ice cream etiquette

today i went to my favorite (well, really only) ice cream shoppe to get some gelato. as i was walking in, i was immediately preceded by two middle-aged ladies. once inside, i noticed two younger girls who had yet to order. i was able to decide which flavors i wanted in about the time it took the two girls to order and get their gelato. unfortunately, i still had the two middle-aged ladies to wait for.

the first one asked to taste one flavor... and then another. then the other lady also tasted two flavors. after all this tasting, one might imagine that these ladies would know exactly what they wanted... but no! the first lady had to try yet another flavor, before deciding on the three flavors to get--none of which she had tasted. the first lady proceeded to pay for her purchase.

when the serving girl came to lady number two, all ready to scoop, lady number two was "still deciding" on what to get. at this point, i had been waiting approximately ten minutes and was getting rather annoyed by her indecisiveness. who takes ten minutes to choose what kind of ice cream to get? her friend had already taken forever to get her ice cream, and now she still didn't know what she wanted? lady two asked for a taste of yet another flavor, but failed to make her final decision. i proceeded to stare at the lady with a profound hatred. the kind of loathing stare that only sippycup could begin to fathom and perform. glancing at the serving girl was of no use, as she was distracted by the cute baby that lady two was holding. lady two said "i think i want mango and coconut... but i'm not sure what else..." and then asked the baby what it wanted. luckily, we did not have to wait for a response from the baby as it was clearly incapable of any sort of intelligible response. so finally, it after about twenty minutes, i was able to get some gelato.

all of this could have been avoided had society imparted the rules of ice cream etiquette onto these two annoying ladies. most notably: don't talk to the server and point as if you are able to make a decision on ice cream if you are still five minutes away from making your actual choice. to avoid such situations in the future, i have created created a mnemonic to help you remember what to do:

if you're choosing gelato and have any doubt,
please be kind to others and don't be a lout.
take no more than ten seconds to choose a flavor,
otherwise take your fat ass and get the hell out.
(especially if you're one of two middle-aged ladies)

gettin' married

a little while ago, i received a wedding notification from a friend. this is the first time any of friends is getting married and it's kinda unnerving. i've never really thought about what would be a good age to get married. the results of my very quick and unexhaustive poll revealed that most people want to get married around the age of 30. but now that i think about it, i sort of feel like it would be nice to get married a bit early to have kids. i mean, a father has to be able to beat his son in football at least until the kid goes to college, right? but then again, kids sure are expensive little things; and does anyone under the age of 25 really know what they want to be when they grow up? i sure don't...

sleep

i used to think that students don't get to sleep as much as people who work. instead, i now think that a student's sleep schedule is merely extremely erratic, as opposed to this consistent lack of sleep that i'm getting right now. this can lead to some interesting situations. for example, i have found that large, factory meetings are a popular place to take afternoon naps. either that, or a lot of people like to nod in agreement to boring powerpoint presentations. not that i've fallen asleep in those meetings... but if you ever see my head slowly dropping and then suddenly jerked back upwards, rest assured that i'm merely agreeing with the presenter.

another issue that also arises from lack of sleep is when you find yourself falling asleep while talking to someone on the phone. this is especially troublesome when you wake up to hear the other person saying "and that's how i super-glued my wrist to my forehead". still trying to figure out that one; i've never done the "i'm sorry, could you repeat that story? i was asleep" thing, but i imagine it might be a bit awkward.

and now... for a bit of sleep.