Friday, January 07, 2005

Cup 19: Four for a Dollar


cup18
Originally uploaded by matt_leclair.
Where: Library, Pembroke Elementary
When: 8 am, Jan 7, 2005
Present: various and sundry schoolkids and teachers
Coffee: unknown
Mood: exhausted

The Mobil station in Pembroke serves the closest thing to palatable coffee in this town. This isn't to say it is actually good, but it is caffienated and it doesn't make me wretch. Not sure what kind it is, but it sure isn't Green Mountain. Some kind of robusta, that's for sure. At least the extra caffiene sort of makes up for the lack of flavor. Enough half-and-half and it passes. This has become my routine in Pembroke. I leave my room at the Rainbow Motel ($25 a night, and the blankets have rainbows on them!) and go to the Mobil station to get a cup of coffee and some breakfast. Breakfast consists of four Little Debbie Granola Bars. Four for a dollar at the Mobil station. I am well aware that Little Debbie products are officially the least healthy brand of snack food you can get in the USA and I am sure the granola bars are no exception. But they stave off hunger until school lunch. Free salad bar on Fridays! Of course what doesn't get eaten off the salad bar goes to the pigs after friday, so the veggies and what not that they've been serving all week are looking pretty sad, but I'm usually too busy to really notice what I'm eating on Friday.

Bad coffee and Little Debbies do the trick, and get me to a point where I am awake enough and not hungry, so I can focus on what I need to accomplish. I am exhausted, though. The night before I was at school til 10 pm, installing software on the laptops. It was a snowy, and creepy night and I hadn't slept well because when I made it back to the hotel I'd realized that I'd forgotten both to lock the gate and lock up the laptops, and hadn't double-checked the doors when I left. But I wasn't about to go back out into the storm and brave Pembrokes unplowed roads in order to remedy the situation. I hoped the laptop thieves would have the same attitude.

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