ihavebeenfloated

Trista gave me a $25 gift card to Borders and $25 to Starbucks.

I went to Borders and bought the Scary Stories Treasury because it’s hard to pass up nostalgic childhood memories. I also picked up Getting Things Done because it’s hard not to be curious when LifeHacker is part of your daily reading routine.

What little I’ve read of Getting Things Done seems really awesome, and just reading the book motivated me to accomplish one task I’ve been meaning to do for about six months now. I wish I had some extra money lying around so I could buy the stupid folder things I’ll need to really GTD-up my life.

I’ve been using HipCal to get some of my laziness under control and it seems GTD is the next logical progression to being more productive. Having a calendar and scheduling rudimentary weekly tasks (“Do laundry”, “Change razor”, “change bed sheets”) has worked really well for me. GTD says I am going to have to delete those weekly tasks from my calendar and I’m not sure I’m ready to let go of that yet. It’s too easy for me to be lazy to erase my reminder of when to do laundry. Sure, running out of clean underwear is a clear indicator that it’s time to do some washing, but at that point I just stop wearing underwear. When I run out of clean socks, well, then I start to cry.

I went to Starbucks with Mike. I ordered a large (Venti, but I refuse to say such stupid words) white chocolate mocha. When I picked up my order it was a medium (grande?), but I figured she heard me wrong because large and medium are such similar words. While I drank it, I dug my receipt out of my pocket and discovered I was charged for the large.

After I finished my drink I went back in and asked if I could get the change difference between the medium and the large.

She refunded me the large and handed me my Starbucks card back.

I insisted that she charge me for the medium, but she said it’s alright and shooed me away.

I’m still not sure how I feel about this. I don’t know why it bothers me so much, but even if Mike wasn’t there to pick on me like an asshole, I still would have felt a little uneasy. I didn’t ask for my money back. I didn’t want my money back. It was good coffee. I wanted to pay for it like a good person. Just because they overcharged me doesn’t give me the right to ask for all my money back, so I didn’t.

I know it’s crazy, most people at this point would be like, “dude, they fucked up, you got free coffee, it’s a win win,” but… no. It’s not that simple.

Sure, it was my birthday and everything but that doesn’t mean I should get free coffee.

Mostly I’m worried that this is some sort of crazy balancing in advance thing. Like something terrible is going to happen to me tomorrow and this free coffee happened in order to compensate for that in advance. Maybe I’m getting ready for a gigantic fall that will require goodness in advance and goodness afterward in order to prevent myself from spiralling into a psychotic break.

Going to the gym after drinking a bunch of coffee kind of sucked. I felt sort of blergh the entire time.