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!
Comments
4 responses to “Random Gifts from Texas”
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.