Dear Diary-

So I woke up today and stumbled to the kitchen where I attempted to make a cup of coffee. After dousing the small fire caused by my accidentally cooking a coffee mug full of instant in the microwave on "high" without water, I headed down the street to Dunkin Donuts.

I had to wait in line for forty minutes. The excessive wait time was due to a combination of factors, one being a family of four who at first couldn't decide what they wanted, then got into an argument which resulted in their little girl launching into a tirade about how it wasn't fair and that she should be entitled to a creme-filled if she wants. She referred to this as the Pastry Proclamation, which I thought was relatively impressive for a four year old but just seemed to annoy her parents.

Then some guy sitting at a booth told the woman to keep her kids quiet and she went ballistic , grabbed a trash can that was in the lobby and threw it at his head. A fight erupted which eventually required the police to show up. While the police were on scene, the family's son decided this would be a good time to kick one of the officers in the shin and when the officer went down, the kid grabbed his gun, held the cashier at gunpoint, demanded all of the money in her register plus a box of crullers , ran out the door, hotwired a car and took off.

I stepped past the melee' and approached the counter only to find that the other employee - the one who hadn't been accosted by a gun wielding seven year old- was on the phone with her boyfriend. I politely cleared my throat to grab her attention, but "Shoniqua" wasn't taking the hint and continued to argue with her man over whether or not he had taken a "booty call" last night instead of coming over to visit her and her sisters. Not to be mean, but given the basic lack of personality this woman was demonstrating in the donut shop today if I was her man and I had to spend an evening socializing with her and two of her genetic bretheren under the same roof, I would place a cyanide capsule in my pocket as a guaranteed "out".

So Shoniqua finally ended her call and- apparently unsatisifed with whatever conclusion they'd arrived at in her personal drama - glared at me balefully for a full moment before glancing over my shoulder and finally acknowledging that a S.W.A.T. team had infiltrated her place of employment and taken a bewildered husband , a four year old girl and a nearly rabid mother into custody while simultaneously ordering air support and heavily armed backup to search for the armed pre-teen currently at large in a stolen Miata. Shoniqua turned her attention back to me and asked "Hey, what happened ?" before adding (as an afterthought) " Do you want something?"

"A sense of dignity, some hope and the last forty minutes of my life back would be a great start" I replied and walked out the door to seek my caffiene fix somewhere else. It was right about this time that my cell phone rang . I said hello and my boss answered, frantically yelling for me to not come to work today because some psychotic kid armed with what looked like a standard issue police revolver had taken the place hostage , demanding some coffee to go with his box of crullers. The irony wasn't lost on me.

So I wished my boss good luck, said that I hoped he wasn't about to become a statistic and got into my car. I found a Starbucks a few minutes later and - according to the hastily scribbled note taped to the front door- it was closed because the managing staff all have relatives working for a company which the news was proclaiming had been taken hostage by an armed seven year old and they wanted to be there on scene to see how it turned out. So I decided to just go home.

On the way back, I stopped and bought a coffeemaker.

Sounds like my day