things i think about while powerwashing 98

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How is everyone doing!!!! It's been a whirlwind of a few weeks and this weekend I finally got some time to sit down and kind of settle down. Cleaning, organizing, getting my life in order. Seeing the fall colors of central park. Watching the world series.

It's fall!

Whenever I walk through the streets of NY, I find myself thinking of some small things to do. Like getting a pumpkin spice latte (not yet), buying new shoes (they are comfortable!), buying an espresso machine (i will not). And this list of small things starts to build up as life gets busy with work, social obligations and attempting to recover from them all. But this weekend, this peaceful weekend, I've finally found some time to get some of these things done!

So if you're feeling a little busy or a little tired — remember to take time to do those little things for yourself. That's what I'm doing this weekend. Except for the pumpkin spice latte. I think I'll save that for another weekend.

* cue fall colors gallery! *

museum of the week: world of coke, atlanta, ga

My god. If there was ever a shrine to capitalism.

Wait, you might be saying. Ryan, don't you live in New York? The city with 142 museums? Yes I do! But I was in town for my company offsite. It was really fun to meet all my awesome coworkers in person but this museum was definitely one of the museums of all time. And I should have known as soon as I got into the first room.

I rushed into the museum and immediately saw a Coke bottle wearing a rice hat (yeah like the asian one). I thought it was weird but figured it was just another badly-aged artifact so I rushed into the memorabilia room where my team was waiting.

And then the doors closed.

There we were. My team, my director, and other parts of our engineering org in this room full of Coca-Cola artifacts staring right at us. I was so focused on trying to figure out where all the artifacts were from that I barely heard the curator start mumbling. I first noticed my product manager cracking up for apparently no reason, but when I tuned in to the mumbling I couldn't stop either. I've heard a lot of mumbling in my life but this one was straight up unintelligible and it rambled on for 20 minutes.

So after giving up on trying to figure out what she was staying, I finally noticed the vaguely Asian music playing in the background. Now THAT was hilarious.

So you might be thinking oh the talk is done! he is free! that's the museum!. NO. We were then directed into a theater where we were locked into watching a ten minute Coca Cola ad about how every touching moment ends with coca cola. And yes, there was basically no way to exit this time as well.

The movie ended with the projector screen pulling up and revealing a tiny door that led to all the exhibits. They were fun — but they definitely weren't as fun as the Coke tasting section.

The idea is that there's a bunch of coke products from around the world. I think there were eight drinks at five stations. So yeah, I had 40 cokes. Best one by and far was Inca Cola — it had a great flavor and I had tried it before. The worst one was the sour plum fanta from China.

I am used to people being a little averse to Chinese flavors so I wasn't surprised when my coworkers weren't that high on it. But when I had it. I was disappointed. Sour plum is a pretty common flavor in Asia (and I like eating the dried ones!) but this one was bad. It was really not that sour, but a little tangy and was overtly sweet. Does this sound familiar? Yeah, it sounds like and tasted like barbecue sauce.

Did I really learn anything from the coca cola museum? Not really. It was kind of fun and the only thing that I came away with was that the drink was first marketed as a brain tonic. They also didn't mention the cocaine part anywhere. Which was sad.

Oh yeah I also had a sip of Oreo coke. Was not the worst thing I had had that day. But will not be recommending it.

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animal of the week

I think the most interesting part of being in New York is seeing the sheer amount of pigeons everywhere. Simba has been absolutely enraptured by them as they land outside our window, and he literally spends hours watching them fly back and forth. Makes for an exciting morning! I found this one on the steps of The Met and was very amused by its bravery and boldness.

Send me your animals at ryan@torrtle.co!