Ok, so although I'm generally frugal and prefer to make my lunches, I like to have a soda with lunch. I realize it's not particularly healthy, fabulous for my tooth enamel, or remotely economical, but that may be part of the appeal. Every lunch, I treat myself to a completely unnecessary and delightfully frivolous Diet Coke with Lime.
Today, however, it was a bit of a struggle finding that happy slice of la vie petille:
The first machines I tapped were in the law school cafe. These machines are set off in a tiny little lagoon where students can go to microwave food, purchase stale pretzels for twice the retail value and careen into each other while looking chagrined and juggling half cooked food. Merely being there is stressful, as the space is roughly the size of your average closet and fairly well populated, so that inevitably you are always in somebody's way. It is the only area in the law school that offers vending services, though, so it seemed a necessary incursion.
I began the cola procurement operations with an old standby strategy - swiping my UW card, which can be used at any campus vending machine. This is optimal because it means I don't have to carry cash with me while at the same time avoiding paying any sort of soda tax that would come with shopping in a more interpersonal venue. This, however, also requires there to be... credit on the card. Apparently I had only 50 cents left. After a long spelunk into the inner caverns of my surprisingly capacious purse, I managed to root out a few dimes... so, no soda... yet. But then, as I elbowed into numerous ribs of chagrined stale pretzel microwavers, I found a dollar!
Usually, the machines allow students to combine cash with the card credit to pay for vending machine snacks: this I attempted. Unfortunately by the time I had inserted my dollar, the card reader on the vending machine had decided it no longer felt like accepted cards for the rest of the day - this happens on a regular basis so it was not particularly extraordinary, but fairly inopportune.
There are two soda machines so I hit the button asking for my dollar back, got four shiny coins and tried again at the next one. Less than ideal, since this one carries only coke and diet coke, but nonetheless, better than total failure. This machine read my card, but would not accept my quarters - the quarters that the neighboring machine had just given me. After some more fevered spelunking, I found one more dime, puttinig my cash total up to 1.55 and ensuring that I could in fact secure the desired soda. By this time, of course, there were no seats available at the student cafe, so I went to the HUB (the undergrad eating area about fifteeen minutes away).
At the HUB I sat down, finally ready to enjoy the (artificial syrupy) fruits of my labor. Bubbling with anticipatory gusto, I found a nice table near an outlet for my laptop (lunch = homework time, after all). I got my lunch out, experienced the effervescently refreshing pop of the uncapped cola tickle my skin and my senses like a fresh ocean foam and then... a girl decided to skulk past, tripping not once but twice over my recently anchored power cord. On her second trip, she stumbled against the table, jostling my freshly opened soda, which in turn dove head-first in a beautiful triple tuck onto the floor, baptizing me, my bag and the floor with its sticky limey goodness in the process. The girl managed to get as far as pulling my plug out of the outlet - claiming to be saving us all from electrocution, but I suspect that it was actually retaliation against the cruel cord that had tripped her so mercilessly and unrelentlessly. She then stood there looking uncomfortable until I managed to compose my horror and despair and weakly muttered I could handle it.
Never fear, however, as there was a store near the bathroom where I'd run to fetch paper towels. Yes, damnit, I've sunk enough costs into that refreshing first sip and I'm not about to walk away now, tax or no tax. And I shall sip it greedily while staring at the offender who vanquished my previous soda and who now sits with her own computer plugged into its own wall only a few feet away.
You can take away a lot, but you shall never take away my diet coke with lime!
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