Starbonics

A decade or so ago when the Starbucks bandwagon first rolled into town, it was of no consequence to me. Sure, I like the way roasting French vanilla coffee beans smell late at night (who doesn't?), and the stuff certainly isn't as vile as tea, but the long and short of it is, I am not a coffee drinker. I'll try some of B's every now and again to make sure that I still don't like it.


It goes something like this:
*Sip*.
Yup, still don't like it.

This and my vanilla ice cream preference are probably two of my parents’ greatest disappointments. (Heh, well, top three anyway).

ANYway, so there's this drive-through Starbucks by my former place of employment, and even as a non-coffee drinker I somehow managed to frequent that window on a near daily basis since everyone I worked/lunched with was clearly fascinated and/or addicted. As merely a coffee voyeur, I never really "got" the fascination. We'd hit the drive-through on the way into work, on the way back to the office from lunch, and sometimes even on the way to lunch *cough* EtNed *cough* as well. People from near and far had heard of this rare and highly sought after service; -~~the Starbucks Drive-Through~~-, and they'd talk about it with remarkable frequency.

I tried Starbuxian hot chocolate once, but didn't like it (I'm very picky about hot beverages, ok?!) so I was always just along for the ride. No, no thanks, none for me. Yes, really. I don't like coffee. *Blush*.

On occasion, someone would exclaim, "What?! How could you not like coffee?!" much in the manner my high school friends used to teasingly say "What?! What do you mean you've never seen "Heathers?!" or "What?! You're not really going to smoke that, are you?!". I'm very much certain I've been quite clear about all of those concepts.

It later came to my attention that, if you had the cohones, you could ask for your Starbucks beverage in a plethora of different ways, none of which indicated on their sparse menu. And this didn't apply to just coffee! From here, it wasn't long until I had broken the Starbonics code and figured out that what I really wanted was not a "hot chocolate", but was instead a "venti-skim-extra-hot-no-no-whipped-cream-thank-you, hot chocolate". Turns out, not only is this a supremely tasty and cockle-warming beverage, but it also gives me a buzz so efficient that I shake for hours.

Plus, I just really like saying "venti".

This very morning, I arrived at work at 7:15. That's 7:15am. Did you know they make one of those? Yeah, it sucks. It's dark out. Anyway, so I went to starbucks.com to find the closest establishment to my new place of employment and, lo and behold, there's one like 4 blocks away. DC must be one of the last places on Earth where there's not at least one Starbucks per 100 yard land mass. Bummer, thought I, that's too far of a round trip to slip out unnoticed (because I am still sitting in the center of the office equivalent of grand central station), which sucks exponentially more when your 5:15am wake-up demands caffeination. And if you know me at all then you know I mean DEMANDS.


I then looked up the calories in my venti-skim-extra-hot-no-no-whipped-cream-thank-you, hot chocolate... and was shocked to find that it's over 250! Over 259 even! Eep!

So, *sigh*, I'm having some lovely "lite" blueberry yogurt right now instead.


Do they make caffeinated yogurt?
They damn well should.