The Bottom Of Lake Pontchartrain

• Hard Freeze
• I Am A Kratom Head
• Food Money At Midnight
• Starbucks.com/complaints

We are possibly going to have a hard freeze tonight.

There will be no busking, as I haven't brought my gear with me.
I might have brought my gear with me had I not heard that the temperatures are going to drop like a rock thrown into Lake Pontchartrain; and there is going to be frost on the pumpkin and the acoustic guitar.

"Just fill it up with espresso, then let's go..."

I had no cash, this morning.

I had the nice gift card for Starbucks, though.

If worse came to worse, I could survive upon their bacon and cheddar melts and maybe even add a veggie juice; they even have an egg thing, which is an egg...with other things added, cooked a certain way. It is a device for turning a 17 cent egg into $1.75 also, I noticed...

The first of these 3 very cold nights when I was in Starbucks, I had struck up a semi-interesting conversation with the young light brown woman in front of me before I had remembered that, at some point that night I needed to come up with a couple cans of cat food, and a trolley ride home through the 29 degree air would be a bonus. She had wound up giving me 7 dollars, for something that had only cost 5 something off my card.

I was going out, with this on my mind, prepared to walk to Starbucks with my laptop in my pack, a 29 minute walk, but it was early. The sun was high, as it was 4:45 PM.

Harold did not meow as soon as I had stepped through the door onto the landing, which meant that he wasn't hungry enough to have posted himself underneath one of the cars in the parking lot, to keep watch for my emergence.

I don't know if he is smart enough to know whether or not I should be coming or going -which direction I should appear from. I have confused him on that matter a couple times when I didn't have food an so I sneaked past him, going through the building instead of the parking lot, so he wouldn't see me and start meowing for food that I didn't have.

I would later emerge from the lobby with the food, when he might have had reason to think that I should have been inside. How can he be coming home again, when he never went out? type of thing...

Cash Aid From Bobby

I decided to stop at Bobby's, thinking that I would, at the least, offer to pick him up something while I was out.

He gave me 5 dollars and 50 cents, understanding that the weather going to put me out of business -even though this is something that the responsible busker plans ahead for; and that I was also planning to trade coffee off my gift card for cash from people. "No, keep your coffee; you need that; all the coffee you drink, you need that; here!"

I thanked him for sparing me the discomfort of having to ask someone if I could put their coffee on my card in exchange for cash.

"There are always people who are going to be prone to suspect foul play right off the bat, given the Starbucks location of 1 Skeezer Place, New Orleans, and will think, at the very least, that I stole the card from some good citizen..."

"Yeah, you don't need all that," concurred Bobby.

So, I stepped outside, ostensibly to spend $1.25 on a trolley to Starbucks. There, I would have $4.25 left over for a can or two of cat food, and maybe a dollar cigar, and then a trolley ride back home.

But, then I paused before getting on the trolley. I decided to walk to the Uxi Duxi, where I would spend 3 of the dollars on a shot of kratom, and then would take the trolley to Starbucks, arriving there with just enough cash to ride back on..

At midnight, my food stamp card should be loaded with $137 dollars. I have 4 hours and 23 minutes to plan a meal.

Last night, I had the catfish that had been sitting in my freezer, the last guardian of that box. I picked at the potato salad that was in my refrigerator. It had been given to me on New Years Eve as a tip, on a night when I otherwise made no money and upon which the guy pointed me to the video of me playing while some kind of Travis Blaine figure speaks over me the entire time.

Travis would give the biography and discography of the artist whose music I was playing, along with, and as a sole means of framing, his own personal opinion of the artist whose music he was talking over....

Kind of funny how I diverged in yesterday's post to tear into Travis Blaine further (I'm not done with him yet; wait until the Travis Blaine comic strips that I'm planning, come out) for what I thought was mere catharsis, but listening to that video must have been what brought him to my consciousness...

But, I went no further than just picking at the salad. It might have had mayonnaise in it which was made with soybean oil.

Maybe not, though, because it came from some restaurant in the Quarter, and I can imagine restaurants in the Quarter wanting their potato salads to stand out, and might use "their own" oil, as part of their secret recipe; and it might be mayonnaise made from scratch with grape seed oil that makes theirs a winner, in the competitive world of potato salads.

But, the potato salad represented "the last thing I'll eat if I absolutely have to" this month. Half the time, I will take the opportunity to go on a fast when the road forks one way towards a cleansing detoxifying fast and the other way towards the likes of the potato salad.

I made a catfish cake.

I fried catfish nuggets; battered them to the point where they were basically swimming in batter in a flat baking pan, and then baked the thing into a cake. A catfish cake.

When it came to eating the catfish cake, though, I wound up separating out the catfish and eating it with vegetables in a more acidic environment, with mustard.

Then, I gathered up the parts that were just cake with no fish, and put butter and blueberries and plenty of brown sugar with it; and it kind of became the dessert to the fish dinner; and I didn't have to eat the potato salad.

Now, 4 hours and 17 minutes before my food stamp money is to arrive, I think I will escape having to eat the potato salad. The little bit that I picked at revealed it to be an excellent potato salad; crunchy celery; a nice grape seed essence....

Whom Do I Complain To?

I got to the Starbucks, where I am now, at the casino...

I was at the one up the street around 9 PM, or an hour before they are to close.

They seem to have the second-shaving disease that so many employees of so many places have been infected with.

They start cleaning and mopping and shutting stuff down, well before the hour of their closing rolls around; with the only purpose being to be able to leave for home a few seconds earlier than they would have, had they, for instance kept the half and half container out on the condiment table, and then had to maybe stash it real quickly (8 seconds) in the walk-in cooler before locking the place behind them.

Choose Your Starbucks Wisely

All of this to shave a few seconds off the length of their tedious shift. If any of them are ever in a car accident, say, right after they leave work -pull out when the light turns green and then get t-boned by a car that came flying out of nowhere; I wonder if it would occur to the person as they were lying in the hospital in traction that, if he of she had taken 11 seconds to fill up the wooden stirrer canister, so the morning shift wouldn't have to do it, and because he or she was supposed to, then that reckless car would have missed them. "...but those few extra seconds seemed so important; as if we were trying to break the record for getting out of there as soon after closing as possible..."

I know a similar thing is what I have thought about to this very day about my motorcycle accident back in 1986. If that girl hadn't wanted to start my motorcycle for me, the one that lived in the same rooming house as I did, and who was out front when I came out to get on my Kawasaki 500 and ride off, and who had said: "Oh, can I start it for you?"

It had misfired on her first chuck of the pedal, so I suppose the blame for my being hit head on by a car 15 miles later might lie with myself not having replaced the spark plugs recently enough so that it would have started right up; and not with the girl, and whatever satanic demon she was being controlled by that was trying to kill me.

"Can I Get Something Started For You?"

When I got to the Starbucks here at Harrah's Casino, there was no one in sight within the boutique sized place.

No problem, I had to use the restroom anyway.

Returning from the restroom and seeing the number of people who were lined up gave me an idea of just how long it had taken the 2 employees, who were now back, to run somewhere to fetch a cart laden with half gallon jugs of a white liquid, that apparently took 2 people to transport.

It was a young black girl and a black guy.

I stepped to the counter and ordered a grande red-eye.

"I can't sell a grande right now. I don't have any lids," snapped the guy, with just a hint of a tone in his voice to indicate that he might be purposely trying to be difficult. After all, I was a customer walking in an hour before they were scheduled to close.

They had cleaned a lot of the machinery. I would be willing to bet that, had I ordered some kind of "special" coffee that would have required them to mess up a machine that they had already cleaned, then that particular brew would be determined to have gone the way of the grande, which couldn't be sold for lack of lids.

"Um, could I get a grande without a lid?" I asked, trying hard to keep the "you're an idiot;" look off my face. What would be so hard about asking people, is it OK if I give it to you without a lid; we're out of grande lids? Unless...

I wondered if the diameter of the grande lid is even any different than those of the other sizes. Seems like they could eliminate a lot of confusion at the typical Starbucks by having a one lid fits all policy. The cups are certainly different heights (with the tall being the shortest).

The formulas of geometry tell us that a cup can be designed so that a taller one will hold a greater volume of liquid than a shorter one. Thus, the grande size could be dispensed out of a cup that is taller, yet has the same sized lid.

If the grande sized cup does indeed have a wider lid to it, then the only thing I can think of is that, after some marketing study, it was determined that, with a slightly wider top, the grande cup makes people feel that they are getting a more grand amount of coffee; it's even bigger around.

Perhaps the grande cup, if only made taller to hold more coffee, but with the same sized lid on top just looked too "tall and skinny;" and maybe a certain percentage of the test group actually picked that cup as being the lesser coffee. That is the only reason I could see for there being a difference in lid sizes at Starbucks.

That, and if the guy behind the counter was consciously trying to provide poor service...

"Sure," he said, snatching a grande cup from the rack, but not a lid...

"Could I get a red-eye?"

"Sure," he said, as he went over by the espresso machine.

"Did you say two shots?" he asked.

I had asked for a red-eye; no mention of a second shot. I probably would have called that a double red eye.

I think, in hindsight, that the guy was trying to "up-sell" me. There were no grande lids, so why don't I pay more for a venti? Was that 2 shots, at $1.49 each, I heard you ask for?

There was no cream or half and half at the condiment bar. They had just pushed a cart loaded with jugs of it into their cooler, but had put none out.

The girl handed a cup (tall sized) almost full of cream, which she didn't specify as being half and half or what, to another couple of customers who were also looking for cream, and the lady had the good sense to realize that she and her husband were not going to require the whole 12 ounces of heavy cream, and they passed the cup to me; sparing me from having to put in a separate request for cream from the young lady behind the counter. I was afraid of what she might have handed me "Oh, that ranch dressing look just like cream, my bad..."


So, then, after finding out that they close at 10 PM on a Thursday night, just like the one up the street where I could have saved a little money, after the young lady with the dreadlocks had informed me so at 19 minutes before that hour, I got in one last order.
I ordered "a refill."

There was a different young black guy than the grande lid guy working with the young lady.
She actually asked me if I wanted the shot of espresso added.

"Well, not if you're gonna have to fire up the espresso grinder just for one cup; I could just get a regular one..."

The young man assured me that the espresso had already been ground, and that it would be no trouble at all for them to give me another red eye.

Before I had gotten to the condiment bar, the young lady asked me if I again wanted cream.

"Yes."

She then handed me the grande cup with no lid that exuded only a slight amount of heat and was now filled with a lukewarm, light brown liquid. "I put cream in for you," she said.

They Shot The Moon!

I took a sip of the bread crust colored stuff, after having put in enough raw sugar to feel that I stood to, at least, create a nice coffee-flavored milkshake and in doing so discovered that the Starbucks staff had really shot the moon.

I was drinking off of a grande sized cup with no lid, of straight espresso. That's 20 ounces, at least.

It was buffered by the copious amount of milk fat that the dreadlocks adorned girl had added, but it was undeniably straight espresso.

She might have become confused between "add a shot of espresso" and "all espresso," in her haste to get out of there as quickly as possible, but I have had enough shots of straight espresso -usually served in something closer to a thimble in size than the cup that I had my hand wrapped around, and topped with whipped cream to combat some of its bitterness- to know that the last cup of coffee out the door of Starbucks (Oh, thank God, let's get out of here) this Thursday night was 20 ounces of straight espresso, thinly disguised as a coffee flavored milkshake by a dread locked haired girl who had probably been trying to cover her mistake by throwing a half pint of cream at it. Even if she had taken care of the tell-tale drop in the temperature that the addition of so much cream precipitated, by having popped it in the microwave for maybe 20 seconds, the flavor and the caffeine levels would have given it away.

Daniel, signing off: 11:40 PM

I don't need to consult any books on customs and traditions of people to know that, the commission of 3 errors making the same cup of coffee, is considered to be "shooting the moon," and it falls vaguely in with things such as the hat trick in hockey, and, well, the triple crown in horse racing.

They screwed my order up in 3 different ways; and maybe in ways that I don't even see the effects of yet. I mean, who knows what the long term effects of consuming 1 gram of caffeine at one time might be?