MickinMD

CNN just announced, "There's former first lady Michelle Obama," and went on about her, not realizing that gray-haired guy alongside of her was Barack Obama - until they passed through a doorway and someone informed the broadcasters he was there.

The only place I've seen Kodiak Cakes is in Costco where, of course the box I bought is huge: 4.5 lbs and contains 3 24 oz. packets. I'm guessing I can use that for everything I use Bisquick for, including dumplings for soup and the main ingredient in breading for chicken. There was a consumer lawsuit that apparently went nowhere claiming Kodiak Cakes "allegedly contain unhealthy amounts of fat and saturated fat and high levels of sugar." 1/2 cup of Kodiak Cake vs Bisquick: Kodiak Cakes: 2g fat (0g saturated), 30g carbs, 5g fiber, 3g sugar (2g are added sugar) Bisquick: 4.5g fat (1.5g sat'd), 42g carbs, 1.5g fiber, 3g sugar (3g are added sugar) 2g of fat is 3% of USDA daily rec'd amount and 3g sugar is 6%. If the USA had laws like other countries where those placing frivolous lawsuits have to compensate their victims for their legal and court costs, I doubt if we'd see bullshit like this "consumer" group or the farmer who sued the ladder company because it didn't warn him not to set the ladder on soft manure as the Spring warmed, leading him to fall and break his leg. I've been involved in the Maryland State Legislature and personally know of cases where ridiculous laws were made or preserved by lawyer-legislators who also put loopholes in them so, in their law practices, they could charge thousands of dollars to people accused through such laws and use the loopholes to get win their cases. For me, the judge and jury is my Freestyle Libre Blood Sugar Monitor. My blood sugar concentration does NOT spike if I eat food made from 1/2 cup or less of Bisquick and 3 oz. of less of dry pasta or egg noodles. Those totals go up a lot if there's 4 oz. or more of fiber in the food - the reason I now add cauliflower to mac & cheese.

A country song needs to be: 1) Focused on a simple emotion: an achy breaky heart, don't take your love to town, etc. 2) it has to have a good "hook:" a catchy phrase. In my opinion, the best one of all time is: "Your cheatin' heart will tell on you." "Take a picture of my broken heart" dictates the song has to be focused on lost love. The hook should probably be about something the picture shows like: a missing piece or can't be mended or damaged instead of made good by Cupid's arrow, etc." There's your outline. I'd spend more time, But I can't rhyme.

Biden is the 2nd Catholic to become President. How different than the first time. Few people notice or care if he is Catholic now. That was NOT true in 1960. The GOP was still trying to make people believe Kennedy would be controlled by the Pope. ( was in 5th then 6th grade in a Catholic School with almost all nun teachers in 1960. Those of us who walked a mile home from school were prized by the nuns: they could load us down with a bunch of Kennedy fliers to stick in gates (we weren't allowed to put them in mailboxes) as we walked home. It had been said in past campaigns that people shouldn't vote for a Catholic because he would be obedient to the political wishes of the Vatican - even though that hadn't been true when 1928 candidate and Catholic Al Smith had been the Governor of New York, etc. When Jack Kennedy was elected the first Catholic President the school was thrilled. Of course, the scene is burned in my mind and those of everyone else present when Sister Morita, the school Principal, walked into our class a few years later, whispered something to our teacher who collapsed back in her chair, and then informed us that President Kennedy had been shot in Dallas, then led us in prayer. Not knowing the gravity of the situation, I walked home disappointed that my neighbor - and still friend to this day - Lauretta's birthday party has been cancelled. Of course, I've never forgotten her birthday ever since.

Sally sure did hold her own singing on Dick Van Dyke: she was played by actress Rose Marie who had been child singing sensation "Baby Rose Marie" on radio, stage, and movies beginning at age 5 in the 1920's. She passed away at age 94 in 2017. My parents told me about her when we watched The Dick Van Dyke Show back in the 60's and said they raved about her in their childhoods. She was so good that many people claimed "She must be a midget!" Here she is at age 5 in 1929: Here's another one 3 years later:

I hadn't seen the ad - thanks for posting it. Great commercial I bought a huge box of Kodiak Cakes Slapjack and Waffle Mix at Costco - I haven't seen it elsewhere locally and it's great for diabetics due to low carbs and high fiber compared to Bisquick. Also, thanks for the taste test! I haven't tried it yet because I'm using up some "Keto Birch Benders" pancake mix I bought that doesn't hold together as well as regular pancake batter and doesn't taste like much - the butter and lite syrup I use makes it ok. I can't wait until I'm making Kodiak Cakes. In addition to pancakes, I may make a couple of them in some frying-pan rings I 've got and use them in place of English muffins or bread in the Hamilton Beach automatic breakfast sandwich maker I received for Christmas - it works ok and you get a whole egg with it instead of the almost-baseball-card-thin piece of egg on Jimmy Dean, etc. breakfast sandwiches.

My sister picked up a state lottery scratch-off when she bought big-lottery tickets for last Friday. She won $10,000 with the scratch-off! She didn't the big ones but she was still happy!

There have been some media articles pointing out that the odds of winning Powerball and MegaMillions on it huge days is the same as on its small days, but the odds are you will split the huge lotteries with enough winners that your share will be smaller than the odds when the lotteries are small and the bets aren't rising exponentially.

It's also, at least, a source of caffeine. Back in the '80's, when the great health-fad diet was The Pritikin Promise (85% carbs), Pritikin advised to quit drinking coffee. I did and had caffeine-withdrawal headaches for two weeks. Within 6 months, I was reading about coffee drinkers living longer and was back drinking coffee.

I was rooting for the Saints. They swept the Buccaneers during the regular season then lose in the playoffs to them - that's got to be tough to take.

Glad you're feeling better. A few Januaries ago, I slipped on ice returning from a quick McD's drive-through run and, instead of just letting myself fall, I successfully kept enough balance to avoid spilling my drink. But saving that drink meant twisting around enough that I was wearing an ankle brace for a bad sprain for a couple months. I hope you heal faster!

Agreed, though I mean understandable at the State and local level where they've been working hard but getting shafted over-and-over by the White House in everything including denying the promised use of unused testing facilities at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, MD because our governor got tired of waiting for promised Federally-supplied tests and bought them from S. Korea (his wife is Korean-American and arranged it). The Federal Government has months to organize and rehearse getting the vaccines to people when they arrived and did nothing. To me, that's a form of murder.

Maryland was doing worse than Virginia in case rate up through early December, but now Virginia's at 58.2 cases/100K and Maryland has dropped a little to 46.7. Maybe VA will move back to the norm. Hospitalizations in MD are a little higher than in the Spring, but critical cases and deaths are significantly lower than then. Our Governor, Larry Hogan (R), said frustratingly at a press conference just before Thanksgiving, "Wear the damn masks!" That went viral and suddenly it's "cool" to wear a mask (It's been the law, though not strongly enforced) and reportedly 97% are doing so. I don't know if that's true all over but the examples of politicians of all parties here has certainly had a positive effect.

My Friday blood test results were posted on my patient portal today. My A1c dropped, thanks to continuous monitoring with the Freestyle Libre monitor, from 11.3% to 8.3%. Since my avg. blood sugar according to the app's records has been 164 mg/dL for the past 90 days, which is equivalent to an A1c 7.3, and 160 mg/dL (7.2) for the last 30 days, I expected a lower number but am not disappointed. My numbers continue to improve. I'm sure my doctor won't want to change anything. I'm hoping that, in a year, I've got the numbers low enough I can begin ending some of the many meds I'm taking for type-II diabetes. Here are the two pages of the sheet I printed out to show my doctor when I see him Friday for my blood test follow-up. The first graph is from my pages on my doctor's office's Patient Portal, the 5 graphs with blue menu bars on top are from the Freestyle Libre Phone App:

In Maryland, those of us age 65-74 (Phase 1c) will be eligible for a COVID vaccination on Jan. 25th, but it's not quite "eligible to receive it" - it's eligible to register, beginning on that day, that you want to get it. One of the few places near me that is on the State list for vaccinations happens to be a hospital where I took diabetes classes from nutritionists that Medicare paid for and thus I am on their official Patient Portal and have a patient webpage there. Assuming the Jan. 25th date remains good, on that date I can REGISTER on the portal and then will be notified when I can make an appointment - no walk-ins allowed. I assume that because they know my info already, I won't have to bring anything more than my Real ID driver's license for proof of age. God knows what people who aren't on the hospital's portal have to do to register. So I'm guessing I'll get my first shot by some time in February. With all the headaches coordinating with the federal government, I guess that's reasonable. There are no drugstores like CVS on the list and their workers don't seem to have a clue if and when. Here's the hospital's blurb for the 75+ folks who are eligible today, Jan. 18th: How Will I Know When I Can Get the COVID Vaccine? On Monday, January 18, individuals who qualify within Phase 1b will be able to register on this webpage to let us know they are interested in receiving the COVID-19 vaccine at UMMS. Completing this registration will allow us to contact eligible individuals to schedule a vaccination appointment. Please check back here Monday, January 18 for more details. Note: In order to distribute vaccinations as safely and equitably as possible, we cannot accept walk-ins.

I haven't gotten anyone interest in cycling, my helping others was in fixing/adjusting things like disc brakes for people in bike trail parking lots and giving a couple medicated bandaids to a pedestrian mother whose little girl had skinned her knee on a trail.

The funny thing is that my great strength was/is in organic chemical synthesis, not the theoretical stuff that was the main focus of the published research papers I co-wrote. As an industrial research chemist, my employers wanted to know some theoretical stuff, but 99% of what they wanted was my skill as a synthetic chemist. I was lucky that I was the guy in my research teams who was responsible for making the chemicals - many of them had never existed but we needed chemicals that started out with certain structures and small variations in them so we could uncover what happened during a chemical transformation. I made 9 organic chemicals that had never existed before and my 1975 master's thesis, which focuses on making them using novel techniques, has been referenced many times in other published works into the 2000's. I also did the kinetic studies and some of the theory work, but organic synthesis was my strength and most of my research time. Of course, I also took 500 and 600 level courses in General Organic, Protein, and Polymer Synthesis and those were the key things that prepared me for "the real world." Then, when I began teaching high school gifted-and-talented chemistry classes, I went into theoretical stuff much deeper than typical high school classes, but the stuff in my published papers required background knowledge so far beyond high school that I rarely mentioned it.

Yes! It was good, though it could have used more ground beef. I have enough left for two more big suppers.

When I was in college, there was always some entertainment going on and so I would try to get my assignments done ASAP so I could join in. I would add that, back in the 70's, you were seldom graded on homework - but if you didn't do it and weren't prepared for the next class, it was bound to catch up to you on the classes tests. Of course, when you're taking 600 level Thermodynamics and Quantum Chemistry classes that require multivariable calculus, sometimes it takes every spare minute between classes to get the homework done. After four pages of intricate calculations, you come up with an answer, check the answer on the list in the back of the book, and find out it looks much different than yours. You look at the four pages of college-lined 8.5" x 11" paper and wonder where among all those equations you put together you went wrong. Then you curse. My Taiwanese roommate asked me, "What's that "F" word mean that you say when you're having trouble with your homework?" Soon I was taught how to curse in Taiwanese and Mandarin! I like the Chinese version of "bullshit." It's phonetically "fun go pee" in Taiwanese and means "dog fart." That's a much better description about what lies are coming out of someone's mouth!

I've had similar fake emails in the past, usually about my Amazon.com account. The sites you have accounts with do NOT have to "reconfirm" your information, they already have it: otherwise how would they know "different computers are trying to access your account"? They're hoping you'll get so nervous worrying about your account you'll overlook the obvious flaws in the scam.

Do they call it French toast because the French invented it or, like the Belgians who invented and named French Fries, it's toast that someone else first cooked in the manner of the French? What do they call it in France? In high school, a Cuban refugee named Lorenzo was in my class and "Cuban Heels" were mentioned. Lorenzo asked what they were. When a picture was shown he exclaimed, "Oh! We call them 'Hollywood Heels' in Cuba!" A quick google says the recipe we call French toast is first mentioned in Roman Empire cookbooks from the 400's A.D., but called "Pan Dulcis" (sweet bread) and not related to Gaul or later France. Much later, the French called it and still call it "pain perdu" which means "lost bread" because it was first made there with stale bread. In the 1600's, it was first called "French toast" by the English, legend has it after a guy whose last name was French. I guess that sounds better than egg & milk bread with maybe vanilla and cinnamon. Since I'm now eating Schmidt's 647 bread with 6 nets grams of carbs per slice, maybe I'll have some for breakfast tomorrow - no cinnamon or vanilla extract handy so I'll have it with lite Hungry Jack microwaved syrup or maybe honey as the Romans did. It will be soft enough to not threaten my temporary crown.

My 2013 Honda Fit has been rear-ended twice while I was stopped, luckily with light damage. The first one was in 2014 by a Ford 250 Maryland Department of Natural Resources Truck driven by a State Trooper. The last one was in 2019 by a Ford 150 truck, where the driver admitted he was texting. Thank God they don't make a Ford 050 truck!

I'm killing time while starving and can't wait to eat. It'll take another 15 min. or so for enough water to boil off of my chili to be really chili - water I thought I had to add at first. Once all the ingredients began boiling together the extent of water made itself apparent. Oh well, a good, long marinating of the ingredients will make it better. I hadn't made chili for months, and I normally add 2 14.5 oz. cans of diced tomatoes with the cans' water along with the water from two cans of beans (kidney and pinto). But "tomatoes-on-the-vine" I just bought on Wednesday were already turning too mushy to use on sandwiches and I knew they'd be fine for chili. So I weighed them and a plum tomato that was getting old and they weighed 28 oz. Perfect. I chopped them up on a plate instead of a cutting board so I could add all the tomato water to the chili, but thought there still wasn't enough water: Here's how it is now. That's thick enough for now. I'm eating. Bye.

I thought the same after my house fire, though I've never had a great mug. I found this "Better Homes and Gardens Farmhouse Collection" 16 oz. microwavable ceramic mug at Walmart along with the same collection's 32 oz. microwavable soup bowls. I love them both, they're $4-$5 each and it took me several months before I could find enough of them at Walmart - there were only 0-2 there occasionally at any time - to complete sets of 6 - can't find them for cheap anywhere else:

First of all, when you write a song about a girl you hitchhiked with, you're supposed to call her Joan or Linda or Anna, not Bobby McGee. Second, you're supposed to spell her Bobbie. Third, he's pretty good!