the ice tea takeover

when i started this 'blog, my favorite SONIC drink was the lemon-berry slush.

it still is (although i waggle quite a bit through the limeades and other real fruit slush worlds), but you can see by my margin numbers that ice tea is creeping up ... it will eventually overtake the slushes and most likely -at least in raw numbers- become my most favored drink.

the reasons are two-fold.

one is the raw caloric hit.  a route 44 lemon-berry slush is over 600 calories.  when you consider that i shoot for a 1500 calorie day, that's a massive amount.  and worse, it's mostly what dox would call "empty calories."  you're getting a touch of vitamin C and the lightest tap of iron, but nothing else.

a sugar pack has 15 calories, i put four in a route 44.  that gives 44 oz of super-refreshing beverage for 60 calories (less than half in a can of coke, or a fifth of the amount in a medium lemon-berry slush).

forgetting what it means in a bomb calorimeter, drinking 44 ounces of sugar beverage is just too much.  when i get done i feel like i need to clean my tongue with a weed eater.

i have kind of the opposite problem with ice tea.  whenever i drink that, i just want more.  in fact, there are two different restaurants in the world that when they see me sit at a table, they automatically bring me a pitcher of ice tea.  (and i don't have that problem that's supposed to be a classic indicator of diabetes: peeing too much ... don't ask me where the hell it all goes.)

i get a ton of survey receipts.  i love them (in fact, it's one of the things that drove the SONIC addiction hook deep into my soul).  but when it's time to cash one in, some idiotic SONICs won't let you downgrade to smaller sizes and i'm not always in the mood -or even able- to split one in half for later.

then there's poker.  i play in a mixed game on the sundays i'm in town ... it's surprisingly hard to get ice tea in a casino and the combo of a lot of tea and a lot of ice is perfect for wiling my hours away as i sit.

and SONIC has great ice tea.  fresh brewed.  my pal bo3b (sic) is super-demanding of his ice tea and loves the SONIC.  as long as you stay away from the raspberry and peach artificial sweeteners (and the cloying pre-sweented tea), you're in fine shape.

all of which means that i haven't fallen out of love with the slush ... i just don't like to carry its burden.