Final Project: Part 1.5 (a story)

So, funny story. I've been living at home for the last month, and forgot to ever post here much because I haven't been at college, therefore, there haven't been many crazy college conundrums to report on.

.......

But I'm back at college now.

I'm also in a class where I'm supposed to post in a blog three times a week. I might post here, I might post on a couple of my other blogs, but in general, I'll try to provide you with a story at least every week.

Here's one from the last week of last semester.

It is only a small piece of my adventures during the last weeks of school, but it was significant enough that I feel it deserves its own post. Here's the real funny story:

Something like Wednesday, April 25, 2012: 

It was a dark and stormy night.  Dark in the sense that I and my team were working late on our final project for our C++ programming class. (Synonyms might also include sinister, evil, and I-can't-believe-he's-making-us-do-this-crap-with-these-people.) Stormy in the sense that we were all tired, irritable, and one team member, Pessimist, was making no effort to hide it. It was all I could do to keep myself from kicking his whiny little face or saying something that might jeopardize our friendship in the future like, "You really have the endurance of a two year old, don't you. Otherwise you'd just suck it up, get through this as quickly as possible, and then move on like people usually do."

I can't tell you how frustrated I was. There wasn't even much I could do to help speed things along because I suck at programming. It was one infinite loop of ever-increasing irritation.

In an effort to help us regain our sanity, I suggested, with great enthusiasm, a McDonalds ice cream break. The perpetually excited team member, Enthusiast, was excited (he wanted to drive his new car) and the other tried to shoot it down with his outrageously expressed pessimism. I volunteered to go by myself since I have no talent for programming and I wasn't much help anyway, but truly I just desperately wanted to leave.

It didn't work. Enthusiast still wanted to drive and Pessimist continued to complain by making himself the victim saying things to make us feel bad for forcing him to get ice cream with us. Seriously, if you hate it that bad, just go home... But I kept my peace, and we all clambered into the cherry red coupé Enthusiast loved like it was his first born child. His cheesy grin was made all the more ridiculous by his larger than average mouth. I wondered if he was the reason the phrase "grinning ear to ear" came into use.

So we drove to the old-style McDonalds on main street. It's my favorite because it still has the giant yellow arches on either side of the building and the asymmetrical larger-in-front, smaller-in-back style making it look like a book held open by a pencil that was used at its book mark. It was actually built in the seventies, but it still makes me feel like I've stepped back in time to the old diners of the 50s for some reason.

We arrived.

Went to the drive through, joking and laughing as we already began to relax with the expectation of frozen fake dairy goodness.

We ordered our cones.

 "I'm sorry, our ice cream machine is down."

Are they serious?? This is McDonalds. They aren't a human company, but one run by robots that want to take over the world, so they CAN'T have their ice cream machine go down. These are robots after all, can't they just magically fix it themselves??

No matter. After some discussion and surprisingly good humored irony from the Pessimist, we have made a decision. To the other McDonalds!!

 "Sorry, our ice cream machine is overheating right now."

Are you kidding me.

Your... ice cream machine... is overheating?!

*Silence*

How on earth does an ICE CREAM machine OVERHEAT??


DO ALL MCDONALDS ICE CREAM MACHINES STOP WORKING AT 3 AM?!??

Why must they deny us our frozen sanity??

Luckily, Enthusiast displayed his intelligence by driving away in the silence before my tirade.

.....

to WALMART.

Better ice cream anyway.

They're not totally sure I'm serious, but it is obvious that I am more unhinged by these developments than I am letting on, so they don't question it and we drive across the street to Walmart. By this point, they've both lost the defining traits that name them by. The only thing that matters is my ice cream. We get cookies 'n' cream, and chocolate, pay, and we're walking towards the cherry coupé Enthusiast loves, and at the sight of it, a bit of his original goofy smile returns.

As we drive home, I am holding the ice cream like Smeagol holds the one ring, slightly hunched over in a protective stance. Silence pretty much reigns until we get back to Enthusiast's house where bowls are brought out, and I begin to devour the precious. A little more of my sanity returns with every bite.

Stupid McDonalds.