Grande = Medium....and Black Eyed Peas

01-01-10...Day 1

As promised the year long venture begins...

Currently I am sitting in my local neighborhood Starbucks ( one of about 8 within a 3 mile radius) listening to the multitude of conversations going on around me.  My first thoughts are...Why is this place so crowded on New Year's Day? Don't these people have somewhere else to be?  But I guess they could be thinking the same thing about me. I used to hate the idea of Starbucks.  I never understood why anyone would want to pay the incredibly high prices for coffee...and I certainly never understood why people ordered coffee and hung around the joint like they were living in an episode of Cheers.  Then one random Sunday morning when I was living in Atlanta, I stopped at a starbucks on the way to work. Totally random for me as I was not a coffee drinker at the time...and really was planning on just getting a hot chocolate.  Once inside, I felt really out of place.  You know back in elementary school when a new kid joined your class in the middle of the year... and on that first day everybody just looks at him like he is the evil invader moving in on previously occupied territory?...that is how i felt.  Anyway, the few people in front of me were ordering in some sort of new Starbuckian language that I had never heard before....skinny soy this....and mocha frap that.  i get up to the register, already intimidated, and say "hot chocolate".  the girl looks at me and says "Tall, grande or Venti?"  Thinking she just called me something derrogative...i felt myself hunch over and hang my head as if i just commited some sort of coffeehouse sin...and said"excuse me?"  She said "what size do you want?"  I said "medium".  she said Grande!...I said "no, medium".  Now just let me point out...to me, the word Grande puts forth an image of a route44 at Sonic....which would be way too much hot chocolate for one person to consume at one time.  She laughs at me, of course.  But then explains the sizes to me.  She obviuosly figured out this was my first time in starbucks.  She tells me that i should really try something else other than hot chocolate.  I told her that the hot chocolate was the only thing i could understand on the menu board.  So she said let me make you something, and if you don't like it, you don't have to pay for it...and you can get your hot chocolate.  I agreed.  Well , i of course loved what she made and have been ordering it every since.  Still pretty plain in the Starbucks world...but i love my VENTI sugar free vanilla soy latte. AND.... i have come to really enjoy lingering around the coffeehouse ever so often.  Starbucks has something in there air system that seems to just realx you....funny considering the amount of caffeine that is on hand at any given time.

There is a young couple near me having a conversation about Black Eyed Peas.  Oddly,given their apparent ages, they are not talking about the "Boom Boom Pow" black eyed peas....but real black eyed peas, the edible kind. They are "arguing" about the good luck superstition of eating black eyed peas on New year's day.  He doesn't like them, and doesn't want to eat them for dinner. She says they bring good luck and prosperity for the coming year and they should really have them.  Personally, I already ate mine today, so i guess i am covered. However, i am only covered for about 1/3 of the year.  They say you should eat one pea for each day of the year ahead... i am pretty sure that i did not eat 365 peas. I really do not have the heart to tell this guy next to me this little tidbit of information...as he is obviously losing the battle and will have to eat the peas.  I am afraid of what type of ramifications might arise if he thinks he has to eat 365 of them.