You know what’s unfortunate is that I now can only drink that really expensive stuff at the grocery store, or get the bulk stuff and make it myself. Lipton just doesn’t do it for me anymore 
Oh, and I’m getting to the point that the herbal stuff is pretty much intolerable. Just doesn’t have enough kick to make it taste like TEA! 
[quote="djm"I’m told that no-one stocks ginger ale in Ireland. 
[/quote]
What? That might be a reason not to move there 
If you’ve ever had the following conversation, you’re from the south:
“I think I’ll have a Coke.”
“What kind?”
“Pepsi.”
My Dad was from the mountains of western North Carolina and he called it “dope”- as in- “I’m drinking a dope.” Maybe that was a throw back to the original recipe Cocoa Cola?
That explains all the bark in my beard. 
Indeed! 
M
Never cared for Pepsi, much, with one exception:
When I was a teen, we used to go watch the fireworks on the 4th behind the mall in Texarkana. This was a kind of all-afternoon affair as you had to get there reasonably early if you wanted to park on a real parking lot (as opposed to on the shoulder of the Interstate, which never felt very safe to me).
So we’d pack a cooler full of ice and drinks for when we got tired of wandering from store to store in the mall. (Texarkana still has one indoor mall, so to the residents, it’s just “the mall.”)
Normally, as I said I don’t like Pepsi much.
This year, though, we packed the cooler with the ice left over from making ice cream…it was salty. And we always bought whatever drinks were on sale, so Pepsi is what we happened to have in the house at the time, so that’s what we packed the cooler with.
The cans of Pepsi wound up with a thin encrustment of salt around the rims. They were wonderful.
Probably unhealthy, but wonderful.
But that’s the only way I care for Pepsi, much.
–James
Hey there. Did you get that new set of pipes? I thought maybe I remembered something about you expecting a new addition to your pipe family—but perhaps I’m mistaken, if so just ignore this!
You know, I lived in SLC quite a number of years when I was little and I don’t remember much about the soda situation, probably because we didn’t drink them either. I do remember my parents telling us that a lot of other people didn’t drink coffee like they did. It must be the sodas with caffeine that people don’t drink, right? I’m thinking that something like SevenUp would be okay?
Add ice cream to that list and I can plead really guilty. James, I didn’t mean to imply that I had the sugar situation under control —far from it, and that is why I am so impressed with your change to sugar-free soda.
Hey, here’s another question I’ve been wanting to ask. Every once in a while I come across a description of a person that is limited pretty much to the fact that he or she is wearing Birkenstocks. If the person is wearing socks with Birkenstocks, the writer mentions that. This leads me to believe that people, like me, who wear socks with Birkenstocks (in the winter, summer I don’t) are perceived to be a certain type. Once I saw the word “crunchy” used. So I guess I am giving off the impression of liking granola and trees? Is there anything worse I should know? I mean I am just wondering what sort of ideas people who see me are forming about me, if you understand what I mean. Am I coming across as some sort of ageing hippy type or what? I reckon I’ll keep on wearing Birki’s, but I’m just sort of curious. I’m not really “crunchy” I don’t think----I don’t eat organic food and stuff. I do like trees though.
My folks never drank sodas and they were quite mysterious to my sister and me when we were little. I remember once a kid had a bottle of Coke and we were thinking if a kid likes it it must be really great and we were so curious about what it would taste like. So he offered us a sip. I thought maybe it would be too dangerous for my sister to taste so I told her I would go first. Man, the carbonation scared me ! I was really shocked and couldn’t really figure out what the heck it was. I told my sister it was something too strange for her to taste and she took my word for it.
I could never drink Tab. My mother used to drink the stuff, and one day as a wee child I took a swig from the can sitting next to her. Turns out she had left a little bit left in the can and had put out several cigarettes in it.
Blech.
Tab is forever associated with taking a swig of ash.
On the flip side, drinking Sprite from a plastic cup is forever associated with my great-grandmother, since that’s what we always drank at her place.
Recently I’ve switch from Diet Coke to Diet RC which is Splenda based, just for some variety.
I can remember when I was a kid some of my friends would drop salted peanuts in their bottles of pepsi or coke and drink it down. Said it was great! Maybe it was just the salt.
But really, diet cokes are for sissies!
What bubble gum do you chew?
Cool, Cynth! You’re a crunchy granola wannabe, and you don’t even know it! Usually people who own Birkis are hippy types…at least they used to be. And those people would wear their Birkis year round, even when the other people would put their sandals away for the winter, which meant they’d have to wear socks with them. So yeah, you look like a crnchy tree hugger Seriously, I don’t know if there is a connection. I think the Birkis are enough for people to draw conclusions, socks or not.
I didn’t think I was the only one..
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/journeys/feature/irn_bru_scotland05.cfm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A219863
http://board.dogbomb.co.uk/showthread.php?t=50447 
this is amazing..
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=irn+bru
I didn’t think I was the only one..
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/journeys/feature/irn_bru_scotland05.cfm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A219863
http://board.dogbomb.co.uk/showthread.php?t=50447 this is amazing..
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=irn+bru[/quote]
Oh well. To me it just always tastes like Irn Bru, nothing else.
What’s with al the links about something. Why not go for the thing itself?
http://www.irn-bru.co.uk/home.html
djm
Been there, done that. I laughed, I cried, I feel down, it changed my life, hell… I even bought the T-shirt…
… but instead of Tab, it was my father’s bottle of Buckhorn beer.
My grandmother used to do that. But she also drank Tab, Kava instead of real coffee, and sweetened it with Saccharine tablets, so her taste buds were suspect.
My mother couldn’t enjoy scrambled eggs for years because her mother (my other grandmother) used to tamp out cigarettes on her breakfast plate, where the ash would mix with the runny part of the eggs, and it was hard, ever after, for my mother to escape that association.
I posted those links, because of reference to the bubblegumesque taste of the drink.
Did someone mention Dr. Pepper?
Dr. Pepper is the Devil. 
Earlier this very day, I found a can of real (i.e. non-diet) Dr. Pepper I had squirreled away in an odd corner.
I iced it down as an experiment. (Oh! the sacrifices I make for science!)
I was hesitant, expecting the same icky-sweetness that I now can’t stand in real Coke.
Then I took a sip.
Glorious! Oh glorious! Liquid summer sunshine! I could feel my mood lift and my muscles relax. It was absolutely, fantastically good. Wow.
Thus, I solemnly restate the conclusion of my experiment: Dr. Pepper is the very Devil.
–James