Tag: candy

Halloween Hijinks

~ Jim Flanigan ~ Leave a comment

I hope you all had a fun Halloween. We started celebrating the scary holiday by attending Halloweensteen, a Bruce Springsteen tribute concert performed annually by Chicago native singer/songwriter Michael McDermott. It appears to be a beloved Chicago tradition that I had never heard of before with many repeat attendees. Now I know why. The show exceeded our expectations. There’s a big difference between a bunch of local musicians forming a tribute band to mimic an artist’s music and a professional musician like McDermott assembling other professional musicians to interpret and perform another professional’s songs.

Our seats were outstanding. The last time my wife and I were at the excellent and classy Park West concert hall, we stood and swayed through a show by Brit pop-rocker Dave Edmunds. However, my wife has knee issues worse than me, so I called ahead to check and see if we could be guaranteed seats. Well, not only were we provided seats, but they were just off to the side of the stage on a padded bench in a handicappped section. We had a great view.

There was a bit of a problem as drinking progressed at the 2+ hour show. I’ll explain.

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A Sweet Deal

~ Jim Flanigan

I have a new “career” as an independent Product Marketing Consultant. So far I have done “consulting” for companies on a variety of topics such as a cremation website, an anti-virus program, lawn & garden product packaging, Medicare, printer ink, and entertainment streaming services, along with others. Yes, people actually are listening to my opinion and paying me good money for it. In the past, nobody has ever wanted to even hear my opinion, let alone pay me for it. My wife doesn’t want to hear it. My friends don’t want to hear me drone on about this and that and how my soup’s too cold. And my kids certainly have never listened to me. They stuck with listening to their mother. Good choice on their parts.

I had blogged that I was hoping to be chosen for a product marketing study about candy. The candy study was local, paid well, and involved me eating caramel candy.

Exactly, Homer. And then yesterday, I got this text.

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Sorry to Make You Weight

~ Jim Flanigan

My exercise, health, and weight loss posts are generally my most viewed posts, so why would I wait until the middle of November to report on how I did in October? I guess it’s basically because I don’t care that much about what happened. There, I said it, and it feels good. I made my goal weight over the summer. When I sit in those special chairs at the pharmacy that take my pulse, measure my blood pressure, weigh me, and check my Body Mass Index, I no longer get the flashing warning to stand up before I break the chair. I’m now in maintenance mode.

Maintenance mode is not very exciting, and I don’t have much to report. I may have been able to lose more weight in early October as the weather was quite good to start the month. I probably could have left my pool up and swam until mid-October, but I didn’t. I walked and biked as usual, but my steps do show a slight seasonal reduction.

And that is because good mental health is key to good physical health. In the middle of October, the weather took a nasty turn for the worse, as did my mental health. I deal with SAD – Seasonal Affective Disorder, so I had to adjust my supplements and start doing this a lot.

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Hard Review of Soft Candy

~ Jim Flanigan

When focused, I’m a vegetarian. Like a 1960 Zenith black & white television relying on a rabbit ear antenna for reception, I tend to normally be out of focus. In unfocused times, I’m a lacto-ovo-vegetarian which means I also eat lactos and ovos, small mammals of the badger family. Normally I am a pescatarian, which means I eat what I want when I watch Joe Pesci movies. Sometimes I devolve into a scavengerian, which means I eat whatever my wife or youngest daughter refuse to eat because of taste, freshness or an abundance of mold spores.

For me, the health Holy Grail is to be a vegan. I’m not sure exactly what that means I can and cannot eat but will probably eat anyway due to being oh so weak, but I had to dip my palate into vegan waters (brrr, cold!) when I saw this product today on the shelf in the local grocery store …

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Six, Seven or Ate?

~ Jim Flanigan

Hiding uneaten at the bottom of my daughter’s remaining Halloween candy were some of these M&M pretenders called Sixlets …

sixlets1

I do see they are labeled as Gluten Free and Nut Free. That’s nice, although they neglected to add Flavor Free. But that’s not the biggest problem I have with Sixlets. I’ve eaten much worse. You can clearly see the problem if I rotate the package slightly …

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