I asked for it

I don't eat fast food as a rule. This is a lifelong habit. As a kid, my parents (who, especially in the last 5 or so years before leaving Ohio when I was 13, went out to eat with incredible frequency) nearly forbid fast food in our diets. The occasional Wendy's burger was a treat, maybe twice a year or after a long drive. I literally never had a McDonald's burger as a kid.

In fact, as you happy few who read my blog know well, the last time I had fast food was for research purposes. The results were predictable: I got sick.

But since we're leaving for New York, beginning tomorrow night, and we have scarce little food in the house, we decided this weekend that today, after I turned in my final grades for Winter term, that we'd go to In and Out for burgers, fries, and a milkshake.

I hit the campus early this afternoon to turn in grades. I also had to complete a travel request for our trip to San Diego for the Society for Phenomenology and Media conference. We plan to drive the new Jetta, and as I still didn't have a license plate, I had to use the temporary identifying number on the travel request. That got me thinking that it's been plenty of time for the DMV to receive, lose, find, misfile, identify, wrongly process, re-process, re-process again with the right names this time, and issue plates and mail them to the dealer. I called; the plates were there. So we drove up to Modesto to get the plates, and stopped off at the In and Out up there.

It was okay. It wasn't up to our expectations/memories of what an In and Out burger should taste like. In any case, the predictable, once again, transpired: I was ill. I'm not doubled-over in pain or anything (as I often am after eating anything from Mickey D's), but I don't feel right. Sour stomach; too much salt and fat.

I only mention any of this because it's become such a reliable pattern in my life. Fast food literally makes me ill. Weird.

But the important thing is, we're going to New York!