Alright, folks. Two disparaging things happened today:
1.) I did NOT get a phone call with a job offer from a highly successful accounting firm I have been interviewing at which has an office in downtown Minneapolis on the 23rd floor of a skyscraper. So I have begun to second-guess my skill set and my interviewing approach, despite the fact that the hiring manager seemed to be a HUGE advocate for me in the interview with the CMO.
2.) On the second day of my social experiment on being a kid again, I drove around Chaska looking for an ice-cold, glass bottle of Orange Crush soda and couldn't find any. So I had to settle for an ice-cold, plastic bottle of Coca-Cola, a suitable alternative, even for this pre-diabetic, almost 40-year old. Sure they had Orange Fanta, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on that one. Sorry, Fanta people. I just can't get into a soda that shares three letters with the word FART.
So anyway, the plan was to get an ice-cold, glass bottle of Orange Crush soda and sit on the curb in front of my house and just watch things: clouds, birds, the stocky neighbor mowing his lawn, etc. So I sat there, which wasn't as easy as it used to be as kid (we have those sloped curbs as opposed to the high round ones). I saw a rabbit under a pine tree, some birds and even a dove or two. The rabbit seemed more interesting. It's funny how rabbits have this illusion that if they sit still in their furry little rabbit-ball pose, that humans and other predators can't see them. I suppose in the wilds that works for rabbits, in a sub-division, maybe not so much.
As much as I thought about myself as that rabbit – hunched up in a ball and hiding under a tree from our mortgage company and impending hardship – my attention was drawn to the plastic bottle of Coca-Cola.
God, a cold soda tastes so DAMN good after a day of gardening and a long walk with the dog.
Anyway, I sat there with that plastic bottle and remembered back in the seventies, holding that glass bottle of Orange Crush – so cold, you had to switch hands with it until you were done. But it tasted so damn crisp and sweet, you'd guzzle it all down, knowing full well your throat would be frozen afterward. No one cared, then. Hot day. Ice-cold Crush. Yum. Soda always seems to taste better in glass bottles.
An interesting aside, but I took a business trip to Pasadena, California last year around this time. Had to close down a branch of my former company (early warning signs, huh). But while there, I took in a slice of pizza and an ice-cold, glass bottle of Coca-Cola in a dinky Santa Monica pizzeria at a small table where Harrison Ford once sat to have a slice of pizza and an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola. I took a picture of the picture of Harrison Ford in that pizzeria. I suppose that isn't important to my thoughts today, but still a nice addition to my growing connections to the famous actor.
Back to the point, my darling wife recently reminded me that soda didn't taste better back in the seventies because of the bottle type, but because of the switch in ingredients (yes, I really am that thick sometimes). Soda today is festooned with high fructose corn syrup, whereas soda back in the day was made with straight sugar.
Couple that move by the soda industry with the switch to plastic bottles and it makes you wonder if entrusting more aspects of our lives to big businesses is really the answer here. I mean it's one thing to be the ground zero point in revolutionizing the way American children contract diabetes, but to also tackle destroying the environment with plastic seems to point at a senseless use of multi-tasking.
Granted, these companies probably didn't know these things would turn into terrible things, but the driving force behind the changes was money. Corn syrup and plastic are cheaper than their predecessors, so making the switch, even though it effects countless millions of lives, made a handful of corporate big-wigs pretty damn rich. But at least they have priorities, right?
Wow.
All that from watching a rabbit hunch under a pine tree while drinking a soda. I bet it had a lot to do with the sugar rush. I mean, the high fructose corn syrup rush.
1.) I did NOT get a phone call with a job offer from a highly successful accounting firm I have been interviewing at which has an office in downtown Minneapolis on the 23rd floor of a skyscraper. So I have begun to second-guess my skill set and my interviewing approach, despite the fact that the hiring manager seemed to be a HUGE advocate for me in the interview with the CMO.
2.) On the second day of my social experiment on being a kid again, I drove around Chaska looking for an ice-cold, glass bottle of Orange Crush soda and couldn't find any. So I had to settle for an ice-cold, plastic bottle of Coca-Cola, a suitable alternative, even for this pre-diabetic, almost 40-year old. Sure they had Orange Fanta, but I just couldn't pull the trigger on that one. Sorry, Fanta people. I just can't get into a soda that shares three letters with the word FART.
So anyway, the plan was to get an ice-cold, glass bottle of Orange Crush soda and sit on the curb in front of my house and just watch things: clouds, birds, the stocky neighbor mowing his lawn, etc. So I sat there, which wasn't as easy as it used to be as kid (we have those sloped curbs as opposed to the high round ones). I saw a rabbit under a pine tree, some birds and even a dove or two. The rabbit seemed more interesting. It's funny how rabbits have this illusion that if they sit still in their furry little rabbit-ball pose, that humans and other predators can't see them. I suppose in the wilds that works for rabbits, in a sub-division, maybe not so much.
As much as I thought about myself as that rabbit – hunched up in a ball and hiding under a tree from our mortgage company and impending hardship – my attention was drawn to the plastic bottle of Coca-Cola.
God, a cold soda tastes so DAMN good after a day of gardening and a long walk with the dog.
Anyway, I sat there with that plastic bottle and remembered back in the seventies, holding that glass bottle of Orange Crush – so cold, you had to switch hands with it until you were done. But it tasted so damn crisp and sweet, you'd guzzle it all down, knowing full well your throat would be frozen afterward. No one cared, then. Hot day. Ice-cold Crush. Yum. Soda always seems to taste better in glass bottles.
An interesting aside, but I took a business trip to Pasadena, California last year around this time. Had to close down a branch of my former company (early warning signs, huh). But while there, I took in a slice of pizza and an ice-cold, glass bottle of Coca-Cola in a dinky Santa Monica pizzeria at a small table where Harrison Ford once sat to have a slice of pizza and an ice-cold bottle of Coca-Cola. I took a picture of the picture of Harrison Ford in that pizzeria. I suppose that isn't important to my thoughts today, but still a nice addition to my growing connections to the famous actor.
Back to the point, my darling wife recently reminded me that soda didn't taste better back in the seventies because of the bottle type, but because of the switch in ingredients (yes, I really am that thick sometimes). Soda today is festooned with high fructose corn syrup, whereas soda back in the day was made with straight sugar.
Couple that move by the soda industry with the switch to plastic bottles and it makes you wonder if entrusting more aspects of our lives to big businesses is really the answer here. I mean it's one thing to be the ground zero point in revolutionizing the way American children contract diabetes, but to also tackle destroying the environment with plastic seems to point at a senseless use of multi-tasking.
Granted, these companies probably didn't know these things would turn into terrible things, but the driving force behind the changes was money. Corn syrup and plastic are cheaper than their predecessors, so making the switch, even though it effects countless millions of lives, made a handful of corporate big-wigs pretty damn rich. But at least they have priorities, right?
Wow.
All that from watching a rabbit hunch under a pine tree while drinking a soda. I bet it had a lot to do with the sugar rush. I mean, the high fructose corn syrup rush.
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