Globex Corporation Newsletter

Damn, I am not a morning person. I don't deal with mornings well, primarily because everything I want to be doing happens late at night. Not even that late at night. If I'm teaching, getting up after attending an open mic that runs all the way until 10pm seems like it will kill me. That's why God created caffeine, I guess, and lord knows I drink more than my share of caffinated beverages, even on days when I don't get up early.

When I used to live in Forest City Iowa (population 5,000) a good time for me was to head over to Mason City Iowa (population 35,000) because they had at least a few of the ammenities that we didn't have in that there town where they build all of the Winnebagos. They had stores tat stayed open past 10pm, a cigar shop, a liquor store and more than two bars (damn Baptists on the Forest City city council, anyway). The also had a Hy-Vee grocery store. If I was over there during the day, I'd shop at the Hy-Vee as they had a few items that our local grocery store didn't carry, and you could buy hard liquor there. So I was shopping at the Hy-Vee one day before work (second shift, 6pm to 2am) and I saw chocolate covered coffee beans. How cool. I'd heard about them but since I'd lived in Vermillion South Dakota (population10,000) before then I'd never seen them where I could purchase them. I picked up a package and finished up my shopping. Having a half hour drive home, I bought a Diet Pepsi for the road.

When I got to the car I opened the Pepsi. A few minutes later I grabbed the chocolate covered coffee beans. I tried one and it was really good. No, it was great. I had another, and another, and another. I washed it down with a big gulp of Pepsi. These were fan-freakin'-tastic! I held the bag up to my mouth and tipped about 6 into my mouth. Amazing! I love these things!

About that time I looked at my speedometer. I was doing 90 on some back road between Forest City and Mason City. I was awestruck, not so much that I was travelling 90 miles per hour (and my Mercury Tracer wouldn't go much faster than that), but that I seemed to be just crawling along. I seriously wanted to get out of the car and push it home, just to make it go faster. I decided better and put the rest of the beans away.

I got home and cooked supper, watched Jeopardy! and an episode of The Simpsons and got ready for work. I was still craving, so I pulled out the beans again. The drive to work usually took about 10 minutes, I probably got there in five. Everyone at work wondered what the hell was wrong with me. I didn't get it, I felt better than I ever had in my life. Got a ton of work done, too, mine and everyone else's. In 15 minutes. It was great!

I've only had the chocolate covered coffee beans once since. The effect wasn't even close to the same. I was covering for an employee, he wanted a Friday evening off, being the fantastic, caring, anything for my troops guy I was as supervisor, I worked his sign-off shift even though I had worked sign-on that morning. I grabbed some beans at the FTC on West Omaha (it's now a Baptist church, oh those nutty Baptists!). While the beans didn't amp me up to a ridiculous degree, they did keep me awake when I just wanted to crawl into a corner and sleep, NBC's Friday Night Videos be damned!

I see them every week at Dunn Bros. The ones they sell there have an additonal candy coating like M&M's. Seems excessive to me. Haven't bought a pack, but it might be fun if I did that before we played some time. I tend to play everything too fast anyway. That might be a cool effect!

BOJ