Ode to the Greatest Vending Machine (reprise)

Recently I discussed the most gratifying vending experience of my life. Said vending machine continues to surprise and delight. I had the same experience this morning where my candy bar got stuck in the coil. I didn’t panic. I looked calmly over at the display and saw that I still had a $.75 credit. I selected E6 again, and the coil made another rotation, dropping my candy bar to the retrieval area… as well as a second candy bar!

Sorry about the mix up, Clay. Here’s a second candy bar for your trouble. Thanks for doing business with me.

Customer service has been automated. Or maybe it was just a fluke of what is obviously a poorly designed coil.

Vending Machine in the Stairwell Nearest My Cubicle, I salute you. Again.

Ode to the Greatest Vending Machine

Most of the times I’ve used a vending machine, I haven’t encountered any trouble at all.  Yesterday was different.  I deposited three quarters and selected E6.  So far, so good.  The metal coil that held my candy bar captive spun slowly but surely, in the process moving my sugary confection closer to the clear plastic I am probably meant to assume is glass.  Just as it was about to reach the precipice and tumble to the bottom of the machine, into the reach of my grubby paws, the turning stopped.

I had been listening for the familiar thunk of a heavy bar of chocolate landing from a fall of several feet.  That thunk never came.  I gazed into the bowels of what I was just beginning to recognize as a malevolent piece of automation, and saw my tasty snack leaning towards me, but firmly lodged in the clutches of that metal coil.

I tried a few experimental nudges of the machine (from a running start) but to no avail.  I resigned myself to drawing three more quarters from my pocket and inserting them into this tyrannical box that tempted me with attractively displayed packages of fat and sugar only to deny me their procurement.

It was then I noticed the display on the machine was showing I had a credit of $.75.  In light of the fact that I selected E6 and watched that damnable metal coil turn, this simply didn’t make sense.  Digging through the folds of my memory, though, there had only been silence after I made my selection.  While I didn’t hear the satisfying landing of my tasty treat in the hand-accessible bin, I also didn’t hear the soul-crushing landing of my precious quarters coming to rest in the quarter-laden bowels of my insatiable antagonist.

I can only conclude that someone had dreamed up the rational and intoxicating idea of installing a sensor in the bottom receptacle of the machine.  If this sensor isn’t triggered, then my credit remains, unsullied.  Is a scale busily counting ounces when individually wrapped morsels of food drop to that weigh station on the road to immaculate consumption?  Perhaps a light beam is broken?  It doesn’t really matter.  What matters is I received my candy bar in accordance with the unspoken agreement between that vending machine and I that the price label it presented for item E6 was something more than mere decoration.  It was a declaration.  We had entered into a covenant that I could distort my blood sugar, possibly adversely affecting my dinner, for $.75.  No more.  No less.

Vending Machine in the Stairwell Nearest My Cubicle, I salute you.

Ode To Walking Tacos

Before getting to the walking taco bit, I should explain that a few months ago I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease.  You may be asking yourself, what the heavenly crap is that?  I'm not smart enough to explain the mechanics of what the disease does to my body, but I can explain the effect it has on my life.  Gluten, a protein that occurs naturally in wheat, barley, rye, and other grains (as well as unnaturally in many processed foods) is strictly verboten.  I'm sure I'll post more about it in the future, but I bring it up here only to point out that I lost a lot of the foods I love to eat with this diagnosis.

I miss pizza.  Katy actually prepared a gluten-free pizza earlier this week that was wonderful, but she had to spend two and a half hours in the kitched to do it.  That's a far cry from picking up the phone and waiting for the doorbell to ring.

Most of the changes are like that.  Food selection can no longer be spontaneous; it requires a lot of planning and forethought.  There is one notably tasty exception: the walking taco.

Take a bag of corn chips.  (I recommend Fritos original corn chips, but any will do.)  Open the aforementioned bag.  Insert taco meat.  Insert shredded cheese.  That's where I stop, but my wife will continue to pile on lettuce, tomato bits, and sour cream.  Insert fork.

The hardest step here is browning the meat.  Fortunately, that ranks very high on the list of the three cooking tasks I can do without adult supervision.  (The other two are boiling pasta and putting things on a cookie sheet.)  It isn't quite as convenient as picking up the phone, but it does strike a good balance between tasty, cheap, and easy.