Saturday, June 19, 2010

Good Day Sunshine

This week our soda stream machine arrived! Yay! No more lugging bottles and cans into the house, and no more guilt about the fact that our complex does not recycle and we're throwing all that stuff away!  No more wheedling Shawn to go the gas station to get some soda late at night :)

This first picture to the left is the machine and a carbonating bottle full of water.   The picture to the right is the bottle screwed into the machine.

 To the left, you see the bottle of water being carbonated when you press the button.  To the right, is the bottle of soda after the syrup is added, which is just poured carefully into the bottle later.  I tried their version of diet fresca in this picture, but we also got the syrups to do the soda stream versions of diet coke, coke zero (we wanted to see which we liked better), diet rootbeer, and diet cranraspberry.  Each bottle of syrup flavors the equivalent of 33 cans of soda. We also got a sampler pack of flavors to try.  Each one does one liter of soda (one carbonating bottle). 

Prior to purchasing the machine, I figure out how much soda we drink at home (I didn't even count what I drink at work), and then figured out how much that cost, and how much it would cost to make an equivalent amount with the soda stream.  After I've paid for the machine, which we'll do in the first seven months, I'll save $200 a year.  And this doesn't count the $2.50 a day I spend at the office, which I now don't, because I bring a bottle or two to work in the morning.  So, all in all, very happy so far.

It was another crazed week, but I managed to finish Secret Project V. I can't even remember what I did on Monday, how sad is that?  On Tuesday, I picked up the dry cleaning and caved into a craving for Taipei Tokyo.  When I got home the soda machine was here, and I played with that for a while :) 

I also made an appearance at the ManchVegas knitting group on Wednesday, and got to have dinner with Sarah T, Maureen M, Gina H, and Kerry M.  Only bummer was there wasn't much milk free on the 99 menu.  Apparently they rub their baked potatoes with butter before they bake them. Cute.  What a way to also add a lot of calories people aren't expecting, besides the whole allergy thing.  Do they get a commission or something for how the number of pounds people pack on or something?

On Thursday, I met Kristin and Lisa at Jillian's for a Jetboil dinner. It was fun to see them and Kristen brought a friend who knit, so we got to kibitz a bit about knitting.  I didn't get home until about 8pm and then I did laundry and tried to do the Wii Fit, but the board ran out of batteries...too bad! (I've been really working on trying to do the Wii Fit since my energy is now back from the whole milk thing).

Speaking of the milk thing, I did have an interesting incident at work yesterday. Mindy made cupcakes for Kate's birthday.  She very kindly brought in the cake mix label so I could read it, but forgot about the frosting.  So I scraped all the frosting off.  I did a really good job too, there couldn't have been more than an eighth of a teaspoon left on that cupcake.  But apparently that was enough because my face broke out into bright red blotchy patches, my hands turned bright red like a sunburn and my feet swelled up in about an hour after eating the cupcake.  I felt thirsty and tired the rest of the day, but I don't know if the feeling tired was just because of a really long week.  The reaction faded back out within 4 hours, but it was weird to think that that's all it took. Guess I really do have to be milk free, damn it! I was kind of hoping after a couple of months that I'd be able to sneak some things back in, but I guess not.

Last night I played cribbage with Linda D and Mary Kate R at Linda's house.  Her cat cracks me up.  It is so fluffy, it looks almost round. Reminds me of a puffer fish. I seriously had not played cribbage in a long time.  I had meant to print out rules at some point, but it just didn't happen, so Linda and I trying to remember the rules was amusing.

When I got in last night, Shawn had picked up my Penzey's order, so I sorted out my stuff from Sarah A's and Tracy B's and this morning I was able to make oatmeal seed bread in the bread machine.  I love, love Penzey's.  So much cheaper than the grocery store!

It's a gorgeous day here, thinking about asking Shawn to go for a ride on the bikes, before he heads off to his family's men thing at Jillian's for Father's Day. (Which as a matter of principal, I find highly annoying.  Hey, women like to drink beer and play pool too!)

Anyway, that's where we are this week.  I need to knit a ton this weekend, so that I can get Secret Project II finished before Chris and Kristie's new arrival shows up. I also need to write, so that I'm ready for writing group next week. 

Stay tuned for further updates.

3 comments:

  1. Boo is insulted, but I am laughing!!!! A puffer fish!!

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  2. I so want a soda machine, but need to find a space on the counter for it. Which model did you get? And do you wish you went bigger or smaller?

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  3. I got the Fountain Jet value pack which is here:
    http://www.sodastreamusa.com/Fountain-Jet-Soda-Value-Kit-P188.aspx

    It is 16 inches tall, 9 inches deep and 6 inches wide. I'm pretty happy with the lack of space it takes up, and the one liter bottles are perfect to take with you to work.

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