/ Cheese on crackers, wine. /
/ Turkey, stuffing; gravy, mashed. /
/ Coffee, pumpkin pie. /

/ How many gobblers /
/ will we all gobble today? /
/ This one – yum! (Yawn) Zzzzzz. /

(When you wake up after the nap, check out “Thanksgiving Comes First“, and then you can go shopping.)

The cup thing was a surprise today, and makes it harder to eat – but from comments the staff was making, it seems to be a regular thing at this Starbucks location. I know it’s in a mall, but it’s still got a significant percentage of regulars from the numerous local offices – so it’s time to step up and do a better job.

I know, not much of a rant, but with a toothache making me consider only soft foods, it’s all I can do for the moment.

It’s very difficult to carry a “cuppa and oatmeal”, since the bottom of the oatmeal cup is exactly not-the-right-size to fit over your coffee lid. It sits right on the top: not quite small enough (like the bottom of a coffee cup is) to fit inside the plastic lid; not quite large enough to comfortably wrap around the outside of the plastic lid.

Now I know you spent thousands of dollars carefully engineering your current oatmeal cups to have the perfect colors, cool touch to the hands, exactly-spaced steam vents on the top, and so on, but it’s been two years (as evidenced by the copyright date on the lids), so maybe it’s time for a practical change. Pretty is great, but practical and fitting in with your beverage sizes is even better.

I’d vote for the over-the-lid size, just slightly larger: this serves all customers, since you could securely stick an oatmeal cup atop a cup of coffee and walk out of the store carrying both in one hand. I know some people might suggest the just slightly smaller, so the bottom of the oatmeal is the same as the bottom of a coffee cup, but that doesn’t seem to be as pleasing a proportion for eating out of, even if it would fit into a pressboard 4-cup holder.

Heck, if you tried just a tiny bit of engineering, I’m sure you could put a little lip on a 4-cup holder so that the larger oatmeal cups would also fit in, just slightly higher than cups do.

Yes, Dear Starbucks, I will submit this as an idea for you to steal. Just be sure to keep your wifi throughput up for all of us regulars now that you’ve let the masses in to use it at all your stores.

It’s not that the coffee’s bad: it’s certainly no paragon of coffee perfection, but it’s a fine chain bakery brew and I do sometimes like their Hazelnut mixed with the French Roast. No, it’s two issues about their materials:

• Light cream. They serve light cream instead of half and half. While I like my coffee with a moderate amount of half-and-half, I inevitably get the amount of light cream to add instead wrong. 90% of the time I think I’ve got it, and it turns out to be far too white and creamy. Today, I was sure I did it right: a tiny splash of light cream and enough 2% milk to make up for it: nope, now it’s not quite rich enough. Sigh.
• Cups. ABP cups have a far higher failure rate than other local shops – more often than not while driving or walking to work, I get a steady stream of drips down the seam side of the cup, from right under the edge of the lid. Either the seams are too uneven, or the plastic lids are too inflexible. It’s disappointing, and today I forgot to wrap a napkin around the edge of the cup, and so got dripped today.

What ever happened to the old, old Au Bon Pain, back when the baguettes were really flavorful, and the croissants were rich and buttery? Were they actually better back then, or did it just feel like that because they were one of the first chains to do those foodstuffs justice locally so long ago?

(Drat! I didn’t mention the “p” word, but even though it wasn’t on my mind I talked about croissants anyway, which I suppose counts. Another statistic plus for BHD!)

If you were born before a certain age, then you’ll remember this cartoony yet serious video. Actually, if you’re old enough to read this blog, you probably remember the video; it’s really a function of age across a narrow range that determines if you think of it fondly or with annoyance. Someone’s done a wonderful job of literalistically rewriting the lyrics. Very nice. HT 2 LizR.

Speaking of 80 calories, there are more than 5 times that many calories in a Starbuck’s pumpkin scone – at least in some metro areas. A dear friend who writes a blog about food – well, really “about the cool and interesting people I meet. It’s not really a food blog at all, in fact.” Well he has an interesting little quiz going on about relative calories. Thank goodness I guessed correctly, even before doing my research on teh internetz. Vote your stomach – or your wallet, I suppose – and catch up on the New York food industry scene.

Hey! I just had a brilliant idea! We can snap the stock market out of this whole bad debt crisis and simultaneously solve world hunger! Just buy a few cases of Starbucks baked goods – raising their stock price, and cheering up countless securities traders the world over – and ship them to the hungry. That’ll give a boost to transportation stocks too, and we know it’ll only take a couple of scones per person to make a huge dent in anyone’s calorie deficiency!

On one hand, they are closing stores left and right – and even though MA was to be spared, they later announced we are not, losing 7 or more stores locally. On the other hand, I see even more “Help Wanted” signs in their front doors that ever before. Plus they’re pushing more and more benefits to cardholders: free refills, free shots, other giveaways that you never would have seen before.

They come up with a huge marketing thing for their new drink, hoping it can revivify their business. What is this vivivying magic they’ve come up with? A banana smoothie. Not what I expect from such an experienced vendor. You think a smoothie’s going to turn your business around? Think again.

Their desperation is showing in many other ways: when using my card to get my free in-store drip coffee refills, I got not one but three receipts, even though I never normally take them. One for the first cuppa, of course; then two for the refill. Not only did the staff patiently explain about their $2 for any cold grande after 2pm offer, but they also eagerly pressed their customer survey – CustomerVoice! – into my hand. This is about the third time I’ve gotten a survey in the past month, and it’s not like I’m in there daily to account for their sudden interest in my opinion.

Plus, they’re canceling their muffin contract, and ditching their breakfast sandwiches. I know there are a lot of mixed opinions about them – myself included: have you ever gotten a breakfast sandwich at the old ‘Buck that was actually assembled straight? I haven’t. But I still like them, and they’re actually reasonably priced for the ingredients, considering their corporate price levels. That’ll be a sad goodbye to the toasties in the morning some days.

What can we do to help them out? Poor little Starbuck, she’s tough but vulnerable these days.

Hmmm.

Oh, wait.

They are an evil corporate giant. Never mind. Let loose the dogs of capitalism, and if you enjoy it, update your schedule to use your card to take your break there: free wifi, free syrup, and the free refills mean it’s a great way to spend an hour in the morning, for those of you who like the coffee there. I mean, it’s good, although Starbucks is not as good as Peet’s.

Admittedly, today is a rather unusual day, and the post title and lead-in is a cheap bit of hyperbole. Today is a day of inconveniently scheduled meetings, long drives, and a bunch of getting out of the way of a FOAF that I’m delivering the moving truck for. So this is not a normal day at all, and I rarely ever visit two coffee shops in one day – honest!

The day started with exactly not quite enough time to get anywhere between the morning dropoff and my first meeting. Hence, I decided to skip rush hour traffic, and drive just a couple of blocks to my coffee home, Peet’s in Lexington. The staff is great (Hi Janice!), there are plenty of tables, and for all the fact that they don’t offer free wifi, I really do find it a good place to focus on work without distractions. It’s also quiet enough in the back to be able to call into my meeting with good cell coverage. Since it was still early in the day, I opted for hot coffee here.

Meeting over, I then had enough time to drive home to do a couple of hours of work, which of course took longer than expected, and left me late to pickup the rental truck. Being hungry, hot, late, and in possession of one of the free sandwich coupons, I stopped at a convenient DD for my large iced, milk, half a sugar, hazelnut, and a flatbread sandwich to finish while waiting for rental truck paperwork. I must admit that I did not actually sit down at that coffee shop.

Truck delivered to the friend who’s moving, I now have a few hours to try to finish some work while they decide what to load up and what to leave behind. Of course, I have them drop me off at the closest Starbucks for another large iced, half-sweet, since now I really do need the free wifi to read my email. This time, I am sitting down.

I promise – I won’t do this again. This week I’ll pull my thermos out of the cupboard and start making iced coffee to bring with me. But today was just a little bit too much happening for that.

I hear you ask: so, how do they compare, these three highly branded corporate behemoths of the caffeine addiction trade? I’m not sure it’s completely fair to do a head-to-head, given the differing styles, but I will share this:

• I love Peet’s. Better coffee, better bar drinks, and a good variety of pastries that I happen to like. Always my favorite, but not always immediately convenient.
• DD is such a background to the fabric of life that it will always be important. I would never call it gourmet, but sometimes you just need a predictable cuppa, and I know I can always find a DD. Sadly, today’s iced was a tad down; I think they actually gave me too little sugar, which rarely happens (I often have to explain “just a HALF sugar, please”).
• The primary value to Starbucks is that when you really need a bar drink, you can always find a passable one. And in today’s case, the free wifi (with air conditioning and comfortable chairs!) was the important part.

And now, back to tracking the latest round of software defects…

The Thanksgiving week started out in a Murphy-esque way after we all arrived back home from our respective trips. The day after I stopped taking Airborne, I got a cold, which was quite a doozy on Wednesday. Luckily, we weren’t planning to travel far.

Thanksgiving day my lovely wife Amy volunteered to do the cooking and watch Roxanne, allowing me to sleep in and feel a bit better. We spent the traditional Thanksgiving locally with my mother, stepfather, stepbrother and his beau. Although my stepfather has been seriously ill, we made it through Thanksgiving with all traditions intact, if a little more tired than usual.

My mother’s traditional Thanksgiving is pretty familiar, with a couple of twists. The good white wine goes with cheeses, crackers, and crudite. The only requirements – besides good wine – is that one of the cheeses is blue, the stuff with mold in it. I lucked out and picked a wine that went perfectly with my light french blue (on the gorgonzola side). With the TV on the in background, there’s the traditional half-hourly dashes to the oven to baste the turkey and set the next side dish into motion. I usually help with the gravy, and then do the mashed potatoes as everyone else takes care of a vegetable.

Our biggest twist is the addition of sauerkraut, steeped with the turkey neck, as a side dish. It’s a surprisingly good counterpoint to the white meat, and comes from the tiny bit of Germanic blood in our background. Dinner is simple, and is accompanied by the good red wine. Everyone got through dinner fine, Roxanne even with unscathed clothes after deciding that the best use for cranberry sauce is to spread like jelly on the cranberry bread.

After the cleanup and finishing of one of the football games, we have coffee with the traditional pecan and chocolate mousse pies. Yes, I actually like pumpkin better, but my stepfather’s dark chocolate mousse pie has been a staple since I don’t remember when.

Friday we drove a couple of hours to spend a night with Amy’s family in CT. This is always great, because her parents use this as an excuse to have everyone else over, including their kids – all close in age, and (usually) all who play together for a while, leaving us a little bit of time to catch up. The dinner was, of course, traditional – turkey sandwiches. Hot or cold as you decided on microwaving with gravy (or not, with homemade cranberry sauce) yourself.

The highlight of this trip was bringing Lucas, our beloved Siamese cat, home again. He had been staying with family for a few weeks since we had both been traveling previously, and he’s a very social guy. He took the trip just fine, but I sense that he’s still a little miffed for having been sent away for a couple of weeks, since he’s still not purring nearly as much as he usually does. Siamese can hold a grudge for quite a long time…

Sunday was fairly productive in getting the house ready for winter, and trying to face up to going back to work in the face of only XX more shopping days until the midwinter holidays. Hope everyone had a good trip, wherever they went! (Or didn’t go, for those of you working a normal week and not succumbing to the odd colonial America holiday!)