Ice cream birthday clubs are the best thing ever

Join them!

I love promotions and free things, so a few years ago I started signing up for ice cream birthday clubs. My birthday is on Monday, and already I have three free scoops lined up. It's so easy - they send you an email, you print out the coupon, and ususally you can use it the week before and after your birthday.

I used my Cold Stone one yesterday, and I now have Haagen-Dazs and Baskin Robbins left. When you're older, it seems like there's less hullabaloo surrounding your birthday, which is fine. So it's nice to leave work during an afternoon and have some spoonfuls of delicious creamy goodness. On a related note, unless there's pumpkin ice cream I think I might need to go with sorbet or something. I had the "like it" coffee with brownie yesterday, and it gave me serious indigestion. I don't think I'm lactose intolerant, but ice cream and milkshakes often give me stomachaches. I think Cold Stone just injects extra fat into their ice cream. I doubt it even makes it taste much better. In NYC, they have to post calorie counts next to the ice cream. A "love it" signature creation (which they used to give you on your birthday) can range up to ONE THOUSAND CALORIES. That's disgusting. Cold Stone, unlike other ice cream places, uses a miniscule cup then has it spill all the way over. It's like they want you to trick yourself into thinking it's not that much ice cream. Their hedonism is unparalleled. A few years ago I was with a co-worker and we got Cold Stone to go after eating some sushi (I was full). We had these hyper scooper girls who were trying to make us get bigger sizes, and then "misunderstood" us and gave us the bigger sizes. The medium in a to-go cup filled up an entired PINT. They had to half-fill my colleague's in a TWO-QUART container. Not normal.