• Too much of a good thing

    I got to work this morning and had some caffeine. I would tell you that I sat down and enjoyed a morning cup of joe, but I’d feel dishonest. We all know that coffee is just a delivery device for caffeine anyway, so,. After some morning “go” juice I was clipping away at a healthy pace, whistling while I worked. You walk through a state office building and see how many people are whistling. There’s no surer sign of mental illness. Ah, but you see, it wasn’t THAT kind of whistling. I’ve got this nagging cough, with accompanying irritated airways; a holdover from three weeks of fighting the good fight against all sorts of viral and bacterial invasions. If you must know, it’s driving me a bit batty.

    Flash back to two years ago. I was talking to a nurse at my allergist’s office about my then (as now) nagging cough. She said that some of their patients took the occasional, as needed, puff on their “rescue” inhaler. This sometimes alleviated their cold related symptoms. She didn’t recommend doing it all of the time, but she reassured me that a couple of hits wouldn’t kill me.

    Flash forward to the present. I’ve got this nagging cough that’s a real downer man. That visit to the allergist came to mind, so I decided to give it a shot.

    First off, let me bring you up to speed on “rescue” inhalers. It’s a metered aerosol spray that you suck through your mouth and into your airways. It is prescribed for people with asthma, or people like me that occasionally have undesirable reactions to allergy shots. “No Mr. Kauffman, the shots are not supposed to turn your throat into a woodwind instrument.” Your garden variety “rescue inhaler” is a stimulant that works almost instantly, absorbing into the tissues in your airways. Picture caffeine, chopped up into a fine powder, and snorting it; that’s how it feels to suck on a “rescue” inhaler. Think instant go. Now imagine that you had already taken your daily dose of caffeine, and then took a puff on that inhaler. That’s some soak your pants in gasoline, light ’em up, and get up and go!

    I just hope I don’t need any fine motor control this morning.

  • I am a Yogurt everyman

    If you are anything like me, you’ve always been a little afraid of “fruit on the bottom” yogurt. It’s one thing to eat something that’s still alive (re: “live and active cultures”). It’s quite another to crack the seal on your yogurt and worry that you might have seen it move. That’s why I’ve been such a fan of Yoplait’s line of blended yogurts. They’re smooth, creamy, and relatively homogenous. Stirring Yoplait yogurt is more a matter of preference than defense mechanism. The problem I’ve had with Yoplait is their portions. When you get right down to it, Yoplait is a snack not a meal. When I eat yogurt, I’m looking for a meal. (Damn freaking diet.)

    Today, my yogurt was born again.

    In a rare moment of marketing weakness, I bought a product based on it’s label. Breyers “fruit on the bottom” yogurt proclaimed, “NOW Better Tasting,. Smoother and Creamier.”

    Wow! With all those capital letters it must taste good! In deed it was. Equally important: Breyers “fruit on the bottom” yogurt is a bigger caloric haul than Yoplait. It’s more than yogurt… it’s a meal.

    Much to my surprise, the fruit on the bottom lay underneath a homogenous layer of innocuous looking blended yogurt. True to their word, it was smoother and creamier. That’s probably better marketing than “not nearly as scary looking.” Or is it? Maybe there are scores of people out there who would be yogurt eaters, if yogurt didn’t tend to look exactly like what it is, a dairy product that’s run its course.

    Maybe I am a yogurt everyman, maybe Dannon can learn something from me.

  • The devil is in the cookie crumbs

    Damn those girl scouts and their cookies!