randomly thinky thoughts about foods
So I finally headed back to work this morning and I actually got up in sufficient time to do like 75% of a morning routine - I packed breakfast and lunch, have nice work clothes on, and even made tea for the first time in weeks and made it out the door in a timely manner (only to be derailed by train shenanigans, but whatever, I still got in on time.) The thing is, though, I'm wondering if packing a lunch is really worth the hassle.
I'm not just talking about having to get up in the morning, be awake enough to assemble food, and then clean up after myself at the end of the day (though given my general reaction to mornings that's also a consideration - dawn and I are not friends). It's mostly conveying the food along with me. I work downtown, and I take the train. I don't know if you've been on the L lately, but the way they did the redesigned cars is absolutely terrible - supposedly it makes for more room/more people who can fit, but what they actually did was remove the ability to move, at all, ever, if the train is crowded. Instead of rows of paired seats, the seats are all set with their back to the side of the car, and your arms are compressed into the people on either side of you; move and you're poking someone in the ribs. Also, because of the restructuring of the seats, the ability to tuck your bag under your seat has more or less gone away.
This is a problem when you want to carry anything downtown.
I carry a medium purse (roughly 8.5x11x4) which manages to contain my wallet, my phone, my sunglasses, keys, keycard for work, a bottle of ibuprofen, headphones, and sometimes my Kindle, but I'm not fitting much else in there. When I remember to make tea, I also have my 20-oz travel mug, which has to go somewhere. I also like to have a book or electronic entertainment of some form, which doesn't fit in my purse, because my total commute from "walk out of the house" to "arrive at the office" is an hour and 20 minutes to an hour and a half one-way if everything goes smoothly, and that's 3 hours I can be using for something more interesting than watching the same buildings go by every day. As I don't want to carry a giant purse all the time everywhere, I therefore take my backpack downtown - it's got a convenient holster I can stick my tea mug into when I'm done with it, and it'll carry my laptop/gaming device/book/whatever I've picked for today. Sure, I could juggle my mug and carry whatever I'm planning to read or whatever by hand, but why would I? (Also: if you're really going to suggest I carry electronics around openly in my hand downtown? You...uh...have a really charming degree of trust in your fellow human beings, I'm impressed.)
So when you figure I'm already wrangling more stuff than comfortably fits in the small box humans occupy in the minds of the CTA, and you add in a lunchbox (and the associated having to schlep it about and find somewhere to put it and all the rest), I start to wonder how much actually packing my lunch is worth. I can find inexpensive or healthy (sometimes both at once!) food downtown that I like to eat, and because I work in the heart of the Loop, I have literally dozens of choices within two blocks of me in any given direction. Obviously, no matter how inexpensively I can find decent food, I'm still paying more for it than I would if I packed my lunch every day. And equally obviously this doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. But this is something I continue to wrangle, because I feel guilty about not bringing my lunch (and having to go out to fetch it eats up 15 minutes or more of my lunch hour). And there's the slightly awkward times where coworkers want to go out to lunch and it's like "oh but I brought mine." (In complete fairness to my coworkers, this is never something they give me grief about! I just feel slightly guilty that I can't go socialize because I brought food and don't want to spend the money.)
...mostly I'm upset about the hassle of carrying a lunchbox, though. I think I would feel differently if I drove and I just had to carry the lunchbox between the car and the house, but for some reason it really bugs me to have to haul it about on the bus and the train. I'm also really bad at a lot of the "traditional" lunch pack foods; I get very very weird about sandwiches (I eventually discerned it was a freshness of bread thing but realizing why doesn't actually....let me fix the fact that I gag if I try to eat dry bread) and I can't always rely on having made correct food for leftovers and then we get to where I'm not exactly a picky eater, in that I will eat most things, but I am not very good at eating the same thing over and over, so it's like - well even if I manage to make sandwiches I don't want to eat the same sandwich every day, you know?
Anyone have good solutions to this problem?
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1112349.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.
I'm not just talking about having to get up in the morning, be awake enough to assemble food, and then clean up after myself at the end of the day (though given my general reaction to mornings that's also a consideration - dawn and I are not friends). It's mostly conveying the food along with me. I work downtown, and I take the train. I don't know if you've been on the L lately, but the way they did the redesigned cars is absolutely terrible - supposedly it makes for more room/more people who can fit, but what they actually did was remove the ability to move, at all, ever, if the train is crowded. Instead of rows of paired seats, the seats are all set with their back to the side of the car, and your arms are compressed into the people on either side of you; move and you're poking someone in the ribs. Also, because of the restructuring of the seats, the ability to tuck your bag under your seat has more or less gone away.
This is a problem when you want to carry anything downtown.
I carry a medium purse (roughly 8.5x11x4) which manages to contain my wallet, my phone, my sunglasses, keys, keycard for work, a bottle of ibuprofen, headphones, and sometimes my Kindle, but I'm not fitting much else in there. When I remember to make tea, I also have my 20-oz travel mug, which has to go somewhere. I also like to have a book or electronic entertainment of some form, which doesn't fit in my purse, because my total commute from "walk out of the house" to "arrive at the office" is an hour and 20 minutes to an hour and a half one-way if everything goes smoothly, and that's 3 hours I can be using for something more interesting than watching the same buildings go by every day. As I don't want to carry a giant purse all the time everywhere, I therefore take my backpack downtown - it's got a convenient holster I can stick my tea mug into when I'm done with it, and it'll carry my laptop/gaming device/book/whatever I've picked for today. Sure, I could juggle my mug and carry whatever I'm planning to read or whatever by hand, but why would I? (Also: if you're really going to suggest I carry electronics around openly in my hand downtown? You...uh...have a really charming degree of trust in your fellow human beings, I'm impressed.)
So when you figure I'm already wrangling more stuff than comfortably fits in the small box humans occupy in the minds of the CTA, and you add in a lunchbox (and the associated having to schlep it about and find somewhere to put it and all the rest), I start to wonder how much actually packing my lunch is worth. I can find inexpensive or healthy (sometimes both at once!) food downtown that I like to eat, and because I work in the heart of the Loop, I have literally dozens of choices within two blocks of me in any given direction. Obviously, no matter how inexpensively I can find decent food, I'm still paying more for it than I would if I packed my lunch every day. And equally obviously this doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. But this is something I continue to wrangle, because I feel guilty about not bringing my lunch (and having to go out to fetch it eats up 15 minutes or more of my lunch hour). And there's the slightly awkward times where coworkers want to go out to lunch and it's like "oh but I brought mine." (In complete fairness to my coworkers, this is never something they give me grief about! I just feel slightly guilty that I can't go socialize because I brought food and don't want to spend the money.)
...mostly I'm upset about the hassle of carrying a lunchbox, though. I think I would feel differently if I drove and I just had to carry the lunchbox between the car and the house, but for some reason it really bugs me to have to haul it about on the bus and the train. I'm also really bad at a lot of the "traditional" lunch pack foods; I get very very weird about sandwiches (I eventually discerned it was a freshness of bread thing but realizing why doesn't actually....let me fix the fact that I gag if I try to eat dry bread) and I can't always rely on having made correct food for leftovers and then we get to where I'm not exactly a picky eater, in that I will eat most things, but I am not very good at eating the same thing over and over, so it's like - well even if I manage to make sandwiches I don't want to eat the same sandwich every day, you know?
Anyone have good solutions to this problem?
I've posted this at http://lassarina.dreamwidth.org/1112349.html and you may comment there or here. On Dreamwidth, this entry has
comments.