A couple thoughts

There were seven (7) votes cast in last week's poll:  two yes, the Bears will go to the Super Bowl; two no, they won't, and three who cares?  Well, I care. I'd like the Bears to go to the Super Bowl. I'd like them to win this time, if they do get there. I'd like to win the lottery too.

The new poll is lame, I know, but I am not feeling particularly creative today.

Here's a better question. How hot does water have to be to kill germs? I've been wondering that for around 55 years now. I got to thinking about it again when I was washing the dishes yesterday. When I was a kid, I tried to get away with using cold water for the final rinse because the hot water out of the tap was very hot and hurt my delicate little hands. My mother told me that was completely wrong and categorically unacceptable. When I asked why, she said, "Because cold water doesn't kill germs."

An autoclave heats up to about 250°F. But if water boils at 212°, then 250° would be steam, and I would blister myself. Maybe it has to be as hot as the inside of a safe piece of chicken, which I think is 160°.

Well, more on that later. I'll have to go see how hot the water is that comes out of the tap.

I said in a previous post that I was going to come back to the subject of putting peanut butter and mustard on a hot dog, one of my favorite gastronomic delights.  If you've never tried it, you should -- peanut butter and mustard together makes a whole new taste – it doesn’t taste like either one, really. My only advice is this: don't put them both on the same side of the bun, especially if you're using chunky peanut butter.  It looks too much like what you might find in a diaper when a baby ...

Never mind. Just trust me on that.

How could you?

So, Netflix has this deal where you can stream movies right to your television through the miracle of a wireless router and your Wii game.  You can place videos in your streaming queue just like you do for your regular one where they mail you one or more DVDs at a time.  You can only stream the ones Netflix has marked as streamable, but they are plainly marked -- they're the same ones that you can watch instantly on your PC.

Taking advantage of the available streamabilities, we have been watching an Australian television show called "McLeod's Daughters" that first aired Down Under in 2001.  It's all about these people who live and work on cattle and sheep ranches, which they call farms -- all very western, except that instead of the west USA it's South Australia.  But they ride horses and wear cowboy hats and cowboy boots and have rodeos and do line dancing at the pub, and if it weren't for the horrendous accents with which they speak English and the fact that it apparently never snows there, you'd think it was Wyoming.

This show was a number-one ranked hit in Australia for at least the first six of its eight years on the tube.  Each season comprises 32 episodes which, commercial-free, are 42 minutes long, but if you whack the closing credits, you're down to about 40 minutes each.

We have slugged our way through these episodes, sometimes three or four at a sitting, until last Tuesday when we finished Episode 8 of Season 7.  We tuned in Wednesday night to see Episode 9, and lo and behold, it isn't there any more.

Netflix, apparently the sole arbiter of what can and cannot be streamed, has removed it from the instant-playability list. 

I hope Netflix rots in jingle-bell hell forever.

Today's Blog

I have come across another one of those locutions that is unique to my family. It came to me while I ate my lunch today -- a Braunschweiger-on-rye sandwich.

When Mom made those, she didn't slice it, she just sort of gouged out pieces from the casing and applied them to the bread, using her knife to spread them around a little. Hence our name for it was "spread meat."

I think my brother was too embarrassed to call it spread meat. At least in polite company he called it liver sausage.

I must not fail to mention that today is Joan of Arc's birthday (1412), or at least the best guess as to her date of birth. She probably didn't even know. She's 599, which means next year we'll have to throw a big 600th birthday bash for her.

I'll make the spread-meat sandwiches.

A Happy Anniversary

Seven years ago today was the first day of the rest of my smoke-free life. I smoked my last cigarette the day before.

The previous fall I had chosen January 4, 2004, as my quit date. In anticipation thereof I had already started taking Wellbutrin, and I had put in a supply of nicotine patches. Michigan’s big cigarette tax increase, effective January 1 of that year, provided further motivation.

And, as if that were not enough, I caught a cold the week before that turned into pneumonia. I could barely breathe on January 4, 2004, much less smoke a cigarette.

All these factors, along with herculean willpower, combined to make my quitting a success. I now cheerfully refer to myself as a recovering nicotine addict.

The magic seven-year cycle of cell regeneration is now complete, and although pink is not my favorite color, I think it is the perfect shade for lungs.

I would be remiss if I failed to note that my beloved partner in life (with patches and determination, but not pneumonia) quit smoking that same day and has also remained smoke-free. That’s two more pink lungs for the record books.

Congratulations to us, I say.

But who's counting?

Observant readers will have noticed a counter to the left called Total Pageviews. I added it a week or so ago to see if I could determine how many people might actually be reading my blog. It increments whenever somebody views this page, although there is no way to know if the viewer actually reads it.

I had my choice of counting hits for the last week, the last month, or forever. I chose the latter. Just now it reads 1013, but I think 950 of those hits are probably from me logging in. After I publish a new post, I always click on "View Blog" so I can see that it actually is out there. Kind of like when you put a letter through the slot of the street-corner mailbox. You always have to open the lid again to make sure it went down. And then I reread, and find typos, and edit and republish -- it's a vicious circle.

As far as I know, there are only about six people who have ever read my blog, and I estimate only 2-1/2 of them (on average) read it regularly.

But, perhaps a better indication of readership is the other new feature -- the Poll. I've chosen to leave it out there until next Sunday at noon EST. And then we'll see. Of course, if somebody votes more than once, that would skew the numbers too.

Oh, well. I'm going to vote now. (Sorry, Bears.)

Is it the beginning of an era?

I can hear enough of the television in the living room to know it is tuned to OWN, the Oprah Winfrey Network which launched yesterday.

I am inclined to think that Oprah Winfrey is going to take over the world. God knows she has enough money to buy a good chunk of it. And anybody who can make a star out of Phil McGraw and a bestseller out of The Bridges of Madison County can do pretty much anything.

But I'm going to hold on that prediction for now. I used to think the same thing about Sears Roebuck and Co.

By 1974 when it built the world's tallest building in Chicago, Sears was poised to take over the world too, what with their retail stores that sold almost everything; catalogue sales for everything else; private label major appliances, automotive products, electronics, tools, hardware, furniture and farm machinery, among others; All State for insurance, Dean Witter Reynolds for investments, Coldwell Banker for real estate, and the Discover Card. The only thing Sears didn't sell was cars.

But then hard times came, Sears started divesting itself of various parts, and it sold the world's tallest building and moved its headquarters to Hoffman Estates, Illinois. Then it merged with K-Mart.

Hoffman Estates began as a housing tract in 1959. We used to call it Cardboard Heights, because there were rows and rows of houses that were all made out of ticky-tacky and they all looked just the same.

Oprah and Sears have Chicago in common, but, for her sake, I hope that's about all. I hope she doesn't end up moving Harpo Studios to Rolling Meadows. And I wish she'd make me a star.

Can a bank be egotistical, or is it just marketing?

I've just seen Michigan State get pulverized by Alabama in the Capital One Bowl. If this was a bowl game with a real bowl game name, like the Rose Bowl or the Sugar Bowl, the loss might affect me more, but who cares about a game named after a bank?

It was originally the Tangerine Bowl. Then it became the Florida Citrus Bowl, and then the Capital One Florida Citrus Bowl. Apparently the bank decided that was too much of a mouthful and eliminated the fruit altogether.

I suppose if I was putting up a crapload of money to sponsor something, I'd want my name on it too, which is how we end up with the "Rose Bowl Presented by Vizio" and the "All State Sugar Bowl." At least the original names are still in there somewhere. But will these succumb to capitalistic greed and become the Vizio Bowl and the All State Bowl?

All I know about Capital One is what I see in their credit card commercials, so I think they would have been better off to call it the Capital One Viking and Goat Bowl instead. A loss in that one might really get me down.

Happy new year, everyone.