Chicken nuggets, fries, a baked potato, a diet Coke, and a frosty to share

Things took a turn for the sadsack, so K. drove us down to the Wendy’s across from Veteran’s Park. They moved it across the parking lot to accommodate the new Albertson’s and it doesn’t have a salad bar anymore, but it still felt an awful lot like home. According to the cup it came in, it’s impossible to frown while eating a frosty, so we got one of those along with a whole raft of value menu items to share. We’re good at sharing, and have lots of practice. We swallowed our almost surgically equal portions of everything with no negotiations, even finishing the soda, and got back in the car to go trolling for a place where K. could get impulse-pierced on a Sunday. Maybe that’s illegal here we wondered after driving past a darkened Stingerz and locked-tight Ink Daddy out in Garden City. Why weren’t we this bored yesterday?

 

Veggie sandwich

Does lunch look different with the coursework for my first three graduate credits (only 30 to go!) under my metaphorical belt? Not particularly, though the concession to my limits that led me to just go ahead and hit print did lend the remaining twenty minutes or so of my hour an air of the festive. I ordered the veggie sandwich downstairs–hold the guac, because it’s not really guac, it’s just like a pasty green paste–and then filled a little cup full of jalapenos and spirited both upstairs to the cloffice where I added some heat to my toasty sub and snarfed it down while paging through K.’s photos of today’s New Orleans snowshower. End times, anyone?

 

Turkey, bacon, guacamole sandwich, plus chips

They’ve got some new heavies working the line downstairs at the Quizno’s–I got my sandwich from start to finish, fifteen minutes, record! Amazing! Whatever it is that’s pushing the sandwiches quicker and quicker through the toastifying machine sadly extended to the application of the saucing squeezers, and that was pretty disgusting. When I unwrapped my sandwich back in the cloffice it was simply dripping with ‘ranch’ and then I felt a little sick and ended up sort of picking it apart and eating what I could that wasn’t damp. This is what happens when I stay out late and don’t have lunch ready. The wages of fun. Then I rushed out to wash my hands and returned to finish my chips over daydreams about girls in bands.

 

Turkey sandwich and a banana

I’m a little bit sick which means I’m a little bit grouchy and that’s a poisonous combination for a trip to the Quizno’s. But due to my arrival at the end of my food prep rope this morning, it had to be done. I waited in line for fifteen minutes, most of which were spent watching Young Love Blossom (YLB) between T. behind the counter and a customer who was–I think–flirting via flagrant rudeness, very sixth grade. When T. tried to slide her sandwich through the heat-’n'-grill machine she flipped out, all I don’t like hot ham! But the way she was hanging on the counter when she said it–I’m not old enough to eat at Quizno’s! When it was finally my turn, bam bam bam! and I was back up in the cloffice, inhaling my sandwich and the banana I brought from home while reading Slate and grrring at everything like I do when my throat’s a little scratchy because I’m a big fat baby.

 

Chick-fil-a ‘original’ sandwich plus waffle fries

K. and I were at the mall looking for a replacement for my watch, wonderful and full of sentimental value and surely still somewhere inside my apartment but refusing to make its presence known in time (ha ha) for teaching in the fall. While I felt some pangs of anxiety about eating yet another mass-manufactured-meal in the land of muffalettas and po-boys and crawfish and beignets, and at a mall food court no less, I was assuaged by the loud and holy presence of the Chick-fil-a, home of the best chicken sandwich I know. I grabbed us a table by the soothing food court fountain and we ate and talked about the challenge of the New Job, my nerves on travel days and ways to calm them, how swiftly routines overtake us, and the time E. and I pulled over in Knoxville for no reason other than to land one of these tender and delicious sandwiches.

 

Six piece McNugget, small fry, and a Diet Coke

We had to go to the local Wal-Mart anyway to answer the disparate needs on K.’s shopping list–swim goggles, a can opener, black pepper, etc.–and as we swerved around Tchoupitoulas I said, Dude! We could eat lunch at the Wal-Mart McDonalds! It was hilarious in the car–only with K. could such a thing unabashedly manifest in my reality–but by the time we got there and placed our orders and filled our fountain sodas and found a seat at the back with a view of the bike rack, it was less funny and more just a cheap, filling, and convenient lunch.

 

Turkey sandwich plus chips and a frappucino

I picked up a turkey sandwich and chips from a Quizno’s around the corner from the museum (loved Nina Katchadourian’s Accent Elimination) and brought it back to the plaza to eat in the hot sun with my newspaper. K. called to let me know she’d made it to my apartment and was looking at my cats while I ate lunch thousands of miles away in San Diego. After my sandwich, I longed for an ice cream to eat absentmindedly while staring off into the middle distance and waiting for my train, but the absence of lockers at the station meant I had to haul my suitcase along and I’m a little tired of that, so I opted instead for the chillin’ power of a frappucino at the Starbucks just across the street. Can you believe this is my very first frappucino ever in my whole entire life? I can see what all the fuss is about!

 

Number five with a Diet Coke

I didn’t want to eat a heat-’n'-serve Amtrak sandwich for lunch, so I decided to wait until we pulled into the station. Due to switching problems, that was roughly an hour later than I needed to have lunch. Inches away from eating my hand, I stopped at the first food-serving establishment on my way to the city bus stop–a Wendy’s. I ordered the number five with a Diet Coke. For those of you following along at home, that’s a grilled chicken sandwich with fries and a drink. I swallowed it in about six seconds and hopped on the 901 to Coronado Bay, where I think it is safe to assume I am the only guest at this hotel who arrived by public bus.