Yesterday was action-packed indeed. I got a haircut, went shopping and had lunch with my friend Sara, then got tea at a diner with my friend Theresa and went shoe-shopping. We actually found some great shoes on sale for 65-75% off their original cost. I ended up buying two pairs and paying $37. I felt all savvy. It almost makes up for having purchased a $170 pair of shoes a few months ago. Here they are:

The black ones will be getting a lot of mileage indeed; the red ones won’t get as much, but they’re still cool as hell and I wear a lot of black, so they can be my little “pop” of color.

Now for the adventure. I got home from shoe-shopping and left again 15 minutes later to pick up my friend Vin and drive 80 miles south on the Garden State Parkway to check out the only Sonic Drive-In in the state of New Jersey.

For many months now, Northern New Jersey has been “infected” with Sonic TV commercials. Whenever it comes up in conversation, people get pretty vocal about it - “Why the hell do they show those commercials here? It’s a tease… we don’t even have a Sonic within 2 hours of us!” There are active message boards of people just whining about it.

Well, technically, we do have one within 2 hours of us - it’s an hour and a half away. It is sort of in the middle of nowhere, though. We passed by a power plant that looked a bit freaky since the lights in the parking lot and on the various buildings were a strange orange color and the fog in the air was glowing orange above the trees. Creepy. I expected the car to stall, radio stations to change, and Mulder and Scully to knock on my door.

NOTE: just checked it out online. I remember the sign outside the facility said “Amergen.” Well, folks, that building was the Oyster Creek Generating Station in Ocean County, NJ - a nuclear power plant. So, if this was a TV show, that glowing might’ve been indicative of something more sinister and weird than just orange-colored light bulbs in the parking lot. It’s owned by the same company that runs the Three Mile Island Facility. That’s just some trivia - I am actually pretty comfortable with nuclear energy as a source of clean power.

Anyway - Sonic. It was an interesting cultural experience. Vin’s first comment was, “Wow, it actually IS a drive-in.” The commercials don’t play up that part, so we weren’t quite prepared for our first-time Sonic experience — parking in the drive-in space, placing the order at your personal menu board, paying via credit card at the board and waiting for the server to bring a tray or box of food out to the car. Some of the servers were actually sporting roller skates. And, hey, that’s fun.

We sampled burgers, fries, popcorn chicken, their limeade and a root beer float. My brother requested that I bring back some food, so I brought a cooler and an insulated lunch bag for his corn dog, chili dog, and Sonic Blasts. Then we made the long drive back, in a sudden torrential downpour, which got me home about midnight.

Adventure!