It is Sunday, December 28 and there are only 362 days until Christmas.  It’s never too early to start planning.  Today we remember the birthdays of Ceslav Vanura, Galixa Lavallee and Stan Lee.  On this day in 1065 Westminster Abbey opened in London, in 1846 Iowa became the 29^th state and in 1968 the Beatles’ “Beatles – The White Album” went to #1 and stayed there for 9 weeks.  In Iowa it is Admission Day and in Nepal it is King Birendra’s Birthday.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas.  We did.  The lovely Elaine did Christmas Eve and the traditional Italian seafood meal.  Technically, you are supposed to have seven kinds of fish, but we only had five.  In all the time we have been doing this meal, we only had all seven types once and that was the year we included the Peppridge Farm goldfish that we had for the grandkids.  But we don’t care.  My brother Jack joined us.  He has been coming for Christmas Eve dinner since before the lovely Elaine and I were married.  

The evening was great.  My son, daughter-in-law and the two grandsons came and we drank, exchanged gifts, ate, rested, ate some more, rested and then had candy, dessert and coffee.   We talked, reminisced, laughed and had a great time.  Yes, I also had Christmas music playing all evening.  When everyone departed, we sat and watched the movie “A Christmas Story” once through.  When it started the second time, the lovely Elaine dozed and I finished the clean-up from dinner.  Don’t be too impressed.  It consisted mainly of emptying and reloading the dishwasher, hand washing some glassware that could not go in the machine and cleaning the stove.

The following morning, because we slept later than usual, we did not follow our usual tradition of going in the hot tub.  We had a leisurely breakfast of stollen and coffee and then showered and dressed to go to Elaine’s cousin’s house for dinner.  When we got home that evening, we poured ourselves a drink, changed into bathing suits and went into the hot tub.  I put Christmas music on and turned on the outside speakers and we had a great evening.

One thing I noticed on the ride to her cousin’s house was signs on the highway telling us how many miles and minutes it was to certain places.  What I found interesting was the disparity between the sign information and reality.  Do the math and let me know if I am wrong.  We were traveling on a highway that had no traffic to speak of.  We were doing 65 miles an hour.  The sign told us that we were 12 miles from a town and the travel time was 13 minutes.  Huh?!?  A rough calculation tells me that if I waited for 13 minutes to look for the town they mentioned, I would be over two miles past it at the end of that time.

I could sort of understand it if they had the time and mileage match, but in what universe does it take 13 minutes to go 12 miles when you are doing 65 mph?  This was not an unusual occurrence.  I have seen this type of thing on a number of occasions.  Sometimes I attribute it to traffic congestion.  Sometimes there is a difference because the speed limit is lower in construction areas (not that anyone actually slows down the way they are supposed to).  I just think that if you are going to have these signs, you should try to make them accurate.

As an example, on one of our trips to see our friend Pat, we saw a sign that told us that a serious accident had occurred and we should expect delays.  This was at around mile marker 125 on the parkway.  When we got off some 60 miles later, we had not yet seen the accident.  I figured that it had happened further south and we were lucky enough to get off the road before we hit the delays.  Or, the accident had happened much earlier, perhaps even the day before, and the sign had not been updated yet.  Don’t get me all excited in anticipation of seeing burning wreckage and lifeless bodies and then not have anything for me.

Traveling on a holiday is nice because the traffic is lighter, the drivers are not, generally, as crazy and when you go by a construction area there is an excuse for no work being done.  Not like on a normal day and when you go by there are trucks all over, equipment moving around and four or five guys watching one guy dig a hole.  You still have to be careful on the way home because by then everyone has been eating and drinking and are now falling asleep or not able to see too well, much like coming home from the shore on a Sunday night, except that on Sundays in the summer you are going much slower. 

This week our fact provides us with information that has been plaguing minds for years.  In fact, Gilligan of Gilligan’s Island had a first name that was only used once, on the never-aired pilot show.  His first name was Willy.  The skipper’s real name was Jonas Grumby.  It was mentioned once, in the first episode on their radio’s newscast about the wreck.  Finally, some closure on this tale of castaway woe.

I would like to wish everyone a Happy New Year!  I wish you happiness, health, laughter, joy, hope and all good things in the coming year.  Celebrate, enjoy and drive safely.  Remember that they (who is this “they” we always refer to?) say that whatever you do at midnight on New Year’s Eve, you will do all year long.  The lovely Elaine says she is not doing that in the middle of a party.  Yes, I mean taking a nap.

Happy New Year!

It is Sunday, December 21 and there are only 4 days until Christmas!!  Fortunately, my baking is almost done and the lovely Elaine has the gifts wrapped.  More about Christmas in just a bit.  First let’s take a moment to remember the birthdays of Thomas Becket, Benjamin Disraeli and Frank Zappa.  On this day in 1620, 103 Mayflower pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock, in 1898 scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered radium and in 1946 Frank Capra’s “It’s a Wonderful Life” premiered.  It is Independence Day/Unity Day in Nepal and Forefathers’ Day in Plymouth, MA.

I would like to mention a few notes about the coming holiday.  Christmas is an annual festival commemorating the birth of Jesus.  While the birth year is estimated among modern historians to have been between 7 and 2 BC, the exact month and day are unknown.  By the early-to-mid 4^th century, the western Christian Church had placed Christmas on December 25.  The holiday has been known by various other names throughout its history.  The Anglo-Saxons referred to the feast as Midwinter.  In Old English, Geola (Yule) referred to the period corresponding to December and January, which was eventually equated with Christian Christmas

Many popular customs associated with Christmas developed independently of the celebration of the birth of Jesus.  Certain elements had origins in pre-Christian festivals that were celebrated around the winter solstice by pagan populations that were later converted to Christianity.  These elements, including the Yule log from Geola and gift giving from Saturnalia, became part of Christmas over the centuries.

The prevailing atmosphere of Christmas has also continuously evolved since the holiday’s inception, ranging from a sometimes raucous, drunken carnival-like state in the Middle Ages, to a tamer family-oriented and children-centered theme introduced in a 19^th-century reformation.  Additionally, the celebration of Christmas was banned on more than one occasion within certain Protestant groups, such as Puritans, due to concerns that it was too pagan or unbiblical.  Imagine what those groups would do if they saw the commercialism that has developed now!  And that ends this year’s “History of Christmas” lesson.

Recently, the lovely Elaine and I had an opportunity to go to the mall.  It was early enough in the day that we did not anticipate crowds.  It was a fascinating trip.  I am amazed at the number of senior citizens who are out at that time of day (it was shortly after the mall opened).  I was again afforded the opportunity to people watch and would like to share a couple observations with you.  First, let me clarify what I mean by senior citizens.  I am talking about the ones in their mid to late 70’s and older.

 

These are the people who go the mall and then walk around as if they are the only people in the place.  They just sort of meander along without any concern for the people around them.  They always have a look on their face that says they have no idea where they are, why they are there or how they got there, but , “Hey, what the hell, let’s just sightsee while we’re here.”  It can be amusing to watch them, as long as you are not trying to get passed them to get to a particular store.  They look at some of the things that are for sale and have absolutely no idea what they are seeing.  It is especially interesting to watch as they pass the Brookstone store.  They look at the items there and you can see the puzzlement on their faces.  It is the same look I (and others, I am sure) get when my grandsons start talking about Pokemon and Minecraft.  Seniors won’t even look in the Apple store.  They go by it as if they are afraid they will catch something.  Generally, they seem to go to the mall so that they can see people that they don’t know and get in their way.

I noticed a new thing that I had not been aware of before.  Perhaps I missed it because the mall was crowded on our other visits, or maybe the seniors had found their way out by the time we got there.  This new thing was confined, as far as I could tell, to men.  It is what I call the “Toot and Scoot.”  This is when a man walks along and breaks wind, audibly.  He pauses for a second, looks to see if anyone has reacted and then quickens his pace to get away from the offending olfactory evidence.  I witnessed this several times within a 10 minute span.  There was one guy who should have someone talk to him about his diet.  It also reminds me of a joke:

A woman goes to visit her doctor and he asks what he can do for her.  She tells him that she has an embarrassing problem – she keeps silently breaking wind.  “What can you do to help me doctor?” His reply was, “The first thing we should do is have your hearing checked.”  Thank you, I’ll be here all week.  Don’t forget to tip your waitress.  But I digress …

I did notice another interesting thing during that trip to the mall and it had nothing to do with seniors.  One incident that I found particularly amusing happened to a young man.  He was walking along at a brisk pace, talking on the phone and apparently in a hurry.  He rounded the corner and went for the escalator to the upper floor.  Unfortunately, he was not paying attention and tried to get on the down stairway rather than the up one.  It took him a minute to figure out what had happened and why he wasn’t going up.  I laughed out loud at that. 

You will notice, if you watch, that there are three types of young people wandering around the mall.  There are the people, male and female, who walk around, in a hurry, talking on their phone as if they are making plans for the transplant surgery they are going to do.  There are the young people who wander as if they have nothing to do and all day to get it done, texting their friends and oblivious to the world around them.  Finally there are the mothers, wearing their yoga pants, with their hair pulled back in a bun or pony tail, pushing strollers with crying children.  Add that crying to the cacophony of lousy Christmas music and you are talking holiday (please note the sarcastic tone here). If you do not already go to the mall for the entertainment, you should.  Get a cup of coffee, find a place to sit and just watch and enjoy the show.

Our fact this week tells us that 40% of the American population has never visited a dentist, but many of them go to Walmart regularly.

I would like to take this opportunity to wish everyone a Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanzaa or whatever holiday you celebrate this season.  May it be filled with happiness, family, fun, good food and good health.  Have a safe holiday and tune in next week!

It is Sunday, December 14 and there are only 11 days until Christmas!  It’s hard to believe that we are that close and I have not started baking yet.  Fortunately, I have already stocked up on preservatives like guar gum, so I will still be able to eat my cookies in February.  Today we remember the birthdays of Nostradamus, Richard Batka and Lee Remick.  On this day in 872, John VIII began his reign as Catholic Pope, in 1819 Alabama was admitted as the 22^nd state and in 1955 the Tappan Zee Bridge in New York opened to traffic.  In El Salvador it is Revolution Day, in Turkey it is the Festival of Mevlana-Jeladdin Rumi and in Alabama it is Admission Day.

We took a few days to go visit our friend Pat down the shore, recently.  It was great to see her, as always and we had a great time, as always.  On the way home, we were passed by a county sheriff car that stated that it was part of the Criminalistic Investigation Unit.  I had never heard of the word criminalistic and assumed it was an error.  I reasoned that since the word linguistics meant the study of human language, criminalistic meant the study of criminals.  That meant that criminalistic investigation was from the Department of Redundancy Department and was the investigation of the study of criminals. 

The lovely Elaine and I had a great time deriding the person who developed the title.  It turns out I was wrong.  Criminalistic is a real word which means the application of scientific techniques in collecting and analyzing physical evidence in criminal cases.  So you see that you can learn new things every day if you are open to the opportunity.

Last week I mentioned the baked goods of the season and the problems I had dealing with them as a diabetic.  I thought I might go a little further into the subject, just to give you an idea of the difficulties the average person has in dealing with this problem.  Both the lovely Elaine and I are type 2 diabetics.  When we were first diagnosed, we went to a nutritionist who gave us some good advice on how to handle our eating habits so we could keep the problem under control.  She gave us good guidance on what we could and could not eat.  We could not eat many of the foods we liked, we had to limit the amounts of the ones we could eat and we could not eat anything that resembled tasty.  We were basically limited to cardboard and celery.

We tried like crazy to adapt to the new regimen and were successful for some time.  Through careful monitoring of our diet, the lovely Elaine was able to control her sugar numbers without using medication and I was able to keep my numbers in check using only one medication.  I stopped using sugar in my coffee and switched to an artificial sweetener.  We were good about eating salads and avoiding what our doctor referred to as “white food” – white rice, white bread, pasta, etc.  We were careful to create menus that afforded us the nutritional benefits we needed, while giving us the illusion that we were enjoying the food we were eating.  The problem is that you can only eat chicken so many ways before you decide that you have had it.

What makes everything more difficult is that for every solution that one “expert” comes up with, there is another one who tells you that what you are doing is wrong and you should be doing something different.  Our original nutritionist said that the big thing was to watch our intake of carbs, because they convert to sugar.  We also read that you should count the net carbs – that is the number of carbs minus the ones from fiber.  We read more recently that you need to consider all the carbs and not deduct the fiber.  The lovely Elaine tried another nutritionist, recently, who told her that you didn’t need to be so conscious of carbs.

I read a number of articles that have told me that I should not be using the artificial sweetener that I have been using because it has adverse affects on your health and can actually raise your sugar numbers.  The nutritionist said that if you are not using that much (less than eight packets a day) it is not a problem.  What makes things even more confusing is that you really have no idea who to listen to or what to do.

Recently, our doctor had us do a test that monitored our glucose over a four day period.  We were supposed to test ourselves four times a day – prior to each meal and just before going to bed.  We were also supposed to list what we had to eat at each meal.  I am not sure what the value of that was.  I could see testing myself after a meal to see how what I ate affected my sugar.  But I did not see what the value was of testing before eating if I wasn’t testing again just after eating.  What makes this whole thing even more interesting is that a couple times I tested myself just before going to bed; then I tested in the morning before breakfast and found that my number was higher – without having had anything to eat after testing at night.  Go figure!

What it comes down to is that no one really has any solutions to the problem.  I am taking three different medications for my diabetes.  I have altered, somewhat, what I am eating in an effort to control my sugar intake.  My numbers continue to fluctuate and depending on which expert I choose to read this week I am doing or not doing the right things.  I try to watch sodium intake, because someone said that was good, someone else said it is bad to limit sodium too much.  I have eaten white rice and not seen any major jump in my number and have seen an increase after eating grilled chicken salad and brown rice.

So what it comes down to is that I am going to eat the cookies and candy and other goodies this Christmas and will see what happens.  My guess is that I will continue to have issues, will continue to take my medications and will continue to be befuddled by all the expert opinions that are out there.

This week our fact tells us that, at one time, the Romans used urine to whiten their teeth.  It supposedly worked.  I guess this was what necessitated the invention of mouthwash.  I also imagine this was originally where the phrase “potty mouth” came from.

Today is Sunday, December 7 and there are only 18 days until Christmas!  Make sure you get your holiday candy now because in the next week or so the Valentine’s Day stuff will be out.  Let’s take a moment to remember the birthdays of Girolamo Trombeti, Solomon Schechter and Eli Wallach.  On this day in 185 Chinese Emperor Lo-Yang saw a supernova, in 1787 Delaware became the first state to ratify the constitution and in 1945 the microwave oven was patented.  It is the Ratification Day in Delaware, National Day in the Ivory Coast and Pearl Harbor Day in the US.

I would like to spend just a little time talking about Pearl Harbor Day.  This is a day that commemorates the attack on the US naval base there.  The attack was a surprise military strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy.  It was intended as a preventive action in order to keep the US Pacific Fleet from interfering with military actions the Empire of Japan was planning in Southeast Asia.  The base was attacked by 353 Japanese fighter planes, bombers and torpedo planes.

Eight US Navy battleships were damaged, with four being sunk.  The Japanese also sank or damaged three cruisers, three destroyers, an anti-aircraft training ship and one minelayer.  In addition, 188 US aircraft were destroyed.  The attack killed 2,403 Americans and 1,178 others were wounded. The following day, the US declared war on Japan and entered into WW II.  If you get a chance during the day, take a moment to remember those who lost their lives that day in the service of their country.  Thank you.

Now let’s move along to other issues.  This is a time of year that creates issues for me.  On one hand I love the season – the music, the baked goods, the happiness, etc.  On the other hand I dislike the season – the music, the baked goods, the happiness, etc.  Let me explain why.  I am going to skip the music aspect for the moment.  First I want to address the baked goods.  I enjoy baking Christmas Stollen every year.  It is a favorite and it would not be Christmas morning without it.  The batch makes two loaves.  Now we enter into the area that becomes an issue.  I am somewhat nuts about Christmas baking.  I was raised in a household where you did not touch Christmas cookies, breads and so on until Christmas Day.

My mother made 20-some varieties of cookies, so there were tins of them sitting around long before Christmas Day and they could not be touched.  I try to adhere to that idea now.  Why?  Because that is the way I always felt it should be.  To be honest, I did snitch cookies, but I never admitted it.  The problem comes now because the lovely Elaine feels that if it is made we should consume the stollen and not wait.  Besides there are two loaves, so we can still have it Christmas morning.  I go along with her, but my inner child disagrees.

The other problem with the baked goods is they all taste so good.  Being diabetic, I should not be eating them.  I only make a couple types of cookies because of that.  I know that when we visit people, they will have cookies, or they will bring them if they come to visit us.  They all look so good that I hate to pass them up.  Plus, I feel that it would be impolite to not partake of their generosity.  I like to believe that sugar and calories consumed during the holidays don’t count, but I really know better.

So that is one issue.  The next is the happiness aspect.  I love seeing my family on Christmas Eve.  We have the traditional Italian fish menu and it is great fun to have everyone here.  We remember past Christmases, laugh a lot and have a great evening.  We exchange gifts and the happiness is genuine and heartfelt.  What bothers me is the fake happiness you see at large parties, brought on by alcohol and the feeling that you have to be happy because it is a party.  You go to these festivities and express how happy you are and how great it is to be together, even though there are people there that you would rather kick in the groin than hug and wish the best holiday greetings to.  I could go on, but I think you get the idea.

Now let us turn our attention to the music.  I love Christmas music.  I play it as much as possible from Thanksgiving to New Year’s Day.  There are songs I could do without, like “Grandma Got Run Over By a Reindeer” or “It’s Christmas and I Don’t Know Where I Am” but those songs say Christmas to someone.  What I dislike is pushing songs on me that say nothing about the holiday and passing them off as Christmas songs.  Things like “Winter Wonderland” or “Baby It’s Cold Outside”.  It gets cold in February, but we don’t hear that song then.  One request I have is could we please, PLEASE stop playing “My Favorite Things”?  I mean forever not just during this season.

I also hate when companies take a standard song and rewrite the words to sell their product.  I can’t stand using the “Twelve Days of Christmas” to sell cars or any of the other lame attempts you hear during December.  What would happen if other groups started doing this?  How about this commercial:

(to the tune of Winter Wonderland)

You’re getting old, things are changing,

And your body is rearranging.

You should have no fear, when dealing with your rear,

Come in for a colonoscopy.

(Announcer)

Yes, Dr. Hugo (the H is silent) Rectuman will be glad to check you out. Call us today at 1-800-RECTUMS

(Jingle)

Things you do will affect you.

Causing problems when you go poo.

You should have no fear, when dealing with your rear,

Come in for a colonoscopy.

This week our fact tells us that Ethelred the Unready, King of England in the tenth century, spent his wedding night in bed with his wife and his mother-in-law.  No offense to my mother-in-law, but that is not the direction I would have gone for a three-way.  Was she there as a tutor?  This might explain why not too many people have heard of Ethelred the Unready.  If he was that inept in bed, he probably was worse as a king.