Not Forgotten

Copied from a posting on Facebook.  A man walked into a bar and ordered a beer.  He left a note and asked the bartender if he would keep it there.  Very moving.

The Great Rip-Off Turns 100!

On Tuesday, the Oreo cookie turns 100 years old.  The first Oreo was introduced to America on March 6, 1912. 

The Oreo cookie

One would think that Oreo has been so successful because it was an original idea: a white, creamy filling between two chocolate wafers.  

But Oreo is actually a rip-off.  The original cookie with a white, creamy filling between two chocolate wafers was called the Hydrox. 

The Hydrox cookie

Hydrox made its debut in 1908, some four years before the Oreo.  It was finally pulled from production in 1999 after a 91 year run on the cookie market.  It simply could no longer compete with its younger carbon copy.

I remember Hydrox cookies.  We used to have them at our house all the time -- I'm sure it was because they were less expensive than Oreos.  I honestly couldn't tell the difference between the two.  Until, of course, Oreo introduced the "Double-Stuf"

The Oreo Double Stuf.  Making American kids fat twice as fast since 1975.

So why did Hydrox fade away while Oreo's popularity exploded?

My best guess is advertising muscle.  Hydrox was produced by Sunshine.  Oreo is a product of Nabisco.  David versus Goliath.  In which case, Goliath steals David's idea and smashes him with it.

But I think the name has a bit to do with it too.  Oreo sounds yummy.  Hydrox sounds like a weight loss supplement.   Oh, the power of words.

So happy birthday to, perhaps, the biggest (and most successful) rip-off artist of the last century:  Nabisco's

Much ado about nothing

So this is what we call a major winter storm, eh?

Sorry for the sarcasm, but I know I'm not the only one who feels this way.  The National Weather Service really built this one up.  They even issued warnings via the Emergency Broadcast System on television.  Prepare to be bludgeoned with 18 inches of snow in the Brainerd Lakes Area.  The end is nigh. 

The geniuses at the local newspaper, the Brainerd Daily Dispatch Disgrace, in all of their journalistic hyperbole, called the looming disaster "Snowmaggedon."  (Real original, I know)

The underlying feeling was that we've never seen snow before.  My personal thought was the weather folks have been bored all winter and they finally had something to talk about.  And this storm was being blown totally out of proportion.

It turns out I was right for once.

Now I'm not claiming to have seen it all, but I have lived in Minnesota for all of my 42 years.  I've seen bad winter storms.  And I started having major doubts about the severity of this "death from above" when 8:00 PM rolled around last evening and not a flake had fallen from the sky.  Eighteen inches of snow by Wednesday afternoon?  It had better start snowing like a son-of-a-gun real soon.

By 6:00 AM, this is what it looked like on my deck:

We just cleared five inches of snow overnight.  In Minnesota, this is considered a "nice little snowfall," not "Snowmaggedon."  If this happened in Tennessee, yes, it would bring things to a stand still.  But this is Minnesota.  We are very prepared for stuff like this.  This is our way of life during the winter season.  Yet amazingly, most of the area's schools were closed.  Because of five inches of snow?  Just incredible.

A massive overreaction if you ask me.

Yesterday's forecast said there would be a 100% chance of snow today, and to expect an additional four to six inches of accumulation.  Guess what?  It's not going to be even close.  In fact, I will eat my Sorels if we get so much as an extra half inch today.  A quick look at radar shows everything fizzling out in this area.

Chalk this up as another case of the National Weather Service making a mountain out of a mole hill.  Crying wolf.  Whatever you want to call it, they were wrong again.  At least they were for my part of the state.

Hard to take anything these people say seriously when they are consistently wrong.

Is this the big one??

According to this map, the weatherman feels fairly certain that my neck o' the woods is going to get absolutely hammered by a winter storm in the next 48 hours.

They scared us with "the possibility of a half foot of snow" on Sunday and we barely got a dusting. What will Tuesday and Wednesday bring?  Could the computer models be wrong twice in three days?

Sure they could.

Or we could have the first real snow storm of the season - maybe it will be remembered as the "Leap Day Blizzard of '12". 

But fret not.  Spring is exactly three weeks away.  And daylight savings time begins in eleven days!

If I have to break out my snow shovel for the first time this winter on March 1st, I'm not going to complain much. 

Some Catching Up

Time for what I'll have to call my weekly update, or perhaps bi-monthly?  A few things have happened since last time I typed away...

The most important thing is my oldest turned six years old on Feb. 9th.  We had a quiet party on the night of her birthday (Mom and Dad were working the entire weekend). 

Celebrating at home, Feb 9th.  Little brother had already started trashing the cake.

This past Saturday we had a bigger party for her at the Three Bears Waterpark at the Holiday Inn here in town.  Even cousins and Nora and Jacob came all the way from Bismarck, ND, to be at the party!

Little brother checking out the cake.  Again.

Ava's cupcake cake

A few of the kids at the party

Opening gifts...

Concentrating on her Lego veterinarian clinic, one of her birthday gifts.  This little work of art took over two hours for Dad (with some help from the birthday girl) to piece together!  She's determined to be a vet when she grows up. 

In the end, she had a lot of fun and the kids were exhausted from a day of swimming.

Now for my major pain in the a$$ over the past week.  On the afternoon of Ava's birthday, I started breaking out in hives.  This has been a lifelong problem and no one has ever been able to figure out why I spontaneously break out.  Luckily, it is much less frequently now compared to when I was a kid, but when it happens, it is pretty bad. 

I ended up in the clinic not once, but twice - once on the 10th and again on the 14th.  I was put on a  dose of prednisone, but when I started to taper off of it, the hives came right back even worse than before, so back to the Urgent Care I went early Valentine's day morning.  Dr. Thompson started me on a new tapering dose of prednisone and some different medications (temporarily) I haven't tried before. 

The hives were finally gone for good on the 16th.  Trust me, folks, having hives for eight days is not fun.  I can't figure out what triggered this outbreak - like I said, this has happened to me my entire life - although we started using new dryer sheets a few days prior to this happening.  I doubt that was the source, but we switched to our old dryer sheets just in case. 

This has just been a stupid winter for me.  Strep throat.  Hives.  Come on, that's enough!

On a better note, on Sunday (yesterday) we went over to Ray and Sandy's for a wonderfully delicious Sunday dinner.  Ham, chicken, corn, potatoes, carrots... pies... and more!  It was a wonderful treat and I got to see all my aunts and a few cousins I don't get to see very often.  It was a fun day and I would love to do that more often.

My kids and their great aunts Jo, Bev and Sandy - in a rare picture where Neil is almost smiling.  All that's missing is my Mom and Tissy and the picture would be perfect.

That's all for now.  For those who don't have Facebook, I will update my Twitter status as often as I can (found on the left column).  That way you can keep up to date between these long droughts of blogging.