more first world problems

    Now I feel the need to point out that in dedicating yesterday's blog to the Dairy Queen on Granville Street,  I in no way meant to downplay the other 13 frozen confection establishments within our 3-by-4 mile city that provide us Gahanna residents with our ice cream fix.
    In truth, when not hanging around the Dairy Queen I do patronize most of the others once in a while, depending on my craving du jour.
    Though for me, if I'm not doing Dairy Queen then it's a pretty good bet I'llbe doing be Rita's, the gelati stand also on Granville Street, just down the block from the DQ and also within walking distance of my house.
    I don't know if I'd go so far as to say that Rita's and DQ are competitors, since their products are of two such different genres; you either feel like a Dairy Queen or you feel like a Rita's. 
    But Rita's sure packs a crowd from the day it opens every  April 'til the day it closes every  October:

Rita's last Sunday afternoon
 

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    I really like Rita's gelati, which has the density of ununoctium (the heaviest element of the periodic table), and it has a commensurate number of calories: 392 in a small.  That's almost twice the calories   of a small DQ cone at 230.  This knowledge makes me not want to eat the gelati even when I'm craving one.  So I usually end up compromise by having a Rita's  water ice instead because I always assumed that the water ice had fewer calories than  a gelati or a DQ, (I mean, it does have the word water in it, right? ) But then I just looked it up:  It turns out that a small Rita's ice has a whopping 284 calories! 
      Calorie charts are such a buzz-kill.
    But there are some days I'll just thumb my nose at the calories and get whatever 'cream I feel like getting, whether it's  a frozen custard, a frozen yogurt, a DQ, a gelati, a scoop, or the  quick cheap thrill of a McDonald's cone.
    The only ice cream stores in Gahanna that I will not set foot in unless somebody else is paying are Cold Stone Creamery and Graeter's.
    Cold Stone Creamery because about 14 years ago I was in a Cold Stone Creamery in Boston and the teen-aged server, who obviously longed to be doing anything else besides scooping ice cream, copped me an attitude.  I still can't pass a CSC without feeling hostile vibes.
    As to why I won't spring for a Graeter's, well, I'll go into that tomorrow...