What Do We Do Now, Brain?
- Wade
I think I'm coming down with the flu. Not that you care, but being creative is a bit on the difficult side right now, so you're gonna get stream-of-consciousness. Lucky you.
So, here's the internal battle I'm going through at this moment. Of my many quirks, two prominent ones are:
These come into conflict frequently, especially when I don't bring my lunch to work. So, like my pioneer ancestors, I venture out into the skyways to forage for lunch. Thankfully, there is a wide variety of choices. Not so thankfully, many are costly. (By the way, to me a costly lunch is any one greater than $5. See the cheapskate reference above.)
An interesting trend I've noticed is that the cost of any lunch item is directly proportional to its healthiness. I can get lunch for under $4 at McDonalds. I can get a big salad at D'Brian's for about $7. Taco Bell? $4.50. A healthy wrap at Good to Go? $6.75. You see my dilemma. Most days, the healthy eater side of me wins. I figure that the extra money I would save is pointless if I die at 51 from eating a daily cheeseburger. But today presents an interesting challenge: the free pizza lunch.
You see, because Dain IT contributed some impressive amount of money towards the tsunami relief effort, the company is bringing in several dozen pizzas for lunch to celebrate. Pizza is the de facto choice for lunches like these, because a) value (large amount of food for not a large amount of money), and b) to be honest, normal IT employees don't really care about the healthiness of what they eat. As long as they can still fit into their Hobbitwear, they'll eat it.
Oh what do I do? Will the idea of a free lunch kick the healthy eater in me to the curb as I make mouth-love to a couple slices of cheese pizza? Or will the guilt that always follows such a binge be worth it for me to get off my duff and get a salad? Such torment! Such strife!
Yeah, I'm going to get the salad. The two sides are pretty evenly matched until you consider that to get said free lunch I'll have to wait in line like some sort of farm animal, and either ignore or feign interest in the conversations around me. I'm normally not such an a-hole-- in fact, I'm usually downright likeable-- but when I'm sick I don't put up with small talk easily. Especially when it involves work.
Hope you enjoyed the brief glance into the windows of my soul. Pretty exciting stuff, Ed.
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