Today is Sunday, April 15 and there are only 176 days until National Fluffernutter Day, so stock up now before the rush starts.  Today we remember the birthdays of Leonardo da Vinci, Charles Willson Peale and Claudia Cardinale.  On this day in 1738 the bottle opener was invented, in 1878 Harley Procter introduced Ivory Soap and in 1957 Saturday mail delivery was restored after Congress gave the Post Office $41 million.  In Africa it is African Freedom Day and in the US it is National Glazed Spiral Ham Day, National Rubber Eraser Day and National Take a Wild Guess Day.

I want to take a few moments to talk about the use of superlatives in advertising.  I watched a fair amount of TV this past week while I suffered through a cold and allergies.  I saw an advertisement that announced that a product was the 2018 product of the year.  It is only April!  How could this be the product of the year when there are still eight months left?  Is there a rule that says all new products must come out by the end of March so that the best one can be selected and announced in April?  If someone comes up with a fantastic product in July, does it get pushed off until the next year?

Then, of course, there are the commercials touting movies that tell us a movie is the feel-good movie of the year or the one movie to see this year.  Again, it is only April.  I guess movie-goers will just be watching so so, grade B films the rest of the year.  I have seen some of the movies that have been praised as fantastic and wondered why they bothered spending money to make the film and have enjoyed films that were panned.  The thing that we need to keep in mind is that these reviews are the opinions of the people that see the movie.  That would be like me telling you that broccoli is no good and should not be eaten, just because I don’t like it and, as a result, you eliminating broccoli from your diet.  I think we would all be better off if we were allowed to make our own decisions on what is good and bad, based on what we like, not some person who writes an article in a newspaper or magazine.

I just want to rant on one particular commercial and then I will move on.  The commercial is one where they are trying to tell you how fast their product is.  To demonstrate this, they put a powerful speed boat in the swimming pool at a hotel.  The boat revs up and people are blown out of chairs and water is sprayed everywhere “because fast should be fast.”  There is nothing about that that says fast.  The tag line would be better if it was “because nonsensical should be nonsensical.”  That’s all.  Thank you for indulging me.

As I said I spent the past week dealing with a cold and allergies.  The problem with that is you are never sure what medications you should be taking.  I spent a fair amount of time looking at the various options we had in the house and reading what symptoms they covered.  I also checked to see if any of the meds would conflict.  I came up with a combination that seemed to work for me, but it caused me to spend a fair amount of time napping.  In itself, that is not a problem.  I am retired and have earned the right to nap whenever I feel the need.  When it became an issue was when I was watching a show on TV and suddenly realized that the show had completely changed the cast.  It was upsetting until I saw that it was also 90 minutes later and a different show.

Anyway, since I was feeling under the weather – now there is a statement you hear a lot, if I may digress.  This phrase means to be ailing or ill and possibly has nautical or seafaring origins.  One source I found says that in the old days, when a sailor was feeling seasick, "he was sent down below to help his recovery, under the deck and away from the weather."  Another source says that during the days when ships were powered by sail, the captain’s log documented everything that happened during the day.  As sickness could spread rapidly on a ship, there were often times where the number of sailors that were ill exceeded the space provided in the log to record their names.  During these times, the excess names of the sick were recorded in the next column, which was reserved for the weather conditions of the day. Thus, it was not unusual for an ill sailor to be listed "under the weather".

So there you have some more trivia that you can dazzle your friends with.  As I was saying, since I was ailing, I did not get out much.  Now that I am feeling better and the weather is starting to improve, sort of, I hope to get out and have adventures that I can share with you.

This week our fact tells us that beetles taste like apples, wasps like pine nuts and white worms like fried pork rinds.  I am not sure I want to know how they went about finding this out, but I do know I will be much more cautious about eating baked goods with apple flavoring in them.