Christmas!  God bless us, every one!

Back from Deblogification

Night falls over the metaphorical world of this blog.  A hush trickles across the barren plain which is the repressed id.  Shaking free from the tentacles of dark, mysterious thoughts I pull myself towards a blurry light.  What is it, I wonder?  Lo,  it is the superficial superego which this megalomaniacal society forces upon me.  I momentarily unloose the brambles tying me to my deepest thoughts to sample the tepid waters of common thought.

For but a season I scamper about in this seeming wonderland.  I forsake the blogging roots which sustain me and try to go it alone.  The desire to rant, vent, or explicate I squelch, neglecting my most basic needs.  In my moments of deepest anguish I turn to apathy and complacency.  

Soon the ambivalency and lightmindedness of it all literally buoys me up and I float in the atmosphere.  While I hang high above in the haze, I realize I need some heaviness.  Some weight. Some are meant to live a life of ignorance and non-examination, but that is not the course for me.  I must return to my melancholy and semi-depressing blog!  For I have made a pledge!

From the frigid North I feel an ARCTIC BLAST of wind approaching.  Gusts envelope me and buffet me amongst the clouds.  I crystallize in the intense freeze and freefall to the earth in a familar hexagonal form.  Around me I see millions like me also parachuting to the firm ground.

For days I lay in a massive drift which blankets the landscape in a pristine white.  I find myself completely immobilized--nowhere to go.  How long will this last?  When will I be ready to return to the mire of the life I once knew?  

The sun breaks through the clouds at long last.  Slender rays pierce my sides and I disperse into water.  Rivulets form streams and I find the cycle returning me back finally to the briar pit which I so foolishly left.

As I ponder on this singular experience, the thought occurs to me that a cycle which perpetuates life on this earth--namely, the precipitation cycle-- mirrors a cycle that I have with my innermost self.  To wit,  I start off in the pit of intense self scrutiny.  I constantly wax philosophical and live life to the fullest (in my unique way), questioning everything.  Then the heat of artificiality, possessions, and gratification causes me to evaporate and I no longer think as deeply.  At the worst point, I become a slave to pleasure and I cast off my brain.  I then reach a barrier where I no longer can keep up the facade, whereupon I condense back into liquid and fall back where I was.  

To speak more plainly, I stopped writing posts for about a month.  Was it a formal self-imposed period of blogging detoxification?  No, not really.  Did I just start moving away from writing and didn't really feel like probing my mind and started worrying about other things?  Yes.

But I'm back.  Screw those other things.