Working days have been somewhat of a good time to be genuine about this hang-up of mine. Whenever I don't have a job I spend my hours doing something, and doing something usually means spending money. But whenever I'm not spending money, I'm making it, and only making it. I don't have time to spend money when I've got a 9-to-5 job. In fact, my lunch breaks at this job is only 30, too little time to have a proper meal. What I usually do instead is take a nap -- then and my other two breaks of 15 minutes. I need sleep more than I need nourishment, and so far this test season, I've been able to go unconscious every break, thus feeling a lot more alert to do my job. If that's the benefit from catnaps, I'll take that over meals. I subsist on coffee provided by the job, candies provided by my supervisors, and diabetes shakes from home that Grandmother no longer uses.
I had a bit of a quandary on Monday, however. My plan after work was to eat dinner at home, then visit Grandmother to see Dancing With The Stars with her. I would then go home and hit the hay at a decent hour. However, I was in St. Paul about ten days ago for the Minnesota North Stars Reunion Weekend. I entered a raffle at a bar downtown, and a week ago I received a voicemail saying I won.
Now, Grandmother lives in St. Paul. DWTS is on Monday and Tuesday. It would make sense to drive the few miles east after visiting her to pick up this prize, then go home. But which day?
Furthermore, my mind jumped into an opportunity, for lack of a better word. I try to eat at the world-famous Mickey's Diner, the greasy spoon just north of the Xcel Energy Center and probably the most famous diner in the Twin Cities. The last times I've been in St. Paul, and thus had the chance to eat at Mickey's, it was the weekend and I wanted to eat at My Favorite Late-Night Italian Place instead. I probably would feel the same way for the foreseeable future. I don't know if the chance for me to eat at Mickey's would be better than if I go there after picking up this raffle prize. But again, which day?
Well, the signs kind of fell for me to hit downtown St. Paul on Monday because my parents weren't home in time to eat dinner. This would be perfect, then, to eat Mickey's as dinner.
But there was one stipulation I gave myself: Do not try to pay cash on Monday, just because. This is a diner, not a fancy restaurant, and it's been so long since I ate there (I think the last time was the 2011 Frozen Four semifinals, so just about a year ago -- in fact, maybe exactly a year ago!) that I don't remember if they even take credit cards. I thought it was cash only. Or maybe that's another diner. Anyway, I told myself to just check to see if they take credit cards. If they don't, I would be using straight cash homey for the first time all day, and I don't want to do that. So even though it's a waste of gas, don't eat there. Just walk away, back to the car, and drive home. No, don't even pick up the prize. I pick up the prize when I eat at Mickey's.
So Monday night I drive to St. Paul. By the way, I love St. Paul because there are many free spots if you're looking for a parking meter. Nearly all the time I go to a Minnesota RollerGirls bout or a Swarm or Wild game or even a concert, I can find parking -- and since it's the nighttime and the hours of enforcement aren't all day and all through the night like it is now in Minneapolis, it's free. Anyway, I find a meter that's virtually equidistant between the bar where the prize is and Mickey's.
I walk up the steps to the dining car (after telling a guy asking for money I had no change to spare). I couldn't see anything about taking cash only through the signs until I saw one that said that they don't take checks. I could have gone in, but I feel like it'd be bad form if I went in, realized they only take cash, then leave, so I was reduced to just peeping in from the chilly outside.
Finally, I see a sign taped to the cash register. "Attention: If you are using a credit card, we can only take tips through the credit card." Perfect! So I went to the bar, got my prize (which was a mirror with the Corona Light logo on it -- shouldn't a mirror have nothing but your reflection on it??), then went into Mickey's and got me some Mulligan Stew. I followed that up with a slice of pie in one of the display cases. I always had a sense of foreboding about those pies. I mean, how do you know if they've been in that case for months? But yet it's a diner, and having pie kind of makes sense. Besides, some other table asked for two of them, so it couldn't be all that bad. And it wasn't, especially since I wanted a scoop of vanilla ice cream on top of the apple pie.
When I went up to pay, I looked at the sign in front of the cash register again. Oh, fuck me. It actually said, and I'm paraphrasing: "Attention: If you are using a credit card, we cannot take tips through the credit card." How the fuck did I miss that? Couldn't I pay more attention to what words actually say? How do I confuse "cannot" with "can only?" And in retrospect, how can a dining establishment only take tips through credit cards? Tips in the form of legal tender is something illegal, or something Mickey's can't process?
Obviously I couldn't dine-and-dash because of my, uh, "thing." So I reluctantly paid with my credit card (I didn't have money for the full meal) and luckily had the two bucks that paid for the tip. Now I had to resort to Plan B of this "no cash" thing: If I was going to spend currency on one thing, I had to make sure there was at least another transaction using money. Two transactions at least, or none. And thankfully there are these two new and relatively pristine quarters (one with the Northern Mariana Islands, the other featuring the Chickasaw National Recreation Area -- are they now going to put national parks on the tail side of quarters?) I had planned to put away at "storage." Now is a good time to put them away. Voila, a second cash transaction ... even though I wouldn't have to put down any for Monday if I just looked a little closer. ...
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