Normalcy returning?

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My symptoms have mostly cleared up, so I went out to get some cat food and cat litter. At the store everything seemed like it was back to normal; the crowd wasn’t quite as massive as usual for a Sunday afternoon, but the shelves were, for the most part, well-stocked. The canned beans section was still somewhat depleted (but there was still plenty to go around), and paper products and bottled water were back to normal stock levels. Hand soap was a bit scarce (and there was a “limit 5 per order” sign prominently placed there) and hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol were completely out. I didn’t think to check the rice section, though. Anyway I did end up buying some more hand soap since I’m running low. Just the usual amount1 I’d need for a reasonable amount of time, of course.

And while I was feeling up to it I finally got around to doing a Sodastream canister exchange at Bartell’s. I only went to the Sodastream section and also picked up some of their actually-sugar-based-we-mean-it raspberry mint syrup2 so I didn’t check their product availability myself, but while checking out the cashier handled a phone call and said, “Sorry, we’re out,” and then after hanging up said, “If I had a dime…”

Stop it with the zero-calorie sweeteners

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I love my Sodastream carbonator. But I don’t like how all of its soda syrups have “50% less sugar” by them replacing it with Stevia or sucralose. Yesterday at Target I saw that they had a new line of syrups that claimed to be made of just fruit juice, and I looked at the ingredients, and didn’t see anything problematic, so I bought some.

Just now I made a cup of soda with it, and at the first sip realized that they’d snuck Stevia in. I looked at the ingredients again, and there was at the very end, steviol glycosides – the distilled essence of what makes Stevia Stevia.

So, that’s $10 down the drain, literally.

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