morning cocoa

My grandmother frequently iterates that "we all have our idiosyncrasies" (I know what a cool word!) and one of mine is that I love hot cocoa all year round, not just in the winter. Whenever I work in the mornings (which is most of the time during the summer) around 9:30 or 10 I head over to the Starbucks inside the Safeway next door and pay $2.69 for a grande hot chocolate. One of the best parts about this deal is that for every 7 Starbucks beverages you purchase, you get the 8th one free! Score!

In the summer I'll only drink hot cocoa in an air conditioned place. I'd never drink a heated beverage in our oven house, but I have no problem downing a hot chocolate in the Washington Mutual or in the Starbucks or Peaberry's. My favorite place to get hot chocolate in Peaberry's (a local coffee chain), but alas the one closest to my house was bought out by Starbucks and despite my grudge against the Starbucks monopoly for that very reason, I continue to buy the grande hot chocolate. Go figure.

I usually only make hot chocolate at my house during the winter and my preferred brand is the Nestle kind. The best way to have the Nestle hot cocoa though is with CoffeeMate Vanilla creamer added, that way you get the chocolate and vanilla taste which really pleases the tastebuds :) What I like about hot cocoa is that it can fill you up enough to last you until lunch so your stomach doesn't perform acrobats and make strange gurgling sounds.

I think my cocoa fixation came from a combination of Rachelle and early morning seminary. Rachelle had this phase junior year where she would have Peaberry's hot cocoa multiple times a day and whenever we went out we would get some. Her brief obsession served as an introduction for me into the wonderous world of hot chocolate. Another factor contributing to my love of hot cocoa is that Peaberry's (before it morphed into yet the 4th Starbucks in a mile radius) was directly on the way from the seminary building to school. Emily and I would frequently stop by Peaberry's on chilly mornings and get some hot cocoa to start the school day off right (but wait that's what seminary is for, right? Ha, good one!)

Some may think it strange I drink cocoa all year round, but my philosophy is that people don't think it's weird if someone drinks coffee all year round, even in the summer, so why then should it be weird if I drink hot cocoa even in the summer? Now I have by no means a hot cocoa addiction like those people whose bodies require coffee to wake them up, but the hot chocolate is definitely a nice beginning to the work day.

So that is one of my many idiosyncrasies and if I tried to document them all, this would be a novel-length post and then some. What are some of your idiosyncrasies?

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I answered the phone a couple of minutes ago and I always answer the work phone: "Thank you for calling Washington Mutual this is Charlotte. How can I help you?" but frequently, no matter how much I ennuciate or speak at an understandable pace, many people still think I say my name is Sarah. Sarah is the name of one of our Spanish-speaking tellers and so today (only one example of something that happens often) this girl called me Sarah and then started going off speaking rapid Spanish that of course I didn't understand. I clarified who I was again and said "No, my name is Charlotte," but she kept on speaking Spanish and so I quickly put her on hold and transferred the call to the real Sarah's desk. I find it funny/frustrating when people think I'm someone else but then I get bombarded by a language I don't know and I can't communicate to them that I'm not the person they think I am and it just seems a vicious circle until I tranfer the call. Good grief.