Ho, Ho, Ho - the Joke's On Us

I'm not complaining. I have always liked to do the dishes
at home. Makes for a sense of order and new beginnings.
Every day!

We do have a dishwasher, and I use it. It is an old one and
it still works, just like me. Once in a while, some pans and
other things need just a little "prep" before they go into the
washer. Then the button gets polked to enable the magic to
begin! So - I still need to buy liquid dish soap.

About the liquid dish soap . . . For the last few months, I
noticed that it seemed to be a lot more runny than before.
Not nearly as much body to it. At first, I didn't pay much
attention. Then, I noticed that the liquid soap runs off the
surface needing to be pre-scrubbed, before it has a chance
to foam up and do its work. For a while, I thought it was a
matter of "quality control" at the liquid dish soap factory. A
bad batch perhaps?

I checked other brands lined up along the dish soap aisle. It
is easy to do . . . just tilt the plastic bottle a bit, then return
it to the upright position and see how long it takes before the
soap returns back to the level. The saying that "water seeks
its own level" applies to liquid soap as well. Try it yourself!
Call it comparison shopping. Invariably, the result is almost
the same. Dish soap actually is less viscous. Though they
look the same with their "cheerful" colors of green, blue, rose,
lavender, and yellow.

I saw a report in the news that all kinds of products are being
resized and modified in some way, but appear to be the same
or even a better deal. Packaging is creatively deceptive. In the
name of  "being green" by saving packaging material means
less price. "Low price" for even a lesser amount, because people
pay more attention to price than to quantity. I decided that I need
to be on the lookout for deals that may not be deals - for me or
for the environment.

Oh, and another thing . . . I  noticed this morning that the water
coming out of our kitchen faucet seems to be considerably thinner,
less substantial. Do you suppose that our city's water plant, in 
order to save money, has found a way to remove one of the 
hydrogen atoms from H2O, so that it is now simply -

HO, HO, HO !