As the outer rain bands of Tropical Storm Fay reach my house, I’m met with a sense of resignation that my weekend will be spent inside. The atmosphere at work Friday evening was one of tense anticipation, but when I woke up this Saturday morning, I was pleasantly surprised to find a windy, gray, dry sky. I was able to run, walk the dogs, and lay down the basketball goal in case of strong winds. As the sky continued to stay dry, two thoughts crossed my mind – I wanted to go to the beach, and I wanted candy.
The beach trip was amazing but short-lived. The Gulf of Mexico was remarkably flat, and as the wind whipped in from the north, my exposed legs felt like they were being thoroughly exfoliated.
Jellyfish of all sizes were everywhere.
The Sound side was insanely choppy, but the scenery just wasn’t that thrilling. My mind was on the coming rain, which also meant impending downtime at the house. How to get through the boredom? Eat candy, of course!
On the way back from the beach, my roommate and I discussed any last-minute supplies we might have forgotten. Water? No, plenty of that. Flashlights and batteries? Plenty. Candy? Oh, no! As the rain began to fall, we knew the Three Mile Bridge over Pensacola Bay would be dicey, but we pulled into Bruno’s anyway. Aside from gum and Gatorade, we were without sugar at the house.
Thankfully, Bruno’s came through for us, and as a handful of other patrons left with large sacks of dog food, cases of bottled water, and carts loaded with Ramen noodles, we gathered our candy. There’s survival, and then there’s comfortable survival. We chose the latter, and left with just over $10 worth of assorted chocolate bars (and a bag of potato chips). By 2 p.m., the feast had begun.
I started on a Kit Kat, while my roommate chose a Hershey’s Extra Dark Chocolate bar with cranberries, blueberries, and almonds. Sweet, smooth chocolate made our view of the rising Bayou a lot more tolerable. After all, Fay’s just going to get us wet. Without chocolate, we might die. Sunday will be a new day, but I have no doubt we’ll survive the power outages and flooding. In fact, we’ll do better than survive – we’ll watch the storm through the front windows and chow down on chocolate like we’re enjoying a live movie. Candy Addicts in the path of Fay: hunker down, and sugar up!
There’s a really cool international food place in Pensacola that has all kinds of candy and beer and awesome sandwiches and hummus and coffee. It’s called Four Winds and its off of Ninth near the Wal-Mart.
August 29th, 2008 at 12:27 am