A story (II of III): Coffee.

Later in the evening I went to run a couple errands before meeting friends at another free concert, but I was a bit tired, so I stopped by a Starbucks to get a quick shot of espresso. Like I always do, I asked for no plastic cup, but to make me seem more normal than my actual reasons would make me seem (I hate the waste), I said like I've been tending to say lately, "No reason to put that on there, I'm going to chug that espresso down so fast."

When I said that, though, the young black girl behind the counter was like, "No sir, we're required to put that on in case you spill it on yourself and burn you."

"Yeah?", I was like, "But what's going to happen when I cut the tips of my fingers going to take the lid off?", and I said that back so quick, her younger black male coworker kind of smiled, and she looked kind of surprised and was like, "I don't know."

"Well," I said -- and I did say this in a theatrical tone of voice, so it's not as harsh as it sounds -- "you better think about it, because you're going to turn around and I'm going to be suing your ass," and she had this wide-eyed look for a second, and then she started laughing really heartily and was like, "Hey, give me a cut in, and I'll be your first witness!"

On another note, later that night I bought a Good Humor bar from an ice-cream truck, and the long-haired kind of crazy white dude in the truck explained to me that the truck has special lights on the sides that he turns on when it's dusk out in the summer, and that he does that every evening when it's time for night sales. He was very nice, and the ice cream bar wasn't hard-frozen or too soft, but right the right texture.