Starbunked.

I went back to Maine (home) and stole a long weekend to see my dad, bro, and pups. I was hoping to pick up Alexis on my way home, but apparently she has a job? She'll hopefully head home this coming weekend so it's all good. The weekend was excellent! The drive home went by fast and didn't crush me, and I got to enjoy the Superbowl with my dad and I can guarantee our food was far superior than at Rochester - no offense to anyone there.

If anyone knows me (or my Dad, or my brother, or my sister) at all, that individual knows that there is one constant: Starbucks. Ever since my early introduction in my pre-teen years, I have been hooked. It's not the caffeine addiction or, even, the need for the spike; although there have been times when each of those has taken control. It is the pleasure of it. I drink decaf just as happily as caffeinated, I just completely enjoy it. What I do not enjoy, however, is when Starbucks stores close at 9:00PM...all of them...when I'm driving 9 hours for the second time within 84 hours (that is just over 20% of my long weekend, for those of you who didn't waste your time calculating. This doesn't include many other hours driving around, back/forth, etc...probably making it about 25% plus of the weekend. Enough complaining. Basically I'm saying I'm awesome at driving). Speaking of which, I picked up the wonderful Taurus (victim of an accident on January 11th...negating being awesome at driving) and dropped off the Concorde.

The Starbucks stores on the thruway were closed, so I used my handy-dandy GPS to check for nearest 'Bucks' stores. I saw one nearby at a Target, bingo! I was sure it was set because I went to another Target where the Starbucks closed when the Target did (this Target was open until 10PM). At this point in the drive, 5 hours in, it started to snow pretty good - roads definitely a bit slick. So the Starbucks was going to be a perfect comforting addition to my drive. It was closed. I got 'pissed', bought a bag of Peanut Butter M&M's and a bag of Archer Farms Buffalo Wing Chips: the two of which totaled at 2880 Cal and 176g Fat (270%). Ouch. At my frustration with Starbucks I was on the phone with Rob and said "I am not going to Starbucks for two weeks". He called me out on not being able to go through with it and I said I was sticking to it. The difficult part is we have a Starbucks right on campus. Well anyways, here goes two weeks without Starbucks!

The kicker is, we brainstormed what my penalty would be if I violated said agreement. It came down to me having to miss a day of training. Now this may seem like more of a "favor" to myself, but that would be grossly incorrect. I have to first state that I am currently on a 229 day training streak, and more than anything I would go crazy taking time off for any reason (barring unforeseen injury). If I missed a day because I weakly gave in to buying a coffee based beverage at one specific store, it'd be really bad. Now the agreement was that I can drink tea/coffee elsewhere (although the other places on campus are flat out horrid), primarily due to the case in which I sometimes get withdrawal...and I have tea on occasion at my apartment. So there it is: two weeks without my comforting, wonderful Starbucks.

PS: I don't like the new logo as much either. Shame on them.