Starbuckies!

You probably can't read it - but this is the beer/wine menu (!) at Starbucks here in Portland.  Is Starbuckies going to roll out beer and wine service to the rest of the country???   Because I’d just like to select the geography of my next consulting gig based on their roll-out schedule.  Seriously….coffee, beer, wine & rice krispie treats all in one location?  ~Heaven~  It’s as if I am a focus group of 1 for SB.  50% of my restaurant budget already goes to SB, but I may as well start signing over the other half of my paycheck right now.  Honestly, I may never need to set foot in another retail establishment again.  If they add bbq chips to the menu, I’ll just move in. 

And speaking of retail – I am MUCH more likely to buy that $13 tin of hot cocoa after a couple Venti Miller Lites.  Actually, we found out the hard way that the Pinot does not come in Venti size after all (not yet anyway…give the SB bean counters another year and we’ll be able to get that whole wine bottle in a SB sippy cup). 

Now you will never QUITE know what’s in that starbuckies coffee cup I’m carrying around, will you?

Leave it to Starbuckies though, now you have to stand in line behind a person ordering a half-dry, extra cold, double tall, skinny vanilla latte AND a person ordering an undecanted, medium toast, low brix older vintage.  Wait – is that Blondie in front of me???

My only concern?  If a cup of coffee costs $3.95 at Starbuckies…how much does something with alcohol in it cost??? 

Peanuts Schmeanuts

There’s something about flying cross country that brings out the hoarding, binging crazy in me.  Subconsciously, ….I think I'm really afraid a wayward hunger pang will hit at the 3 hour mark of a 6-hr flight (with no access to additional provisions) and madness will result.  Which is weird since I routinely go without eating for 6 hours at work (the approximate duration of my staff meetings).  But there’s something about being trapped for hours without food that causes my complete panic….that I might end up like that soccer team stranded and starving in the Andes after their plane crashed (although I'm pretty sure cannibalism didn't set in at the six hour mark).  Or at the very minimum, that I’ll end up in a hunger-inspired peanut-and-pretzel-related TSA event. 

So better to be safe than sorry, I say, by buying stupid amounts of pre-travel provisions.  Besides….the sucky-travel-schlep factor burns MASSIVE calories – RIGHT??   (Or is that why they call it comfort food??)  Honest to god….I buy more at the Paradies shop of the San Diego airport than I EVER have at a grocery store.  On Monday I spent $50 at the airport before my flight left.  $50!!  Here’s what $50 buys you at an airport:

$5.50     Starbucks (first things first, afterall)

$5.50     3 newspapers (maybe ONE of them will cover the Titans)

$9.89     Blimpie sandwich (where’s the $5 footlong when you need it??)
$7.75     Back to the newsstand for two protein bars (but not the good kind that taste like a candy bar so you eat them right away – the real protein bars that you ONLY eat in a real, real emergency.  Like just before you go all stranded-Andes-soccer-player on someone.)

$8.00     Another trip to the newsstand for a pack of Hall’s and the ibuprofen travel pack (I may not have a cold right now, but I am sure I will by the time I land) 

$4.00     before I leave the newsstand this time, I better get a bag of chips to go with my Blimpie (I mean I’m entitled to a side item at lunch, right?)   Make that $6.50 so I can get a Rice Krispie Treat as a….well…a TREAT (because I’m going to spend all day on a freakin’ plane and I deserve a little treat – dammit)

$5.00     I’m sure I dropped at LEAST a fiver along the way (my offering to the airport gods)

$6.05     In change at the bottom of my briefcase

By the end of my little shopping spree, my newsstand shopping bag is the same size as my suitcase, I’ve undertaken a personal airport stimulus and I’ve individually assumed all of Angelina Jolie’s carb-offsets.  In fact, on MORE than 1 occasion – I have purchased a sandwich before departure only to cart it across the country, onward to the waiting taxi and into the fridge at home before Rita throws it away as part of salmonella prevention month.  (Like airport food could ever really go BAD!)

And god forbid I’m RUSHED at the airport.  Tonight I only had 9 minutes to get all my provisions.  What a scene - like that episode of Laverne & Shirley where they have 30 seconds to grab everything they can in a grocery store give-away.  Not.  Pretty.  When I finally got on the plane, my hastily-assembled stash included a Russian language newspaper, a family-sized bag of Ruffles and a gyro that I don’t even remember buying.  (When was the last time I ate a GYRO?  The 1996 Fall Festival??)   

Well, all this typing is making me hungry (or is it the guy sitting next to me who smells like Greek food), so I better go.