little tip for my loyal readers

If you're hauling up the Jersey Turnpike.

Hoping to reach the city by dark.

And, accepting this won't happen, you stop for a leg stretch and coffee. You're particularly impressed with how securely the plastic lid fit on the thick styrofoam cup, and with how nifty the reclosable sipper flap has gotten. Hurray for plastic-extrusion toolbuilders!

50 kilometers north (or 30 miles, whichever comes first), strands of red tail-lights festively draped for miles ahead, you decide you'd like a slurp of your BK brew.



I highly recommend one thing:

Inspect the lid with your fingertips and maybe hold it on while you sip.

Here's why: a crotch full of coffee, nestled in grey pinstriped trousers, can give you something close to a sunburn, even half an hour after that joe was served. Not sure which smells worse: wool flannel, viscose and a panty-liner all soaked in coffee, or seared skin.


If you don't find that suggestion practical, then at least take this one:

Choose a holiday weekend on which to dump coffee in your lap. On holidays, state troopers have bigger worries than finding out why you're parked in the breakdown lane, waving your hiney out the passenger side of your car.

Oh, and a public service announcement to 2% of the cars that flew by while I was freeze-drying my bum : one of your headlights is out.