Sonic – 10:58 p.m. – The Sonic is understaffed and the customers are getting rowdy

There is some kind of high drama going on here at the Sonic – and I wonder if me and these four old people who just wanted some sundaes are gonna get caught up in some crossfire or something.

Destiny's Child is banging out on the radio. Every 30 seconds the manager or the carhop looks out the door like they expect a gangland thug to come roaring by in a little black Buick and start pumping out hot lead.

There's a truck that has torn through the parking lot a few times – and I saw the carhop stick her head outside the door and scream at someone leaving the drive-thru. She was also yelling exasperatedly at the order screen – but that could just be equipment issues. Retail. It's the modern soap opera.

Here comes the manager again. In. Then out. They are watching for SOMETHING – although I don't know what. There's a Ford Excursion on one side of me and a Dodge conversion van on the other. I can't see anything but straight ahead – and I'll be damned if I back out and get into the middle of the great Tater Tot War of January 2008.

Now the carhop girl is out – prowling around. The old people want more napkins. They might be wanting bandages and splints in a minute. Oh. My. Shiva. Typical old people. They sent back a completely consumed chocolate sundae because – and I swear upon my dead plant's grave that I might have heard this – the hot fudge melted the ice cream too fast.

Yes. Carhop just brought out a brand new sundae. It's just like the Wal-mart. Eat it. Return it. Get a new one for free. Boy, the old people are cackling like mad hens on acid now. They're driving a brand-new Escalade and scamming ice cream sundae's out of minimum wage girls at the Sonic.

What a life to look forward to when I start collecting Social Security. At least my own grandparents garden. My granny might chew out the checkout girl at the Piggly Wiggly for crushing her bread – but she'd never scam. The woman saves the lids to baby food jars to make Christmas ornaments.

Where was I? Oh. The Sonic manager just came back inside. The old people are laughing. I guess any potential threat has gone the way of the dodo bird. And my burrito. Gone, gone, gone!

Sonic has a new Double Berry Smoothie – the double berry part comes from raspberries and strawberries. It's good – but the seeds of the strawberries are a real pain. Plus, it doesn't suction well out of the cup. You know how sometimes when you get an ICEE and you suck all the Coke or strawberry flavor out of it and all you're left with is ice? That's what seems to happen with this – although if it really is "low-fat yogurt" in this I'm dying to know what exactly causes this effect.

My. Lord. Vishnu. I have the window on the car cracked for fresh air (I didn’t feel like getting out because it was clammy) and I can hear these old people kicking up a storm. I need to order me one of them there sundaes and see what all the fuss is about. And then eat it and return it.

The old people are departing. Two old ladies in the back of the Escalade, two old men in the front of the Escalade. That's the way the retirement fund goes!

OK. My time is up. My smoothie is done. I need to go home and do some laundry.

Peace, love and tater tots!

Starbucks #798, 7:35 p.m. – My new computer, let me show you it

I GOT MY NEW MACBOOK TODAY.

Praise Allah. Praise Kali. Praise Buddha. Praise Shiva. Praise Cthulu. Braise a howler monkey and pass the barbecue sauce. I GOT MY NEW MACBOOK TODAY!

Now that I've got that out of my system … I'm about 35 miles north of my normal haunts hanging out at a brand new Starbucks. This is the first Starbucks I've ever seen that is laid out in a near-perfect square. The dining room is a rectangle. The barista bar is another skinny rectangle – and the drive-thru is a third skinny rectangle on the back of that.

It's very, very strange – because the design is open – and it means that every single bit of noise that comes from the espresso bar is amplified and echoes out into the customer area.

This is another one of those - "no-merchandise" Starbucks - so there's lots of seating and hangout space. It is just noisy as hell. No one in their right mind would want to make this their "third space." Counting me, there are only three customers here. I can't hear myself think over the noise of dishes, the sink and the blender. If this place were full of customers, I'd run screaming for the hills trailing coffee beans behind me like a shitty baby with a diaper full of poo toddling down the aisle of a Wal-Mart!

One of the baristas was just making a frappuccino – and I swear to Kali it sounded like she was blending a concrete block inside a cement mixer. It doesn't help that they've turned up the Juanes in this joint to a level 11 and beyond. I'm down with Juanes. Just not a level that will vibrate the hairs right off Frida Kahlo's upper lip.

The baristas are a triple set of teenage tramplets that belong in a Pussycat Dolls video. Or in the Pussycat Dolls. Whichever comes first.

This is the dialogue from the last thirty seconds. "OH MY GOD. I'M TOTALLY IGNORING YOU. LIKE, IT WAS BLENDING SO LOUD. LIKE, WHAT'S THE EASIEST WAY TO MAKE A CHAI LATTE? JUST, LIKE, PUT SOME MILK IN THERE. OH MY GOD. DOLCE. I'M SO STOKED."

Blarf. There were a couple of foreign tourists in front of me at the register.

POR LO MANO DE CHRISTO. THE NOISE FROM THE DISHES IS KILLING ME.

Anyway. These tourists. They couldn't figure out what they wanted. They finally managed to get two coffees.

CANNOT HEAR SELF THINK FOR NOISE OF BLENDER. WHOEVER ORDERED THAT FRAPPUCCINO I HOPE YOU GET THE RUNS RIGHT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE TOLL BRIDGE AND DIE!

Foreign tourists. Two coffees and two coffee cakes. Then they ask the girl at the register for sugar and cream – because they're obviously from some Third World slumhole country that has not yet been cursed blessed with the beneficent majesty of the Green Apron goodness. Anyway.

MY GOD I CAN LITERALLY HEAR THE SCRUB BRUSH GOING IN AND OUT OF THE DISHES OVER THERE.

Anyway. Register monkey is helping me and asks another girl to direct the tourists to the cream and sugar on the condiment bar. The other girl – who has ratty hair that looks like a beaver made a nest, died, willed the nest to another beaver, then that beaver made and nest and raised a family of six and then died – she leans over the espresso machine and yells at the top of her lungs ITS OVER THERE! And she points at the condiment bar.

Because she obviously knows how to give the legendary green apron customer service.

Ok. The noise here is just too much. I feel a migraine. Either that or I am way, way, constipated and need to take a serious dump.

I love you all.

But I love my new computer more.

My couch, 11:40 p.m. - My memories, let me share you them

I slept in today, the first weekend in five weeks I've had that luxury. It was bloody fantastic. No Cujo pawing at my face demanding I get up. No work projects. No unavoidable social engagements. Just me, my bed and my couch.

I spent about 15 minutes outside the apartment today. I made two food runs - one to Wendy's and another to Sonic. The Wendy's one ended in disaster with a Biggie soda sloshed across the passenger seat of my car. That's what I get for stuffing the cup holders full of those free mints from the Sonic in the event that I ever DO meet a boy and need to freshen up my breath. In the greater scheme of things, I'd have rather had the coke at that precise moment because I was having a severe caffeine-deprived meltdown. C'est la vie.

And the Sonic has a new boy-toy delivering food to the car stalls. Think Elijah Wood with more hair and an extra 20 pounds. He was cute until I realized he was wearing black socks with black shoes. Maybe I could give him a makeover.

Anyway. The point of tonight's pontifications is that I want to pay tribute to someone special to me - someone that I won't get to see this holiday season - my grandmother.

Of all the people in my life, this is the person I've managed to stay the closest to even has I have drifted away from my family. This woman was born during the hardest years of the Great Depression, sent a husband off to the war in the Pacific and once picked cotton by hand in the Deep South. She raised three children and then four more grandchildren and worked until she was 65.

I love her dearly.

This is the woman who encouraged my imagination to run wild and never blinked an eye when I broke things or smacked a baseball through a window. For three summers she listened to me throw a baseball onto the tin roof of the house over and over and over so I could practice catching it as it rolled off.

When I wanted to play store, she emptied out the cabinets for me, and would obligingly come "buy" a can of peas or beans for dinner from me. She gave me real nickels and quarters for groceries from her pantry. She even made me loaves of "bread" from dish rags and old bread bags. She never threw anything away and still to this day saves the plastic bags bread comes in.

Despite being forged in the crucible of the Deep South, living through the Depression and living in a house without air conditioning for nearly 70 years, this woman is a creative genius. She can draw, paint, sew, craft and create with the best of them.

Every Easter, for as long as I can remember, she would boil dozens and dozens of eggs for all the grandchildren to decorate. Anyone who wanted to could jump in and make a grand old mess decorating. Crayons, markers would be scattered everywhere and every teacup in the house had little tablets of Easter egg dye in it. "Oh, that's pretty," she would exclaim again and again.

And this woman could cook. She still uses a gas stove and an ancient rolling pin made out of a glass bottle to roll out the dough for the plumpest dumplings. She swears that an electric range makes food taste funny - and won't let my uncles put one in.

For years, she would never let anyone but me help her in the kitchen at holidays - because she said that I was always the only one that would never get in her way. I would butter rolls and set the table and listen to her fret over the turkey and dressing, or the ducks, or the fried venison or dumplings.

I would eat nearly everything this woman decided to cook - except the squirrel dumplings. Squirrel has too many bones to make good dumplings. My theory on food is that you should not have to work for it.

One of my strongest memories is of the immediate aftermath of a tornado that nearly destroyed my grandparents home. Miraculously, it spared the house but tore up hundred-year-old trees, nearly a dozen outbuildings and completely obliterated a shed where a bunch of farm equipment was stored.

I must have been barely 9, and didn't really understand what had happened - only that the house was crooked and all the places I used to play and the trees I used to climb were gone and the cats and dogs and chickens were all gone too. There was aluminum irrigation pipe from the cotton fields around there house stuck up in all the trees - hanging down like some bizarre fruit.

I remember sitting on an overturned chicken coop crying because I'd been trying to help my uncles sort out the mess and had sliced my leg open on a nail. I still have that scar, faintly, across the top of my left thigh.

My grandma came and sat down beside me and put her arms around me and said that everything was going to be all right. Everyone was alive. Trees would grow again. Stuff would be rebuilt. And she gave me a few bites of a bacon, egg and toast sandwich and took me indoors to help her make biscuits for my uncles and all the people who were coming to help clean up.

I hope I get to see her this year. She turned 75 two weeks ago and I love her and I miss her.

Sonic, 11:44 p.m. – There’s a boy making dirty gestures with caramel sauce

I’m sitting on the patio at the Sonic. I can find a WiFi network from this sketchy mobile home park down street, but it is password protected. Le sigh.

Damn. How long does it take to bring out a soda and some cheesecake bites? Ize be havin’ a sweet tooth tonight.

Some country music is wailing out over the radio. Sonic FM in the house!

You know, it is kind of nice out here – if I didn’t feel like I had to keep turning around and be looking for skeezy characters or listen for bullets and be afraid of a knife in my back. The patio is well-lit, the people inside can see me and I don’t think I’m in imminent danger - but I still feel kind of unsafe.

The cheesecake bites are pretty good. They’re a little bit over-fried, but err to the tasty side. The apple-caramel dipping sauce could use some work (I prefer the raspberry sauce from Arby’s), but other than that, I’d give them a solid B.

Land sakes a Cthulu. White peoples in the house. Urban professionals from some office. I guess they’re out on the roam. They ordered cheesecake bites too.

One of them – a preppy white boy type wearing slacks and a polo shirt, stole some dipping sauce from his friend. He’s dipping his finger in the sauce. He’s running his finger around the sauce container. Now he’s making faces and licking his finger. WORK IT! WORK IT!

Way to go man, way to go. Sex it up. Sex it up. Way to act like a grown up. That was the most mature thing I think I’ve seen all week. And it’s only Wednesday. Well, almost Thursday now.

The DJ for Sonic Radio is just waaaaaaaaay to cheerful. And he screams.

There is a gray Toyota that has been parked at the drive-thru window for at least five minutes. What the hell did they order? A whole cow with a side of tots? I love tater tots.

Hmm. Only one skinny white boy in the Toyota. I hope he doesn’t have a heart attack when he eats that order, whatever that was.

We’ve switched to something thrashy/slammy/guitarish on the radio now. “Crushcrushcrush,” from Paramore. I kind of like this.

The Sonic staff is here for the midnight shift. Poor dude is banging on the window trying to get inside and no one wants to come open the door. BANG BANG BANG. Seriously. Somebody need to come to this door or he’s gonna break the window.

OK. He’s in.

The preppies have left. I’m the only person here. Me and the DJ apparently. If I keep coming to the Sonic I’m going to turn into a country music fan.

There’s a red Chevrolet pickup at the drive-thru. Nothing else to say, just a red Chevrolet.

You know, there’s a lot of trash out on this patio. Would it kill them to come out and spray it with a hose or run a broom around a few times a day? Or would it kill the customers to actually pick up after themselves? There are mints, straws, ketchup packets, etc.

OH MY GOD. Those freaking chipmunks are singing some insipid promo on the radio.

All I want for Christmas is for Alvin, Simon & Theodore to go die in a fire. Seriously. And I loved the “Chipmunks” as a child. Heck, I even liked the Chipettes.

Man, let me tell you, that “Chipmunks” movie is SERIOUSLY going to blow major chunks. Think two buckets of chicken and then a bottle of tequila chunks. The only thing that could be a bigger bomb than the live-action Chipmunk movie is Dick Cheney target range. And then only if you’re a Democrat!

CALL IN YOUR REQUESTS AT 866-SONIC. This man needs to stop screaming. No one is this chipper at midnight. He bothers me worse than that crazy heffa Delilah that hosts the soft-rock & talk-about-your-problems show.

I’m having trouble with inspiration tonight. Maybe it is this ugly pseudo-modern lawn furniture – which is none too clean, mind you. Maybe it is this TOO DAMN LOUD music. Maybe it’s just the fact that I’m tired and cranky and really need a good night’s sleep.

Finally. Some good music. It’s the Go-Go’s and “Our Lips Are Sealed.”

Just in time.

Play me out, Belinda Carlise!

Peace, Love and Understanding!

See you all tomorrow!

Sonic, 10:15 p.m. – Sonic mayhem at the Sonic

OK. I’m going to try to break out of my love affair with coffee shops and bookstores and try some other place to spend 21 minutes.

Tonight my trusty MacBook and I at the Sonic. I’m not getting out of my car just yet – because I’m not entirely sure of the crowd in this neighborhood – and I can’t risk my work laptop. Sorry, no can do. I’ve killed it once already this year and I don’t think they’d replace it again.

Still, as an experiment, it is this is starting off on a good note, at least so far as it proves that I can write in my car and not be too slow in the process.

Just got my food – a Route 44 vanilla Coke and those new fried mac & cheese things. Yum. Fried mac & cheese is the bi-zomb.

The guy who delivered the food gave me the strangest look. One of those “what the hell are you doing typing in the car while at the Sonic?” looks. Well dude. I pay you to cook and deliver the food. If I want to do cosplay, role-play or track a Yeti with it – that’s my business!

Let me just take a moment to strike a blow against holiday creep. Two thousand and seven in the year of our Lord anno domini is going to go down as the year that America just said “Eff the Pilgrims. Screw Thanksgiving. We’re going straight from Halloween to Christmas.”

I’m sitting here at the Sonic and they are already promoting the Sonic Card as “the perfect gift for people who eat.” Complete with red and green decorations and stickers that go above the payment area AND a special sticker promoting the $25,000 contest for the Sonic card at Sonic’s Web site – also in Christmas trim and colors.

Consumerism. I reject thee. I cast off thy shackles and reject thy greed. Get thee behind me wrapping paper.

Anywhoo.

Other than some intermittent drive-thru traffic, there’s not much going on here.

The music on the in-store speaker system is something I don’t recognize. It is usually a mix of country, pop and top 40 – but tonight it sounds like cats being anally raped by an electric toothbrush. Lots of yowling. Must be emo metal. Or the White Stripes. Same difference.

I can see the Sonic manager through the window. He’s yelling at someone. Somehow, authority doesn’t really translate when you’ve got a baseball hat and a greasy ponytail and you’re standing inside a fast food joint. I mean, he’s always been the very model of a modern major fast food worker whenever he’s delivered my food, but screaming orders just isn’t going to get anything done.

You know what I don’t like about this Sonic? It is RIGHT by the highway. I understand they’re all about customer traffic and all, but still. The constant drone, drone, drone of cars as you’re trying to eat is annoying. I can even hear the gunning of motors as I have my window up. More better landscaping please.

Now Jackie DeShannon is wailing “Put A Little Love In Your Heart.”

And now a word from our sponsors: You too can own Sonic’s extra-long coney & tots for just $2.99. Here’s a tip. Don’t get it. It’s a lousy hot dog. If you want a good dog – go to Checkers. Much better food.

There is a beat-up black Pontiac Sunbird convertible in the parking space next to me. The cloth top is ripped, the paint is stripped like a hooker in the last hour of a eight-hour shift and if anything inside works, I’d be shocked. It is always parked there. I bet the speaker in that particular stall is broken and they just don’t fix it.

What does that say about this particular Sonic’s business? Do they just not care or do they simply not need the stall? Maybe the door locks don’t work and Mr. Greasy Ponytail wants to park his pride and joy where he can keep a close eye on it.

Anywhoo.

I just realized that from this particular stall I can see the clock that tells workers how long they are taking on a particular order. This silver Mustang at the drive-thru is already clocking in at over 2:20.

Aren’t drive-thru orders supposed to come in under two minutes. I remember reading something on Digg or Slashdot that two minutes was an industry standard. Maybe that was Starbucks. At 2:30, the screen went red – I guess 2:30 is Sonic’s GET ‘ER DUN mark.

Then again, it is 10:30 p.m. at night. How much food could they reasonably have made up ahead of time? I think everything after 10 p.m. is made to order. At least, I hope it is. The silver Mustang’s final wait time clocks in at 5:34.

Speaking of time, my own time is up. Thank you and good night!