Ten Facts about Chocolate

This being the season of chocolate, I thought I would do some research and see what interesting facts I can learn about chocolate.

1. People spend more than $7 billion a year on chocolate. The fact does not state if this is each or grouped together, but I figure that I have significantly helped to reach this total.

2. According to the fact sheet, the per capita consumption of chocolate indicates that each person consumes 12 lbs of chocolate a year. I want to know if this is my limit, like the monthly data usage for Verizon. If this is my limit, I am in big trouble--and it's only February.

3. David Gerrold consumes well over 12 lbs of chocolate a year.

4. In the movie Psycho, Hitchcock used chocolate syrup to simulate blood in the shower scene, which may be why Janet Leigh spent so much time in the shower--she wasn't screaming; she was opening her mouth to catch the chocolate!

It is a little known fact that she gained 5 lbs during the filming of that scene. (OK, I made that last part up.)

5. The first known use of chocolate was by the Mayans from about 250 to 900 A.D. They used cacao for many things, including money. 10 beans would buy you a rabbit, or a prostitute. Of course if you spent all your beans buying a prostitute, you would have no way to keep her happy because you couldn't offer her chocolate truffles.

6. The first recorded case of "Death by Chocolate" occurred in the 17th century when the Catholic church in Chiapas, Mexico issued a ban on chocolate. The townspeople refused to uphold it and the bishop was found dead from poison mixed in his own chocolate. (Even then the clergy were issuing "do as I say, not as I do orders".)

7. More than 60 million Hershey's kisses are made each day. My mother buys most of them.

8. More than twice as many women as men eat and crave chocolate (and this is a surprise to anybody?)

9. The biggest chocolate structure ever made was made in Belgium, using at least 50,000 chocolate bars.

10. People rarely buy chocolate for fat people.

So. Given #10, I have watched each year as Walt buys chocolates for the kids. We've never done gifts for Valentine's Day (such a silly custom), but sometimes a girl just wants to have an excuse for chocolate, you know.

So this year I set about deciding how I was going to treat myself. My first thoughts always turn to See's, the candy I grew up on, but I'm not sure you can actually buy See's in Davis and I certainly wasn't going to drive 20 miles to get myself a few pieces of chocolate. And besides, someone had brought a box to See's to my mother recently and I had had some there.

I thought about getting myself a candy bar, but that seemed too mundane.

I thought of going to the candy store in town but I get all flummoxed when presented with a number of choices behind a glass when someone is waiting for me to decide. And what if they weren't really good, or at least not the taste I was looking forward to.

I bought chocolate croissants for us for breakfast this morning, and served them with strawberry smoothies (Walt found two awesome cards, one from him and one from "the girls.").

I also went to the supermarket and bought a bag of Lindor truffles (which I love) to take with me to the book store.

(I wanted to read a Harlequin romance novel because I've never read one and I figured a good bodice-ripper might be just the thing to read on Valentine's day, but I couldn't find one, so I read this instead...I couldn't pass up the baby feet in the picture!)

There is one of the pen palling bloggers who has been touting her chocolate product. I keep seeing ads for it everywhere, and even sent some to Jeri and Phil for Valentine's Day.

I was recently in the supermarket and noted that it is not available on the store shelves, so I treated myself to a block of chocolate on a stick, which you immerse in a cup of hot milk and let melt for a hot chocolate treat to end the night.

I think I'm all chocolated, now, and able to go for another year before such a splurge! (But I'm dangerously close to my 12 lb limit for 2012.)

Letters...We get Letters...

Actually today, it's postcards that I'm more concerned about, though I did get a couple of very nice letters.

I have been on PostCrossing for over a year now. I have exchanged somewhere near 300 postcards with people around the world, cards which have traveled, my stats tell me, 1,630,078 miles. I am part of a group of people who have sent, over the years, more than ten million postcards!

Pretty impressive numbers.

This is what my map looks like:

(This isn't entirely accurate, though, because I have received a couple of post cards from Brasil and I notice that South America isn't tagged here and I've had a card from South Africa, though Africa isn't marked either.)

I have been tossing postcards in a box for a year and today I got a bee in my bonnett and decided to sort them by country.

Every surface within my reach was covered with a stack of post cards. It was a surprise to me that I had at least three times more cards from the U.S. than from any other country. I rarely send cards to the US and hadn't realized that I had received so many.

I was also surprised to discover that I had received the most cards from Germany. I would have bet that it was Finland or the Netherlands, but Germany had the thickest pile, with Finland and the Netherlands probably the next thickest.

I have a lot of cards from China, Taiwan (all of whose residents have a very distinctive handwriting, I discovered), and from Belarus, Russia and Ukraine.

There were several countries from which I have received only one postcard: Croatia, Norway, Turkey, South Africa, Thailand, the Czech Republic, Vietnam, Italy, Belgium, Moldovia, Estonia, Trinidad & Tobago, and Slovenia.

And I love the dellightful Inge Löök old lady cards from Finland. I only have a few of them, but I'm all ready to go back to Helsinki and go looking for them! Löök was born in Helsinki and her cards remind me of Char and me...how much fun we would have had when we were in that city shopping for cards!

It's also interesting how people write their postcards. Most write short things about the picture on the front, or about their lives (that's what I do, mostly), some write amazingly long personal notes in teeny, tiny print. The disappointing ones are the ones that come with nothing on it, or just "happy postcrossing."

The only down side of Postcrossing (other than the increasing cost of international postage!) is that you don't really make friends on the site. You have the address of someone to mail a card to but unless you want to include your own address, the recipient doesn't have your address. I have received one or two personal messages, but mostly this is about the cards and not findings friends. Still, I have received some really fun cards. If you'd like to see my favorites, you can follow this link.

I also made a major dent in the letters I have not answered during (a) Christmas, (b) my mother's pneumonia, and (c) the computer problems. Still a long way to go, but I'm getting there!

Five letters today alone, along with a bunch of post cards mailed! What's nice about this pen pal project is that some of these pen pals are starting to feel like friends. That's nice.

Arrgh

I spent the day with pirates...and it's not even "Talk Like a Pirate Day."

With my computer back and all set up again, I have been ploughing through letters that need to be answered. Boy...start a little hobby like letter writing and it's amazing how quickly you get overloaded when you can't write for a few days!!!

Anyway, one pen pal is a guy named Lucas, who is fairly new to pen palling, and who contacted me from the address posted my Pen Pal Project blog. We are in the "getting to know you" period, but when I told him about being a theater critic, he gave me his theater background, which involves touring with Riverdance for a year and then going into a show called The Pirate Queen, which was headed for Broadway, but apparently ran out of steam (and money) in Rochester. Lucas was going to be an understudy.

I was intrigued with the show for two reason, first because I was wondering about all the special effects he talked about and second because, well, with a name like Pirate Queen I wondered if this was Gilbert & Sullivanesque, something historical, or a gay musical. It turns out to be something historical, about the real-life legendary Irish chieftan, Grace O'Malley. Reading through the musical's web site made me want to know more about her, but a brief check didn't yield much in the way of books that sounded interesting on Amazon (which is just as well, since I have too many books waiting right now anyway).

But I did pull up the show on iTunes and listened to enough of the music that I was intrigued and downloaded the whole album.

This musical was from the people who brought you Les Miserables and also the people who brought you Riverdance and there certainly would be no guesswork involved with that! We played part of the score on our way to Sacramento this afternoon and not only is it unmistakably by the people who wrote Les Mis, but even the voices of the performers have the same distinct sound to them. There is the Jean Valjean character (who is the heroine's father), and the heroine who sounds like a grown-up Cosette and there is even a "Master of the House" number with a guy who sounds for all the world like the actor who played M. Thernardier on the original recording.

Shortly before we reached our destination, the music shifted and suddenly there was a Riverdance-like dance number.

Overall, I am liking it, but have only heard about 1/3 of it so far.

Our destination for the afternoon was a LOTS (Light Opera Theater of Sacramento) production of Pirates of Penzance. This show is running two week ends in Sacramento and a week end in Davis and I figured if I could catch it in Sacramento, the review would make a nice bit of promotion for the Davis shows.

Though this company was begun by someone who performed with the Davis Comic Opera company many, many years and left to start his own company (which is now celebrating its 31st year), I had only attended one production. I guess in the early years there was such competition between LOTS and DCOC that it felt somehow a slight to DCOC to cross the causeway and see a LOTS production.

But a couple of years ago, the daughter of some friends at The Lamplighters was playing Katisha in a LOTS production of The Mikado and I went to see her. I thought her performance (even though she was too young for the role) was one of the stronger performances and had some negative things I felt about the overall production. I probably thought the tempos were too slow (after nearly 50 years of Lamplighters productions, I usually think all other companies have tempos too slow...I even challenged film director Mike Leigh about the tempos in his movie, Topsy Turvy, but he very imperiously informed me that they were "absolutely, completely accurate."

Anyway, I hoped that this LOTS Pirates was going to be a good production.

The theater is in a neighborhood in Sacramento in a building which may have been a school at one time. When we were parking, I saw a lot of people in pirate garb walking into the theatre, which seemed very odd, but I thought that maybe the facility was so small that they had to come to the show in their costumes (what a silly thing for me to assume! The very thought of that would give costumers heart attacks!) but, no, it turns out that about 1/4 of the audience had come in pirate costumes to get into the spirit of the thing.

Aargh.

As for the actual Pirates on stage, I was blown away. For one thing, the orchestra may be one of the best community theater orchestras I have heard in this area. Definitely professional level (though I can't figure out why the musical director cut 2½ minutes from the start of the overture, and have written to ask him to give me his thought process before I write the review).

The cast was uniformly excellent. There were a couple who could have had more volume, but man when that first male chorus started singing it was electric, and the women were as good or better. "Hail Poetry" sent chills down my spine. The leads were great, especially the woman who played Mabel, and the young woman in the small role of Edith was the kind of actor you just can't take your eye off. The group should do Oklahoma. She would be the perfect AdoAnnie.

Kelly Daniells as Edith

So the matinee did not disappoint and I look forward to writing the review. I love writing reviews when I am totally and completely familiar with the work...and especially when I actually like the production!

Sunday Stealing

The 99er Meme, Part 3

51) Do you tend to hold grudges against people who have done you wrong?
Only one person. But I got him back. A word to the wise: Never do something wrong to a writer.

52) What is your astrological sign?
Aquarius, and from what I know of stereotypical traits of Aquarians, I am the quintessential Aquarian.

53) Do you save money for anything? What?
Not really. I have a small savings account that I haven't touched and now that I'm not working, my income (the money for "miscellaneous sundries" that is kept separate from our joint acount) is from Social Security, most of which goes to the Compassion children.

54) What's the last thing you purchased?
Clothes to wear when I found myself unexpectedly spending the night at my mother's...I couldn't pass up the 60-70% bargains at Macy*s.

55) Have you ever had a relationship that you realized was lust not love?
I don't think so. I can't remember back that far.

56) In a relationship?
Does married count? :)

57) How many relationships have you had?
In my dating years, they weren't really "relationships." We were all so good (or at least I thought we all were so good). But before Walt and I married, I had dated 5 other guys, two in high school and three in college. One went into the seminary; two were gay.

58) What do you want to tell us about your day?
This is "catch-up" day. I have been without my computer for a week and now that it is back, I'm getting caught up on all the useless stuff I would have been working with all week long.

59) Where were you yesterday?
I just went out to drive to the next town over to pick up my computer; otherwise I was at home.

60) Is there anything interesting within 10 feet of you?
Depends on what you consider interesting. What is mostly within 10 feet of me from where I sit, in any direction I look, are books.

61) Are you wearing socks right now?
Yes, some wonderful slipper-sox that I bought when Borders was going out of business. They are thick and soft and I love them.

62) What's your favorite animal?
Favorite domestic animal is the dog, of course.
Favorite farm animal is the horse.
Favorite wild animal is the elephant. I am fascinated by elephants.

63) What is your secret weapon to get someone to like you?
I don't have one, which is why I have so few close friends. :)

64) Where is your best friend?
My mother has been my lifelong best friend, and if you ask "where" she is, I'd say she is still there, but slowly slipping away.

65) How did your last relationship end?
The last guy I dated before I married Walt was his best friend, who married my roommate. The "dating" part of our relationship just ended when he told me he was too old for me. Seeing how we have both aged, I'm very glad that he ended things. We would have killed each other eventually, we are so different.

66) What is your heritage?
Scotch, Irish, and a bit of German thrown in.

67) What were you doing last night at 12 AM?
I think I was asleep by then.

68) What's new?
My newly un-infected computer!!!

69) What is the key to seduction?
Damned if I know.

70) What was the weirdest thing that happened to you this week??
Nothing really weird, but having to detour around a long stretch of road on which there were multiple accidents, was out of the ordinary. But it gave me the opportunity to drive through some lovely scenic areas and listen to my audio book, so I didn't really mind.

71) You are walking down the street on your way to work. There is a dog drowning in the canal on the side of the street. Your boss has told you if you are late one more time you get fired. What do you do?
I mentally rewrite my resume while I'm rescuing the dog.

72) You are at the doctor’s office and she has just informed you that you have approximately one month to live. a) Do you tell anyone/everyone you are going to die? b) What do you do with your remaining days? c) Would you be afraid?
I'd come home and write a blog entry about it, so everyone would know. I would try to get my kids to come and spend time here, and I would be afraid, but not "deathly" afraid. I think.

73) You can only have one of these things: trust or love.
Love.

74) What's a song that always makes you happy when you hear it?
"Thank God, You're Doing Fine" by Lawsuit

75) Who has your cell phone number (other than family)?
A few friends and my computer guru.

Saturday 9

Inspired by "One Gal's Musings," I'm doing this meme today.

1. Do you enjoy going to a casino now and again?
No. Too loud, and I never win when I try to gamble. I'd rather go to a show.

2. What makes you happy most of the time?
A clear, clear day in San Francisco, the sound of the ocean, my dogs...

3. Are you jealous of someone right now?
Yes

4. You're stranded on a desert island with one fictional character. Who is it? Why?
Kay Scarpetta. She's clever, she's interesting, she'd probably be a great survivalist, she's a great cook...and I'd like to ask her why she let Patricia Cornwell change her character so much.

5. Have you ever been in the emergency room? If yes, for what (most recently)?
Many times when my kids were growing up, for myself only once in 2003, when I fell over the handlebars on my bike during a charity ride and dislocated my shoulder.

6. Where is the last place you drove to just for fun?
I drove to Sacramento (20 miles from here) to have lunch with a friend, and then since the day was so beautiful, I drove out into the country for a little ways just for the heck of it.

7. If you were to make your living as a photographer, what would love to shoot?
I love photographing so many things, primarily small children and dogs. But I love to take nature pictures and just anything that happens to catch my eye at the moment.

8. Tell us about a band you like that we might not have heard.
Anybody who has read my blog for any length of time knows about the band Lawsuit, but for those who have not...enjoy...



(Sorry the quality isn't great...but it may grow on you)

9. Where was the last place you went shopping?
I went to SaveMart to buy milk and coffee creamer for my mother

My Pet (Dust) Bunny

I picked up my computer this afternoon. This is one of the many photos my guru showed me to let me know how full of dust the machine had been...

There was an even bigger blob in an earlier picture. Very embarrassing! But who knew you should clean out the inside of your computer? I've had a computer for about 25 years and I've never cleaned out the inside. Walt says he's cleaned his once, when he dropped something and had to open the machine to retrieve it, and decided to get some dust out at the same time. In fact, the guru had even told me when last serviced it that it wasn't all that bad and that I should see some of the computers he had to clean out. I suppose I now have become one of "those" computers.

He says you should open your computer twice a year and blow out the dust. So all of you who, like me, never thought of doing such a thing should take heart! Get yourself some canned air and give your computer a blow job.

The other thing he told me is that reg cleaners, like My Clean PC, are scams. They charge for a program which accesses your files, gives the company your vital information and eventually will infect it with a huge virus so they can charge you another amount to fix the virus. DO NOT BE FOOLED BY THE SLICK ADS FOR MY CLEAN PC seems to be the lesson learned!

This guy really knows his stuff, but I'm not sure if he thinks I'm an idiot or a savant (or perhaps an idiot savant). His office is on 3rd street and he told me that as I entered town, I would see 6th street, then I should go to 5th and then 4th and then 3rd. Like I couldn't count down from 6 to 3. But then he gets me into his workshop and he tosses out so much technospeak which just spews forth in a continuous stream. He's sitting down, I'm standing up. He can see the screen, I can't focus in it, and when I do see what he's talking about I can't make heads or tails of the stuff I'm seeing on the screen. And even if I could, it takes me longer to process and by the time I'm starting to process, he is 4 lines of code ahead of me.

We got the computer home and set back up again. The Guru has the laptop, now, which started just fine for him, though I tried for 2 days to get it to start, unsuccessfully. Walt is happy. He has his computer back, and I only added a dozen bookmarks to his system! :)

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For those who have been following my mother's health problems, you must read the journal entry I wrote one year ago today. It is called "The Road to Wellville" When I read it, I called her and we both laughed a lot.

Pooh Bah and the Pill

In The Mikado, the character of PoohBah, in explaining how he came to be such a powerful politician says to Nanki Pooh, "When all the great officers of State resigned in a body because they were too proud to serve under an ex-tailor, did I not unhesitatingly accept all of their posts at once?"

Pooh Bah later talks with KoKo, the controversial new Lord High Executioner, about the arrangements for his upcoming nuptials.

Koko says, "I want to consult you about the amount I should spend on them."

Pooh Bah responds, "Certainly. In which of my capacities? As First Lord of the Treasury, Lord Chamberlain, Attorney-General, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Privy Purse or Private Secretary?"

As the conversation continues, KoKo learns that if he consults one of Pooh Bah's roles he might get a desirable result, but then there is another role which would deny him that result. "Speaking as your private secretary, I should say that as the city will have to pay for it, don't stint yourself, do it well.....Of course you will understand that, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, I am bound to see that due economy is observed." etc.

I thought about Pooh Bah's many roles when I was listening to the latest about the kerfuffle over birth control coverage for employees of Catholic institutions (medical, educational, etc.).

In its role as a religious institution, the church has every right to control its followers, those who are willing to be controlled, and to refuse to make something it considers sinful available to its followers.

BUT in its role as a business which employs not only Catholics, but also members of other religions, and even people who have no religious affiliation, is it right to act as a religious organization and impose its beliefs on non-believers?

Suppose you run a hospital. Your top surgeon is Jewish and your chief cardiologist is Buddhist and a nice Muslim runs the pharmacy. All of these MDs are women and all want to use birth control. Should the BUSINESS wing of this organization force its RELIGIOUS beliefs on these employees?

Seems to me there was a time in this country when everybody was up in arms, certain that a Catholic president would take orders from the Pope, and furious about how wrong that would be.

I had lunch today with a friend who heads up one arm of one of the Catholic businesses in the area. I asked her what was happening in her office after all this brouhaha erupted. She said essentially nothing. She said it's no big whoop. It just means that if they don't now offer a medical plan that includes birth control options they now need to offer one.

I don't know about you, but when I was working I had my opportunity each year to change my medical plan. We have always had Kaiser, but we also could have chosen a number of other plans, most of which offer coverage for birth control.

This is not a religious issue, it should be a labor issue.

Even local religious organizations here acknowledge that. But this is a great attack point (isn't everything?) against the Obama administration. This is going to be a big scary monster talking point in the coming campaign for the White House. Twenty-eight states now already require insurance coverage for birth control...but nobody thought to scream about it until now.

This is why I hate elections and their rhetoric and the made-up crises that want to strike fear and terror into the hearts of voters. And it ain't only the Republicans, I admit. But this particular issue is all anybody is talking about today.

Maybe someone should start interviewing the Groom of the Back Stairs for a change of pace.

* * *

Our lunch today was such fun. We discussed this birth control/religion issue at length along with lots of other things. We go our separate ways after our lunch and never call, write, or visit until another month has passed and we do it all over again. I so miss talking with people about current events, books, religion, work, and lots of other things. Today she called me "one of my intelligent friends," which tells you why I enjoy her company so much!

---

I am still without my own computer. I thought I would get it back today, but no. Maybe tomorrow morning. I am still limping along in HTML coding on Walt's computer, which I apparently screwed up (he can't find his home page any more because I checked my g-mail and now it thinks that he is me and has erased his home page), but my guru assures me I will have it back tomorrow...and I told him I would be trading my desktop for my laptop so he can fix THAT too.

So far my cell phone is still working!