Confessions Of A Splenda Stealer

I like to think I’m a team player. Go team Blair. Go Giants (or Redskins if my Dad is reading). Go Man U (if Matt is reading).

And now…GO YELLOW!!

From the NYTimes article in this week’s Dining section:

courtesy NYTimes.com

For the last decade the big three — pink packets of saccharin, aspartame in blue and sucralose in yellow — have fought to a kind of stalemate. But now a new player, dressed in green, hopes to shift the balance of power, opening up the $1.2-billion-a-year world of fake sugar to all kinds of changes.

The Food and Drug Administration agreed in December that rebaudioside A, an extract from the leaves of the stevia plant, is safe to add to food and drinks.

And: The makers of Splenda, which holds more than 60 percent of the retail market, have just introduced Sun Crystals, a mix of sugar and stevia that has five calories per serving. Sugar has 15 calories per teaspoon.

Confessions of a Sun Crystals Stealer? Confessions of a Stevia Stealer? I’m going to start sounding like patchouli wearing crystal meth addict.

This Splenda Stealer is getting nervous.

Thank you, you beautiful weather, you. Yes, I’m pointing at the sun and laughing. It’s Friday, gorgeous out, and I’m losing my mind.

Since the weather appears to be behaving today, I will not let the little things get to me today. I refuse to bitch about the following: it’s wonderful out and it’s so cold in my office I’m wearing my crew team hoodie from college, I finished my lunch at 12:05 PM and I’m still hungry, I have nothing to do at work, and I had a woman fall on me when I HAD to take the subway due to my damn foot.

If the sun weren’t out today, I would whine my little heart out. But, if it was crappy out, this would be my rant. I’m not realllly ranting of course, this is all just a hypothetical whine.

Because of my club foot, I am reduced to taking the subway. I take the PATH into the 33rd St. station, then I limp over to the F train platform, where I can hop on either the F, V, B, or D, to Bryant Park, then TRANSFER to the 7, which pulls me right into Grand Central, a block from my office. Annoying, but I’ve done it so many times I know how far down to walk to get into the car that will open directly in front of the subway exit I want. When you can pinpoint that on a subway, you know you are a regular on that line.

Clad with bags because I’m going home to dog-sit this weekend, the extra weight was making my foot whimper, so I HAD to take the subway, though I really craved to walk in the beautiful sunshine. All is well, you know, as fine as the subway can be, until I hop on the 7. I usually stand, but I had to sit because of my foot (no whining, just commenting). Along comes this herd/family of sweatpant-wearers and they slowly climb into the car, where they just stand in the middle of the car, speaking in a language I couldn’t quite place. Fine fine. Whatever. I’ve traveled in other countries too, and I could tell their cautious looks and hesitant entrance into the car was just because they were hoping they got on the correct line to get to, oh, I don’t know, possibly Rockefellar Center or something. But generally, when the doors close, that typically means that the subway is about to take off. This isn’t always immediate. But I’m fairly certain that it is general, universal knowledge that once you step into a subway car, a train, a cab, etc., once the doors close, you will soon be on your way to your destination.

This family didn’t quite get the memo, and so when the subway started down the tracks, this family was left to fend itself against science. As I learned in high school physics, according to Newton’s first law of motion, every object in a state of uniform motion tends to remain in that state of motion unless an external force is applied to it. That’s why WE SHOULD HOLD ONTO THE BARS IN THE SUBWAY OR SIT DOWN. I assume it was the mother of the family, but for some reason she didn’t remember her Newton’s laws or F=MA (force equals multiplying the mass of the object by the acceleration of the object) and so I became the external force that stopped her from sailing down the remainder of the car, meaning, she FELL ON ME, complete with a three year old child in her arms. OOOF.

She was apologetic, so I’m not going to say anything cruel, but it’s incidences like this that make my commute all the more colorful, like the time I had to grab on to the escalator railing when I used to use the Port Authority bus terminal.

I don’t really have a great ending for this story, but at least if this were a rant, I’d feel much better documenting it for entertainment purposes.

61 degrees and sunny. 61 degrees and sunny...

Oh, how frequently my lunch breaks turn into shopping breaks. At least most of the clothing stores in my office’s neck of the woods in Midtown basically consist of H&M, Banana and Republic, Zara, and Lord & Taylor. And Sephora. If I were near more expensive stores, that would be potentially disastrous/depressing. At least I can find good deals at these stores, most of the time.

Today was definitely a shopping break, rather, a shopping excursion. Every once in a while I will click around the internets to look for sample sales. I found one that was actually close to my office, and the blurb said something about $80 scarves going for $10. Sold.

After about 40 minutes (most of that time spent waiting on a ridiculously long line in a teeny, hot and stuffy room, then waiting another 15 min for someone to break my $20 bill) I ended up with this pretty thang to wrap around myself:

It doesn’t really go with my dress or coat that I’m wearing today, but I can’t wait to pair it with my non-patterned tops. The scarves are by Bindya Lula, who makes a line made and sold out of NYC for stores like Nordstroms and Anthropologie. This is from her Lula line, the more “downtown” version of her upscale (uptown?) Bindya scarves.

The scarf I came to work in was actually a really pretty blue pashmina, that I got for an even better deal: someone left it at my apt. after my St. Patty’s shindig. After a month of it sitting folded in my kitchen with no claims, it has officially been brought into my rotation of accessories. Just another reason to throw a party: people leave crap at your apt. that you get to keep.

By the way Mike, I still have your sunglasses. They don’t frame my face that well. You’re lucky.

My foot post inspired a gchat conversation between myself and Ms. Ball O’Sunshine about a $50 co-pay to her doctor. Maybe we should just move to Europe and not have to pay for healthcare. Best line from the convo:

me: $50 copay!!

Ms. Ball O’Sunshine: just stab me in the empty pocket