Blinkenlichten Blog » Humorous Commentary

Protected: Swedes: Knowing What’s Important

Pat — Tue, 17 Jul 2007 18:17:33 +0000

Protected: Where Babies Come From

Pat — Thu, 05 Jul 2007 20:44:42 +0000

Grandpa’s Marriage Advice

Pat — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:29:30 +0000

Krista and I visited my grandma and grandpa’s up in Watkins Glen, where I talked about the farm a little, showed her the horses, and introduced her to some of my family. While sitting around the table with my grandma and grandpa and listening to stories of the old races and the rock concert that was at the racetrack many years ago, Krista and I overheard the following very valuable marriage advice…

Grandpa: “No, that wasn’t them.”
Grandma: “Yes it was”
Grandpa: “No, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t who it was”
Grandma: “Yes it was”
Grandpa: “No… Okay, I’m sorry, you’re absolutely right. Pat, never argue with your wife”

It was actually very funny how humble and calm they were while arguing. They didn’t raise their voices, they didn’t get upset or hyper… they just disagreed and went about it in a very civilized and relaxed manner. After having been married for so many years, I thought, they must be experts at how to properly communicate disagreement! Later, I reminded Krista of their conversation…

Me: [repeats the conversation quoted above]
Krista: “Great advice if I do say so myself…”

Well, folks, I guess I better keep the following moral of this story in mind: there is only one effective way to survive through disagreements in marriage… always go along with everything your wife says!

Sugar-free Lemonade Recipe

Pat — Sun, 24 Jun 2007 23:25:52 +0000

I opened the fridge to find a very special treasure inside… sugar-free canned lemonade?! Usually canned lemonade is nasty, so I decided to give it a try.

To my surprise, it was actually fantastic and extremely refreshing! I chugged one can down and looked forward to chugging my second one. I got about halfway through the second one, but almost choked with the following realization: SUGAR-FREE THINGS NEVER TASTE GOOD!

I decided to see what Minute Maid did to make their artificially-sweetened lemonade taste good, so I took a peek at the ingredients. In my opinion, lemonade is supposed to contain just water, lemons, and some form of a sweetener, such as sugar. Apparently Minute Maid disagrees…

Ingredients: pure* filtered water, lemon juice from concentrate, less than 0.5% of natural flavors, citric acid (provides tartness) [the lemons don't do that?], potassium citrate (regulates tartness) [don't you usually just watch the lemon:water ratio?], modified cornstarch [in what way is it modified?], glycerol ester of wood rosin [I don't remember wood or anything like that in my grandma's recipe], sodium hexametaphosphate and sodium benzoate and potassium sorbate and calcium disodium EDTA (to protect taste) [that's a lot of "and then"'s to protect taste... isn't EDTA a pesticide or somethign?], aspartame [okay, that sounds familiar... glad to know there actually is a sweetener in this and the sweet flavor isn't just a byproduct of my tastebuds dying], acesulfame potassium [no explanation needed?], sucralose [another sweetener is really necessary?], yellow #5 [it's in an opaque can... does it really matter what color it is?]

*The purity of the water might have negligible effects on the overall health risk associated with consuming this product due to the other chemicals that are present.