you know what they say about good intentions: they're chocolatey.


i volunteered last weekend for the philadelphia distance run, a popular annual half-marathon here in the city. one of our programs had 75 neighborhood youths participating and i thought it'd be real magical to go hand out little cups of gatorade at the finish line.

but, like any wishful volunteer, i was struggling to keep my same sense of spiritual pursuit alive when i was stuck behind the merchandise booth selling official memorabilia tshirts for $25 a pop in the gigantic convention center expo.

the good news was that all of the 18,000 participants were given goodie bags of shwag, and everyone got a free box of chocolate soy milk which i'm pretty crazy about except when it's too expensive and when hippies feed it to their newborns.

so after almost 7 hours of backbreaking mel brooks-style salemanship (moichandising! moichandising!), i told the expo coordinators that i'd carry home as much as they were willing to give me and ended up with two free cases of chocolate soy milk that i've effectively bragged about to my entire neighborhood and office.

victory tastes like free.