The Rootbeer Chronicles

Today my family and some family friends ventured to a little Italian market in St. Pet called Mazarro's. My family's been there several times before, and I must say they have the most delectable foods you ever did see. Every time we go there I order either the classic Italian panini or the meatball, though usually it's the latter, as melted mozzarella is my weakness. They also have the largest selection of non-mainstream soft drinks I have ever found. However, the signs in front of the sodas were very conflicting: they each said that their particular soda was the best. As a gullible skeptic, I feel the need to believe these signs, but compare to see which TRULY IS the best.

So I got the Bulldog root beer, the Sprecher root beer, and the Sioux City Sarsaparilla root beer (as seen above, respectively), all of which claimed to have been the superior root beer. I tasted each and analyzed their tastes based on sweetness, flavor, and texture. However, I completely forgot about this rubric and judged them sans criteria. For flavor analysis and links to the sodas' websites, see descriptions below:

Bulldog: Ingredients- Pure cane sugar, honey, vanilla. The taste was very sweet and smooth going down, not too bubbly.
Sprecher: Ingredients- High fructose corn syrup, honey, vanilla. This one wasn't sweet at all and way, way, way too bubbly. It was borderline bitter. Interestingly enough, the New York Times rates it the #1 Root Beer. I don't know what they taste.
Sioux City Sarsaparilla: Ingredients- Pure cane sugar, honey. It was a very interesting taste, very different from the others, but in a very good way. It was just sweet enough, though with a bit too much carbonation. Overall a decent soda.
Verdict: Bulldog Root Beer was the far superior root beer. It had the great vanilla taste that gives root beer that perfect taste. Coming in second was the Sioux City Sarsaparilla. It was very good, but the lack of vanilla was disappointing and could have let to its victory. Sprecher was alright if you want more root beer for your money, but not quality. I would rather drink Barq's, A&W, or Mug than Sprecher but at least you get 4 more ounces than regular sodas.
I think the key factor that made one soda better than another was cane sugar vs. HFC syrup. The real sugar simply has a taste that is incomparable.

For links to the soda websites, see below:
Bulldog Root Beer
Sprecher
Sioux City Sarsaparilla

Trashed Sunset

I don't know if you've ever seen the sun set. You would think that it's a slow process that would be unnoticeable to the naked eye observing along the horizon. However, it's actually much faster than you think. It's kind of like filling up a water bottle; you can see the water getting closer and closer to the top until the bottle is full and overflowing with no more room for water. The sun sinks lower and lower until the light is but a faint glow along the horizon where the sun once resided just seconds before.

It's actually astonishing how quickly a moment like this can pass. It's a split-second of beauty few witness, and many overlook. This is what disappoints me.

Flip UltraHD

Ok, so good news bad news. I'll assume you want the bad news first.

BAD NEWS: The Flip UltraHD camcorder that broke last week, so it turns out, did not have a warranty on it anymore, according to Best Buy and Pure Digital Technologies.

GOOD NEWS: My dad created a fuss and haggled his way into getting me a brand new 8GB Flip UltraHD camcorder fresh off the shelf. I'm pretty stoked and glad that everything worked out.

MORE BAD NEWS: The factory wrist strap that comes with the camera is pretty wack so I found another wrist strap and put it on my old Flip. My dad gave them that Flip, so I'm stuck with another lame wrist strap. Oh well...

Evening on the Beach

So today my family, two other families, and a friend of mine spent the evening on the beach. We first arrived and threw around the pigskin, played bocce ball, and played games. However most of the time my friend and I spent our time engaging in some amateur photography: he scouted out some objects to get shots of, and I made it happen.

I took pictures almost all night. The problem is that (as seen in earlier blogs) I don't have a decent camera. I was resigned to use my phone camera. The shots actually came out really good, except that each one took me like 5 minutes to take, as phone camera settings are impossible to perfect. If you wanna check it, click the link below. Tell me what you think.

CLICK

Anyway, some interesting things transpired at the beachside restaurant, Frenchy's, that we ate at. As our waiter was taking orders for meals, I was talking to my friend about some shots I'd taken earlier. Then our waiter walked away and I realized I hadn't ordered. So the waiter came back to our table and swore he had my order. I never ordered my meal, though it seemed that the waiter had written down my EXACT order. Cajun Mahi-Mahi Fish Tacos. I was shocked.

Anyway, later on we noticed an interesting man walking to the deck with some buddies of his. However, he was dressed JUST like Alan from the Hangover: he had a beard and sunglasses. But that's not all, he also had the (Fake) Baby Carlos in a baby carrier. We decided we had to take pictures with him. Oddly enough, he too, was there with his friends for a bachelor party.

Peeps are mad weird.

Photography

So I've noticed that more and more of my friends are becoming interested in photography and big projects and whatnot. Some of them are even enrolling in photography classes in school. It's not odd that my interest in the field is increasing: my dad has always been quite the photography enthusiast. He's owned at least 7 digital cameras in the last decade.


I have everything necessary for such a photography project. Well, most of the requirements anyway. I have Adobe Photoshop Creative Suite 3, the perfect environment/community for decent pictures, an empty Flickr account waiting for pictures, and an encouraging paternal support system (father, for those with inferior vocabularies). However, I lack the most essential thing: a decent camera. Right now I have a Olympus C-5060 (as seen to the left), which is a dinosaur compared to contemporary photographic devices.

I would shell out the dough in a heartbeat for a nice D-SLR camera if I had the cash. That's the problem, though. I'm thinking that maybe if I get straight A's, I can get the folks to throw down half the cost of the camera. I'm hoping that might work, but I'm quite doubtful as to those possibilities.

I'll give you guys the Flickr info if everything works out. Just keep informed and I'll let you guys know.