And then there was Jumanji…

I don’t like being a ‘regular’ anywhere. Sadly however I have two personality quirks that make this a challenge.

1. I’m a creature of habit
2. I’m perfectly willing to pay for convenience

So when, for example, I find a restaurant near home that I really like it becomes a convenient habit to go there. Sure I could save money cooking my own meals… but then I’d have to go shopping for food, cook a meal, do dishes….learn to cook somewhere in there. The point is…I’d much rather pay the 7 bucks to have someone else do all this for me. I see the value in this and I consider it a fair deal.

This tends to make me a ‘regular’ more times than I care to admit.

However this morning the universe gave me a great big good-morning-smack-in-the-face as only this cold and judgmental universe can do. Now to help you understand the situation I should point out that the personality quirk #2 listed above … borders on laziness. (Yes, BORDERS.)

For example… I’m a night owl. I hate waking up in the morning and if I could would gladly sleep through day light hours and live/work at night. So I tend to go to bed rather late. This of course only makes the morning more painful as I have to get up and get into work. However by simple logic, I came to realize that I could sleep a little longer if only the L would get me to work faster. Well… the L has one speed. But… a cab… a cab would be faster. Pppht that costs more money….but then…it’s more convenient. So based on quirk #2, on days when I particularly needed an extra hour in the morning I would take a cab. However… based on quirk #1 I have lately been taking a cab far far too often.

Today I got in the cab and was about to give the driver the address when he gave it to me. As if reading my mind he told me where I was going. “Wow That’s amazing!” I thought. But as it turns out the only thing amazing was this guys memory. He’d picked me up before.

As it turns out his wife works at the little grocery shop across the street from my place and he’s good friends with my building’s door man. We chatted, exchanged names (his was…well I forget – something like Jumanji), and he asked if I go to the same place every morning because he would be happy to stop by and pick me up every day!

Now as appealing as having a personal driver is to me…I’m not willing to either a) admit that I’ve become a regular…to a cabby or b) pay cab fare every day, no matter how convenient it may be. So I told him that I do go to the same place every morning, but I don’t take a cab every morning (which is true… but only barely lately).

So tonight I have a choice to make… I have no food in the apartment, so I can go to one of my regular hang outs on the way home … or I can toss the proverbial cabby back in the face of the universe and actually go shopping, clean up the kitchen, try to cook something, eat, and do the dishes.

*sigh*

Maybe Jumanji would deliver me something new so that I don’t have too hear “welcome back” at Panda Express.