A Starbucks secret

This morning, I had to pick up something from Kroger and decided to stop at Starbucks while I was there. To both my delight and dismay, I noticed that they're in full-on holiday mode, complete with festive red menu board, red cups and a Christmas tree drawn on the chalkboard listing the coffees of the day. I say dismay because I have a major weakness for Starbucks' peppermint mochas, and I couldn't resist getting my first one of the season today. As one barista filled my order, the other one asked me, "Have you been waiting a long time for the peppermint mochas to come back?"

"Yeah," I admitted, "they're kind of my downfall around the holidays."

"The funny thing is," she said, very nicely, "you can get them year-round. As long as as we have the syrup, we can make pretty much anything."

Oh, I thought to myself, immediately feeling like an idiot. Why hadn't this occurred to me before? I just laughed, made some lame comment about how I would just pretend that peppermint mochas weren't available the rest of the year, handed over my $3.40 and got the heck out of there. Honestly, I kind of feel like someone just told me that "A Charlie Brown Christmas" is actually on TV every single day of the year. What do I have to look forward to now? Stupid Starbucks.

By the way, the Starbucks Gossip blog probably could have told me about that little secret and more, had I been checking it regularly. But I did just learn that today is the official launch date for Starbucks' holiday marketing blitz, according to this Chicago Sun-Times article. At least they waited until after Halloween.