A few weeks back, I had a cryptic e-mail message from my friend Karl:
From: [redacted]
Date: Fri, 11 Apr 2008 23:00:16 +0000
To: marius@marius.org
Subject: April 27I sent y’all an unbirthday present. I think I got the date right, though
I’m not too good at math and it is a leap year … 🙂
Apparently April 27th is the half-way point between my birthday and Diann’s birthday in a leap-year. Yesterday, I got home and there was a … large … box on my doorstep:
Yes, that says 29 pounds. I hoisted it upstairs (the return address was actually obscured by a UPS shipping sticker, so that increased the intrigue) and opened it up:
Yep, a 24-pack of Dr. Pepper from the Dublin, Texas factory (no, you’re not crazy: Diann had already pulled four of them out of the box before I was able to snap a picture). What’s special about this? Well, you see, the Dublin Dr. Pepper factory is the one of four in the world that makes their Dr. Pepper the old-fashioned way: with pure cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup. You can definitely taste the difference, and having this only a 1-hour drive away is one of the few things I miss about Texas. Mmmm, Dublin Dr. Pepper.
Karl: well played, sir. Well played. Hope you don’t mind that we’ve already opened it up before our unbirthday!
Man. Someone needs to send some Blue Bell on dry ice to top that 🙂
@Bill – Are you signing up to provide the ice cream? 🙂
In reality, we can get Blue Bell up here – Outback Steakhouse throughout the whole country serves vanilla Blue Bell in their desserts!
You can have it shipped, but man it’s expensive – we’ve looked into it. Luckily, a friend works for Mariott, and somehow they all get 4 tubs of Blue Bell every year and we’ve been getting some dutch chocolate off of them for the last two years. And you should see me when I make a business trip to Texas – I’m at the nearest HEB with a pint of Dutch Chocolate 🙂
And if you want Coke with cane sugar – now’s the time to be looking for it – 2L bottles with a yellow lid – nicknamed “passover coke” – only available during passover (started this weekend), but good 🙂 You may have to trek towards you local Jewish area or Jewish grocery store to find it though.
@elwing – Oooo, I’ll keep an eye out for the passover coke. Dutch Chocolate? Meh. Homemade Vanilla or Cookies & Cream are the only ways to go.