clearance

— पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ बहत्तर — The things we do to save some money! Much to my chagrin and disappointment, we are discontinuing five flavors of Zevia zero-calorie soda 6-packs here at PCC. Four of these flavors are flavors I have been known to buy; two of them I have bought a lot of; and one particular flavor, Cherry Cola, is by far my favorite. And why are we discontinuing them? Because we are bringing in this new brand, called Nixie—because it's organic. I don't usually want to say "fuck organic!" but I'm sure tempted to in this case. The price of Zevia 6-packs has crept up over recent years, from $5.59 in 2019 (which was down from the $5.99 it had been from at least 2013 until then), back up to $5.89 in 2022, to $7.19 in 2023 to $7.59 in 2024 to $7.99 just last month—but I love this brand, and I have begrudgingly remained loyal to it, largely because of my 15% employee discount and how I have stocked up on bunches of 6-packs when it's been on sale, sometimes often combined with things like $10 off $50 coupons. So, again: Zevia Soda 6-packs, non-organic, currently regular price $7.99. And what will the organic Nixie be? $9.49! For a 4-pack. Fuck that noise. The discontinued flavors of Zevia Soda went on clearance pricing as of yesterday. I keyed the pricing myself. The clearance price is $5.19. With my employee discount, that makes my price $4.41 (before tax). Not just a reasonable price, but the cheapest I have been able to buy it for many years. (Over a decade ago, if it was on sale for $4.99 then I'd get it with my discount for $4.24, so it's still not the cheapest I've ever paid for it—even at the current clearance price!) Shobhit picked me up at work yesterday, and we went to three different PCC stores, and called at least two more to ask about inventory. I had looked at movement in the system at work and deduced that Columbia City sells the Cherry Cola flavor the most (we do not have an internal inventory tracker), so we went there first, only to find it gone—not even a shelf tag for it. Shobhit called the West Seattle store and talked to a guy who set some aside for me. When we got there, he had set aside three six-packs but I found a fourth still in the back on the shelf. At Shobhit's insistence, which he did very annoyingly but in the end it was very useful to me (which is sort of dangerous, because it makes Shobhit feel validated in being an asshole, even if it's in the service of getting me something he knows I want—I just don't always feel it's worth so much trouble), I also called the Ballard store. They had six 6-packs of Cherry Cola on hand; they also set all of them aside for me. In the end, between West Seattle and Ballard, even though we had to travel literally all around town to do it, I got ten 6-packs of Cherry Cola Zevia Soda on clearance price. I also got two 6-packs of Cream Soda; one 6-pack of Grape; and one 6-pack of Lemon Lime Twist. I bought a solid ten 6-packs of Zevia soda at the Ballard store alone, where I also got four bottles of Fever-Tree Ginger Beer or Tonic Water, which was also on sale (though not on clearance), in order to meet the $58 or so minimum I needed, accounting for my staff discount, to use the $10 off $50 coupon I was also using. I had also called the Central District store earlier on in the evening, which had two 6-packs of the Zevia Cherry Cola. But when we found out West Seattle had more, we went there instead. I considered also still going to CD to get those last two units, but in the end I was super ready to just go home. We also stopped at the Interbay QFC on the way home from Ballard to take advantage of a few sales happening there, and it was nearly 7:00 by the time we got home. — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ बहत्तर — — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ बहत्तर — One of the things we got at PCC, though, we a free PCC private-label brand chocolate bar as part of a Member Only Offer. This offer has been active for nearly a week, however, and the only flavor still left at either store we went to was the "Pure Dark." So that's what we got. But after we had dinner at home, I used half the bar to make hot chocolate. I did not add sugar while cooking it on the stove with a small a amount of water but mostly milk, and it made for a fairly bitter hot chocolate. I added a heaping spoonful of sugar to mine and that really helped; Shobhit just drank his as is. Even though he agreed: "You are right, it's weird without sugar." We had leftover eggplant/potato that Shobhit made the other day, with rice, and baked frozen naan, for dinner. We watched Olympic curling while we ate. Then Shobhit got ready for an accent lesson he was going to do virtually—only to discover it was scheduled for tonight, not last night. He found a movie to watch, which I was not much interested in after seeing it had a score of 51 on MetaCritic, a 2023 Guy Ritchie film called Operation Fortune: Ruse de Guerre. It cracked me up a few times, but really wasn't very good. And when Shobhit paused it to make an egg sandwich and that meant it would be nearly 11:00 before it ended, I bailed about halfway through it and went to bed. — पाँच हज़ार नौ सौ बहत्तर — [posted 12:33pm]