I don’t know how long I have been a customer of Starbucks. My best guess is 15-20 years. I usually patronize the Starbucks at 1810 Wisconsin Avenue NW in D.C.
I don’t drink regular coffee so at the outset I ordered iced tea. Then over time I changed to a Frappuccino. Eventually, I realized just how many calories were involved in a Venti Frappuccino (590 calories) and switched to decaf espresso. My regular drink became 8 shots of decaf expresso over ice in a Grande cup.
I also have a small expresso maker at home and was regularly making decaf espresso using Nespresso capsules by Nestle. It usually took at least 35 capsules to fill a 32 oz Camelback bottle.
Then one day I decided that it would be easier to take the Camelback bottle
to my favorite Starbucks and ask them to fill it with 25 shots of decaf espresso. On my first try, the bottle was not full so the next time I asked them to fill it with 30 shots of decaf.
The people working at the Starbucks, did not want to handle the Camelback bottle themselves. One of the baristas came over with a very large cup in which I placed the Camelback and that is where it sat until it was filled. The barista then brought it back to me, I took it out of the cup, and screwed on the top.
I decided to figure out the difference in cost between filling the Camelback with decaf from my home machine as opposed to the store.
Without considering taxes, the decaf from the Nespresso capsules cost approximately $37.00 – $1.48 per shot. The 25 shots of decaf from Starbucks cost $61.25 – $2.45 per shot.
In addition to a huge assortment of different drinks, Starbucks also offers pastries and other goodies to go along with these drinks. The following is the list of the various treats which I have tried, in some cases multiple times.
Dark Chocolate Grahams (140 calories), Dipped Madeleines (280 calories). Short Bread Cookies (170 calories), Blueberry Scones (380 calories), Vanilla Biscotto (90 calories), Salted Almond Chocolate Bites (300 calories), Rip Van Waffles (130 calories)
The Starbucks at 1810 Wisconsin Avenue is the store at which three employees were killed on July 7, 1997. There is a memorial near the front of the store.
Odds and Ends
Earth boasts 73,300 tree species and as many as 3 trillion individual trees.
[WP 2/8/22]
In the 1950s, it took an average of 35 years for a word, once coined, to qualify for entry in the Merriam Webster dictionary. Today, it is just 11 years or less. [NYT 2/6/22]
Cremation is the end-of-life option expected to be taken in about 63% of deaths in the United States by 2025. [NYT 2/6/22]
English is the world’s most widely spoken language with some 1.5 billion speakers even though it is native for fewer than 400 million. [NYT 2/13/22]
How much time is lost in traffic per year per person? The following is based on 2021 data. New York – 80 hours; Los Angeles – 75 hours; San Francisco – 59 hours; Chicago – 55 hours; Philadelphia – 50 hours; Atlanta – 48 hours. [Axios 2/14/22]
In case you have forgotten, here are the generational birth year ranges since 1928:
Silent generation – 1928-1945
Baby Boomers – 1946 – 1964
Generation X – 1965 – 1980
Millennial – 1981 – 1996
Generation Z+ – 1997 – onward
March 22, 2022 – is the 50th anniversary of congressional passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. [Jay Berman]
The following describes fund raising by the six major party national committees, the Democratic and Republican National Committees, The Republican and Democratic Senate campaign committees, and the Democratic and Republican House campaign committees.
In the 2020 election the Republican campaign committees together outraised the Democratic campaign committees $1 billion to $861 million dollars. And in 2021 the Republican committees again outraised the Democratic committees $403 million to $389 million. [Ballotpedia’s Daily Brew 2/4/22]
There was an error in the January 15, 2022, issue of the Watch (No.197). It says the FOX broadcast television network starting to broadcast in October 1996. Actually, the network began broadcasting in 1986. [Thanks to Joel Jankowsky.]