My So Called Life

Berries: Miraculous After All!!

/ Shane / 1 Comment

So, after yesterday‘s less-than-stellar trial, today I came armed with several things to try that would be more appropriate to test the properties of the pills.  Yesterday I only had my lunch and it was not really geared towards the type of thing that the fruit is supposed to affect.  Also, as pointed out in the comments by someone from ThinkGeek, the fats in my cheese and oatmeal cream pie were working against me and breaking down the proteins that make the whole thing work.

Trial II was nothing short of a rousing success!  You have to get a hold of these things, it was as amazing as I could have hoped it would be!!

1) A lime – Absolutely delicious!  I tried it before hand to make sure it was not some secret delicious sweet variety of limes and I assure you, it was very sour.  After letting the tablet dissolve, the lime was just so sweet and delicious and sugary like candy.  The weirdest part was that you could feel a feeling of citrus in your mouth but you couldn’t taste it as sour.  Very odd.
2) A plum – I had to prove that yesterday’s delicious plum wasn’t a fluke.  Sure enough, it was super ripe and sugary tasting.
3) A tangerine – This was crazy.  It was so sweet I almost couldn’t eat it.
4) A cherry – Mostly like a cherry still, but definitely sweeter, almost like cherry pie.

We had about 4 people from work trying it and every one agreed it was pretty cool.  One person was impatient and chewed his tablet and he didn’t notice any difference.  So the lessons learned are:

1) Make sure you dissolve it fully on your tongue.
2) Make sure you have the appropriate items to try (i.e. sour things and fruit).
3) Sweet things don’t really get sweeter, so don’t bother with those.

There are several items I would still like to try such as Tabasco sauce and sour cream.  The guy from ThinkGeek also recommended beer.  I would absolutely try it again at home when I could gather some more items together.

As a side note, why do people from companies only comment when I bash their products? 🙂

Berries: not so miraculous

/ Shane / 3 Comments

And now the berries finally ARE in my grasp.  A co-worker bought some tablets from ThinkGeek.

Unfortunately I didn’t have anything prepared to give them a fair try, so I will probably need to try this again.  This is what I had with me:

1) Oatmeal Cream Pie – It tasted about the same, I really didn’t notice a difference.  I was warned it could be super over sweet, but I didn’t notice.
2) Plum – At first I thought it tasted the same and I thought the pills were bogus.  But after eating it for a little bit I thought, “Either those pills are working or this is the finest, ripest plum ever picked!” By the end it was almost too sweet!  But I didn’t taste it before the pills, so I don’t know how much improvement there was.  It could have, in fact, been the finest, ripest plum ever picked.
3) Venison and Cheese sandwich – It seemed to taste extra delicious, but I think I am chalking that up to my heightened awareness of taste as I scrutinized every bite for the effects of the berries.
4) Diet Dr. Pepper – It had a sort of bitter taste at the end.  Definitely not an improvement!

Nothing was that dramatic however.  I’m wondering how much of it is a placebo effect, meaning, I know this is supposed to taste different so now I’m thinking it tastes different.  The Emperor’s New Clothes in pill form.  To be fair though, the pills are supposed to turn sour things sweet and I didn’t really have anything sour.  I will need to try again with some lemons or the like.

I will, of course, keep you posted.

Unintended Back Surgery

/ Shane / 1 Comment

My dad has been having a lot of back pain lately.  It seems like once a month or so he would go into the doctor and they would give him a muscle relaxer shot and send him home.  This seemed kind of stupid because it became obvious this wasn’t a long term solution.  He just had to come back every month.  When we were at his house, at least two times I saw him standing there and suddenly clutch his back and almost collapse.  So clearly there was a problem.

On Thursday or Friday he started having pain in his leg and it was going numb.  By Saturday he figured he better go to the doctor or else he may have permanent damage in his leg.  By this morning he was in surgery for a herniated disc.  The surgery apparently went well and he was at home by this afternoon.

So all in all, not too bad considering it required surgery.  I’m hoping this will mean an end to his back pain, since until this happened they didn’t really have a long term solution for him.

Now on to his next problem…it might just kill him to be out of work for 4 weeks.

 

P.S.  That means he’s going to miss our camping trip! 😦  People are dropping like flies from that one.

Saturday

/ Shane / Leave a comment

It’s Saturday and that means farmers’ market.  There is a nice pictorial over on I Hate My Developer.  It is accurate for us as well since she apparently walks the same route we do.  Today’s bounty included some peaches and some hot peppers for some homemade salsa we are going to make.  They let us try several peppers and find the ones that were the perfect heat.  Unfortunately, many of the booths seem to be missing this time.  I’m not sure what the deal with the inconsistency is, but I guess it is the first year after all.  And we always find something to buy!

Of course that also means a trip to the garden.  I think our garden is running out of steam a little bit, and none too soon!  Oh the food we’ve gotten out of it this year!  We have tomatoes like mad but we are busily eating them on everything from fresh salsa, to pizza, to sandwiches, to homemade marinara sauce.  We got tons and tons of beans, so much so that we ended up throwing some away.  We didn’t want to but we just couldn’t get to them in time.  We also have 4 more squash to deal with, and another on the way.  So the garden was an unqualified success!  We are already plotting for next year (pun intended).

Finally, since it was my first free Saturday in like months, I finally tackled a problem that has plagued us since the dawn of time…a bad ceiling fan remote!  The ceiling fan in our bedroom doesn’t have any strings, so if you want to turn the fan off and on, you have to use the remote.  This usually means a 10 minute dance around the bedroom waving the remote around like a magic wand and mashing on the button a million times.  The dance finally ends with me standing on the bed pressing the remote against the fan base and then trying to withdraw my hand fast before the blades start.  Even this had been working less and less lately until we gave up on it altogether.

So today I decided to swap the receiving unit from the living room fan because it not only works, but we never use it and also the fan has strings making the remote unnecessary.  Sara was not behind the project since it was an ordeal the first time, but I persisted.  It actually went really well.  I had the remote out of the old fan and had it rewired in like 10 minutes.  Then on to our room which took a little longer only because I clipped off like 2 feet of extra wire, which is partially what made it take so long last time.  It was tough fitting the remote sending unit and all of that wire up there before!  But here’s the thing!  I discovered that the remote receiving unit and the remote itself were set to different frequencies!!  I don’t know why it worked at all, even though the codes were very similar.  So, surprise surprise, when I put it on the right code, it seemed to work much better!  So, consequently, I put it all back together without using the remote unit from the living room.  I didn’t put it back in the other fan though, just in case.  I can’t believe all of the headache that thing has caused me and all because I put the stupid switches in the wrong position.

Oh well, what’s done is done.

Pickle Pop Redux

/ Shane / 1 Comment

In case you are keeping track at home, I still had one Pickle Pop left after our previous trials.  Well, Evie’s birthday party seemed like a good time to break it out.  I meant to blog this a long time ago when it was fresh in my mind, but I will try to do my best to remember everyone’s reactions.

A brave soul goes first

A brave soul goes first

Even though he doesn’t like pickles, we convinced Nathan give it a try.  I will let his reaction shot speak for itself:

Not so much

Not so much

 After the ice was broken, everybody wanted to try.

Dabu

Dabu votes no

 I can’t remember for sure, but I don’t think Chris liked it.

Chris gives it a try

Chris gives it a try

I thought Anna might like it since she really likes pickles.
A new hope

A new hope

I think she thought it was okay, but she wasn’t wild about it.  After that we thought maybe a kid would go for it if an adult wouldn’t.  In any case, kids are easy to trick and will do anything their daddies tell them to do.
Maybe it is more of a kid thing

Maybe it is more of a kid thing

Eliza didn’t dislike it, but she’s old enough to recognize an icy and therefore didn’t get what she was expecting.  Also the reaction was a little skewed, what with the camera and all the adults crowding around.  I think she would eat them under different circumstances.
On to the next sucker

On to the next sucker

If I remember correctly, Tom thought they were alright.  I for sure remember him requesting Sauerkraut Pops, but I told him they probably already had enough trouble selling Pickle Pops.  Sharon didn’t want to try them but she did anyway.

Dont forget the folks outside
Dont forget the folks outside

Well, obviously with a predisposition to dislike, the outcome was obvious.  That brought us to the last, but not least, test subject.  My dad LOVED them!  He would have eaten a whole box if it was available.  He even slurped up the extra melted juice at the bottom.

Finally, success!

Finally, success!

So, although it took a while to find the right person, in the end we did find a person just crazy enough to like the Pickle Pops after all!