Strong Brew, Strong Blood

This morning began as a typical Thomas Boomhower morning.

My alarm went off, my dog Jack Burton gave a big yawn and even bigger stretch, I hit snooze on the alarm.

The alarm goes off again, this time Jack is at the side of my bed, nuzzling my hand. It’s time to get up.

I get up. I do a little stretch. I put on a jacket, I put on shoes, I walk Jack. He gets excited, I say, “Hey! Who you pulling?”.

He looks back, a mite bashful, mostly mischievous, but stops pulling all the same. He does his business, we go back inside.

I get ready for work.

But this is where things begin to diverge from the norm.

For one thing, once I got into my car I noticed, I was nearly out of gas. For another, I had left my to go mug at work over the weekend, which meant I hadn’t been able to make any coffee this morning.

Which meant one thing, a trip to Stewart’s was in order.

So I drive to Stewart’s, no big deal, nothing unusual to report there, but, after parking at one of the pumps and getting out of my car, things began to get a little weird.

You know when you go to walk into a place and somebody else is approaching from a different direction so there’s that little bit of tension as to like, do I slow down? Do I speed up? Do I pretend to tie my shoe? What message am I sending here?

Anyway, it turns out none of that mattered, my calculations were off anyway, and he got to the door before me. He holds the door open for me. Nice, love to see that.

I say thank you, pull my mask up, and walk into the store.

Now, a word on my mask, it is a gaiter (not a gainer as I previously believed), one of those scarf type things, and it also has a topographic mask of Longs Peak, Colorado. In the past I’ve been worried about giving off the wrong vibe, but it’s convenient for me to just leave my mask on my neck all day at work because otherwise I’d lose it.

Anyway, my dude is also rocking a gaiter, his is blue, not as cool as mine.

So, I walk in and notice, coincidentally, that I do actually have to tie my shoe, and I veer off the beaten path to do that.

After doing the loopty loop and pull, I walk over the coffee station and begin filling up a to go cup. Largest size, regular coffee, nothing too crazy. Now, sometimes, I will grab a blueberry coffee from Stewart’s, good stuff, but I wasn’t feeling that today.

Gaiter Guy is there at the coffee station as well, doing the same, filling himself up one of the to go cups in the largest size Stewart’s has. Dude put A LOT of half and half in his coffee, but that’s neither here, nor is it there to be honest.

He looks at me, noticing, I presume, the same sized coffee, and he says to me:

“This is the only juice I’m on”, with a little nod to me and the cups of coffee.

Weird thing to say, but whatever, so I say, I guess a little taken aback if I had to describe it, “Nice, it’s good stuff”.

He gives me another look, takes a beat and says, “I mean I’m unvaxxed, this is all I need, blood too strong”.

Now to this, I obviously had no reply. Mostly because I was too confused, I at first thought maybe he was doing a weird brag about not drinking juice. Maybe dudes a hydro homie, or just doesn’t like drinking his calories, and sticks to water. Maybe he was sober and coffee was the only drug he was rocking with?

Either would be a weird thing to vaguely say to a stranger.

But to be like “this is the only juice I’m on, I’m unvaxxed, blood too strong”. That’s… that’s a lot, and exceedingly unlikely to be scientifically accurate.

Just a weird conversation, an odd start to the day, and frankly something that has made me question a lot.

All in all, unreal Tuesday.