As I was perusing candies at my local store yesterday, I decided to buy some M&Ms.
Why? Rich likes them and I don’t like them as much so hopefully I won’t eat as many…
Apparently I haven’t shopped for them in a while because I had no idea of the plethora of flavors now available!
I counted at least nine flavors and that doesn’t include seasonal flavors!
One of the first things I studied in Business 101 over 30 years ago was the Product Life Cycle.
Each product that gets to a point where it is sold goes through a common time line from introduction, to growth, to maturity, and then decline.
That’s why my favorite toothpaste keeps disappearing every few years. The manufacturers decide that sales have declined so they re-introduce a slightly modified toothpaste that then goes through it’s own product life cycle.
So, back to M&Ms.
I’m not sure what’s happening. Either the original M&Ms has a very long maturity time span or the introduction of other flavors of M&Ms help original M&Ms cycle back to the growth phase.
Here are the current M&M flavors NOT counting season flavors like Candy Corn and Gingerbread and Cherry Cordial and Red Velvet and…
It’s the scariest thing I’ve heard about since . . . well . . . a long, long time!
It’s basically Yelp! for people.
Yelp! publishes crowd-sourced reviews about local businesses and promotes social networking.
Created by two women from southern California, the peeple concept helped them raise $8 million from venture capitalists.
As an app, peeple will allow people, real people, to rate other people using a scale from 1 to 5. And there will be a place for the rater to make comments about the people they rate.
Seriously, all they need to rate and berate or praise you is your phone number.
You need a Facebook account to rate others, but, and this is the big BUT, the others they rate do not need to give permission to be rated.
So say I know my child’s teacher’s cell phone number, and the teacher had the audacity to ‘give’ my kid a bad grade (regardless of the fact that my child didn’t do any homework). I can get on peeple and, using the teacher’s cell phone number, rate him/her a 1 out of 5 and lambaste him/her for the poor grade.
The teacher finds out about the rating and comments when he/she gets a text from peeple with the rating and the comments; I’m guessing the text message is what’s considered the ‘inbox’.
Negative comments sit unpublished in the person’s inbox for 48 hours which “gives both parties the opportunity to work out any disputes. If their dispute can’t be resolved by then, the comment will go live.”
The peeple app allows us to better choose who we hire, do business with, date, become our neighbours, roommates, landlords/tenants, and teach our children. There are endless reasons as to why we would want this reference check for the people around us.
The irony behind their ‘reason’ for creating the app is in direct opposition to one of the founder’s VERY recent post on Facebook where she wants to prevent people from posting on their page. Apparently what’s good for the goose isn’t good for the gander…
It’s not out yet, but peeple sounds just super scary. There’s lots more to their original business plan that I haven’t covered here that make it even more frightening!
Maybe its just me, but it sounds like letting bazillions of Donald Trumps out into the social media clouds where they can belittle, lie about, and bully others…
Thirty-one non stop days of All About Breasts for Breast Cancer Awareness Month.
While I’m glad that so many women’s (and men’s because men can get breast cancer, too) lives are saved by the focus on all things pink this month, I wish that as much attention was put on the leading cause of women’s deaths: heart disease.
While 1 in 31 American women dies from breast cancer each year, 1 in 3 dies of heart disease.
My most embarrassing moment was when I was getting a shot of penicillin for tonsillitis. I knew I was getting a shot. I knew it was going be in my right rump. I watched her start to give me the shot.
And then I slapped the nurse’s hand away. Not tapped, but slapped with an audible WHACK.
I have no idea why I did it.
When I apologized, she just laughed and said, “You’d be surprised at how often that happens.”
Here are some embarrassing medical exams from the medical professional’s point of view. (Thanks to Carol for sharing these on Facebook!)
EMBARRASSING MEDICAL EXAMS
A man comes into the ER and yells . . .’My wife’s going to have her baby in the cab.’
I grabbed my stuff, rushed out to the cab, lifted the lady’s dress and began to take off her underwear.
Suddenly I noticed that there were several cabs – – –
and I was in the wrong one.
Submitted by Dr. Mark MacDonald, San Francisco
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At the beginning of my shift I placed a stethoscope on an elderly and slightly deaf female patient’s anterior chest wall.
‘Big breaths,’ I instructed.
‘Yes, they used to be,’ replied the patient.
Submitted by Dr. Richard Byrnes, Seattle, WA
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One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct (heart attack for us non-medical types).
Not more than five minutes later, I heard her reporting to the rest of the family that he had died of a ‘massive internal fart.’
Submitted by Dr. Susan Steinberg
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During a patient’s two week follow-up appointment with his cardiologist, he informed me, his doctor, that he was having trouble with one of his medications.
‘Which one?’ I asked.
‘The patch. The Nurse told me to put on a new one every six hours
and now I’m running out of places to put it!’
I had him quickly undress and discovered what I hoped I wouldn’t see.
Yes, the man had over fifty patches on his body!
Now, the instructions include removal of the old patch before applying a new one.
Submitted by Dr. Rebecca St. Clair, Norfolk, VA
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While acquainting myself with a new elderly patient, I asked, ‘How long have you been bedridden?’
After a look of complete confusion she answered, ‘ Why, not for about twenty years – when my husband was alive.’
Submitted by Dr. Steven Swanson, Corvallis, OR
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I was performing rounds at the hospital one morning and while checking up on a man I asked . . .’ So how’s your breakfast this morning?’
‘It’s very good except for the Kentucky Jelly. I can’t seem to get used to the taste,’ Bob replied.
I then asked to see the jelly and Bob produced a foil packet labeled ‘KY Jelly.’
Submitted by Dr. Leonard Kransdorf, Detroit
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A nurse was on duty in the Emergency Room when a young woman with purple hair styled into a punk rocker Mohawk, sporting a variety of tattoos, and wearing strange clothing, entered. It was quickly determined that the patient had acute appendicitis, so she was scheduled for immediate surgery.
When she was completely disrobed on the operating table,
the staff noticed that her pubic hair had been dyed green
and above it there was a Tattoo that read . . .’ Keep off the grass.’
Once the surgery was completed, the surgeon wrote a short note on the patient’s dressing, Which said, ‘Sorry . . . Had to mow the lawn.’
Submitted by RN with No Name
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As a new, young MD doing his residency in OB, I was quite embarrassed when performing female pelvic exams.
To cover my embarrassment I had unconsciously formed a habit of whistling softly.
The middle-aged lady upon whom I was performing this exam suddenly burst out laughing, further embarrassing me.
I looked up from my work and sheepishly said … ‘ I’m sorry. Was I tickling you?’
She replied with tears running down her cheeks from laughing so hard . . ..
‘ No, doctor, but the song you were whistling was, “I wish I was an Oscar Meyer Wiener”.’
Sophie and I took off yesterday to find a new place to go for a walk and/or jog.
The one we tried a few weeks ago just didn’t feel right. I think we found a good fit yesterday…
It’s at the Eagle Sports Complex which houses a lot of sport venues including a skateboard park, bike trails and a BMX course.
A few random pictures from our virgin hike…
It has just the right amount of ups and downs and curves and swirls.
The views of the Treasure Valley are pretty spectacular.
The myriad of trails are well marked.
There is a lot of wildlife as indicated by huge badger holes. Didn’t see one thankfully, but I did see a jackrabbit. Sophie only smelled it and stopped in her tracks to figure out what was going on.
Some of the bike trails were indicated as MOST DIFFICULT.
When I saw these bridges to nowhere, I never thought anyone would jump off of them…
But I was very wrong. This is where they land about 15′ below the bridge.
There were lots of bicycle racers competing for prizes.
And there are lots more trails to explore next time we go…
I’m in the middle of listening to a Robert Littell book called The Amateur.
His books almost always deal with the CIA, and he’s most famous for The Company, an excellent book about the birth and history of the CIA.
The Amateur involves a cryptographer, Heller, who avenges is fiance’s death by terrorists by hunting them down in Czechoslovakia.
Elizabeth, an operative he meets there, is entranced with all things American, including American idioms. Hearing and laughing to Elizabeth’s mangling of these idioms makes me realize how difficult it would be to understand idioms in a non-native tongue.
For example, Elizabeth says, “It’s like finding a thread in a haystack.”
Heller says, “You mean needle.”
“What?”, Elizabeth asks, confused.
“The saying is ‘a needle in a haystack’,” says Heller.
Elizabeth retorts, “What difference does it make? Both are incredibly hard to find in a haystack…”
Elizabeth’s idiom trouble and her logic reminds me of the Ziva David character on the CBS show NCIS. Her distortion of idioms was delightful! I have so missed Zima since her character left the show…
Here are a few Zima idiom distortions…
Ziva: We hit a shamu. Susan: Did she mean a snafu?
Ziva: Bah hum-bog. Tony: What?
Ziva: We have come to sit on the baby.
PS For those of you who are NCIS and/or Ziva fans: There are rumors (again) that she’s coming back . Here’s hoping…
Over the last three weeks I’ve had a bit of a health scare. Everything’s fine, but it’s been an ‘interesting’ time…
During early September, I experienced what is called ‘gross hematuria’. You can Google it if you really want to know what it is, but, in a nut shell, it’s one bodily fluid that IS NOT supposed to exit your body coming out with another bodily fluid that IS supposed to exit your body.
I had it once before almost a year and a half ago, and at that time I attributed it to a new medication I was taking because it was listed as an uncommon side effect. I had the requisite testing and nothing was revealed. Eventually the side affects disappeared and all was well, so I attributed it to the medication that didn’t agree with me.
But I’m not on that medication now, so I was a bit surprised and bummed when gross hematuria happened again.
I went to see my family doctor who diagnosed a probable urinary tract infection. I had never had one before, so I was a bit surprised.
I was placed on antibiotics for a week, but I got a call a few days later (after test results came in) and was told, “Lo and behold–you don’t have a UTI.”
Kidney stones were suspected, but I didn’t have any of the normal symptoms associated with them–the INTENSE pain, nausea, fever, etc… (If you’ve ever experienced or talked with someone who has had them, you know how awful they are!)
I figured that the stones weren’t quite mobile yet, and I didn’t really want to have another MRI to determine what was going on because how much could change in 18 months. Besides, the gross hematuria wasn’t THAT bad…
However, I had some other symptoms that were a bit worrisome. So I asked our wonderful friends Dean and Lil, a gynecologist and nurse, if I needed to see a specialist.
Dean said, “Yes.” He said that if men have gross hematuria once, they need a full urinary tract workup. If women have it twice, they need to.
While that was bad news for me because this was my second episode, I did giggle a bit to myself because, once again, something that involves penises is much more important than whatever a woman has. 🙂
(I’m sure there is some anatomical and/or biological reason for the single vs double reasoning, but it still made me giggle…)
Long story short…
I went to see a specialist, and I am fine.
I do not have anything visible in my kidneys, and, most importantly, because it’s what I thought I had, I do not have bladder cancer.
He tested this and tested that. He looked up into this and looked around at that.
Everything came back negative. (D = True Negative)
I learned a lot throughout this month. For example, I didn’t realize that bladder cancer is so prevalent.
Men are about 3 to 4 times more likely to get bladder cancer during their lifetime than women. Overall, the chance men will develop this cancer during their life is about 1 in 26. For women, the chance is about 1 in 90.
I also learned that bladder cancer is often caused by exposure to chemicals including smoke (I was around a lot of second hand smoke for twenty years, but then again–haven’t we all been around it.) and arsenic (The water where I lived for 30 years had lots of arsenic in it.)
The good news for me was that if I had bladder cancer, it wasn’t really my fault. I couldn’t help the fact that my parents smoked, and I couldn’t help the fact that the water had arsenic.
Sounds stupid, but I’ve always felt that my health issues since my bicycle fall were my fault because I should have not fallen or I should have launched myself off of my bike so that I landed on lawn instead of asphalt.
Regardless, I was so very, very relieved when the doctor told me that he saw no tumors in my bladder.
But that relief only lasted a few seconds, because then he said in an accusing tone, “But you have LOTS of gallstones!”
Gallstones are usually caused by high cholesterol which is often caused by a diet too high in fat. That’s partially true for me because I’m not the healthiest eater, but endocrine changes to my body after my bicycle fall also contribute to my high cholesterol. So the gallstones ARE my fault.
That being said, I’m still so relieved that I ONLY have gallstones and (fingers crossed–so far) they aren’t bothering me a bit. 🙂
Her day begins early in the morning, when Rich gets up to start his coffee brewing. He lets her out of her crate and she comes up on our bed to sleep with me a bit longer.
After a few early morning stretches…
… she is on high alert watching for squirrels.
Sophie discovers that she made a mess of her bed last night and tries to lure me to straighten it up.
“What are we going to do today?”
“How about we play with my cupcake toy?”
As I go out to the garage, Sophie asks, “Are we going somewhere?”
And then decides if we are, it would be best if she untied my shoelaces because that’s what her job is… Day in and day out… Every time we go somewhere…
At this point she’s not sure if we’re going for a walk or for a drive. It’s best to see if the car door opens magically.
Once she’s in the car, it’s not quite as fun as she thought it would be.
Back from our drive, she needs a nap.
Nap’s over. “How about let’s play with my cloth Frisbee.”
“OK!”
“Wait a minute. I think I heard the UPS guy drive by…”
“Time to fix dinner.” Sophie’s always VERY nearby to help.
She thinks if she looks pathetic enough, she’ll get more treats. Rarely works with me. Works well with Rich. 🙂
Each product that gets to a point where it is sold goes through a common time line from introduction, to growth, to maturity, and then decline.
One day I had to be the bearer of bad news when I told a wife that her husband had died of a massive myocardial infarct (heart attack for us non-medical types).
I’m in the middle of listening to a Robert Littell book called The Amateur.
“What?”, Elizabeth asks, confused.
Here are a few Zima idiom distortions…
… she is on high alert watching for squirrels.
