dunkin donuts is set to win pumpkin spice this season
this i read in (i'm hesitant to call it) an article somewhere online, possibly by way of email-- i'm not entirely sure. link, link, link. my first thought: damn, it's early august and way way way too hot for that shit yet. my second thought: i gotta get to dunkin donuts. i didn't though. i still haven't. the nearest dunkin donuts is like a mile and a half off my travel path and i'm not makin extra time for that in the morning. after work i figure it's probably closed, so i haven't bothered to go by. there is, however, a starbucks on my travel path home. well, not really. my real travel path i go down the back streets by the elementary school, but my variant travel path goes down the main street which has a beautiful new starbucks that i kinda want to go into. but it has a drive thru, so i didn't. yet. i will, someday. so, i drove down the street along one side of the starbucks, turned on another street along another side of the starbucks, didn't stop, three days the first week of september. finally i gave in.
grande pumpkin spice latte with an extra shot. do you want whipped cream? no, just throw some foam on top. i get to the window. six-something. wow. that feels expensive. i take a sip. i've wanted this for like a month. it's not that good. not like i remember. does it need the whipped cream? did i ever drink it with whipped cream? i cannot imagine that i ever have. was the extra shot a mistake? have i ever ordered a drink without an extra shot? anywhere? ever? i can't imagine that i did. maybe their machine is calibrated wrong. but that seems unlikely too. self contained, pressurized, could-be-operated-by-a-monkey is the way they were going, and i can't see them backing away from that model. maybe it's me.
i waited, impatiently, for the pumpkin ice cream at the grocery store. their store brand pumpkin and eggnog are two of my absolute favorites. and it's a problem if i have to choose between them. and it's another kind of problem when they put them on sale two-for-five. that, when i finally got it a few days ago-- the pumpkin ice cream, that is-- was really really good. but even that made me want pumpkin pie.
and truth be told, i want sweater weather. i don't like the real cold, but the thing that makes me twirl with girlish glee is when the weather chills just enough for sweaters. i live in a place, am from a place, where there really aren't distinct seasons. i'm not used to it, and i don't really miss it. i see the beautiful red and gold fall displays that are so magical in other places and i think that would be awesome. i look at pictures. whatever. but here, here it's summer six months of the year. it's spring for about three weeks, and spring is great. winter is fine. hard to define, maybe, when it splits off from fall exactly. it tends to rain a lot. it's cold, but not really. most of it is in the temperature range of chicago spring-- i discovered as a teenager when we first got cable and i discovered the weather channel (among others. it's not like i watched the weather channel, as such, it just expanded my information potential.) but fall? i'm totally down for fall. i love fall.
i guess the whole pumpkin thing is about that.
and i did find the perfect pumpkin drink quite by accident. it's the cleanness and the ginger that make it. it doesn't make me long for any other thing. it is just good. that's what i want. things that are just good. i can bring the magic.
