MMs - Feb 8

How bout those Saints? Nice to have a good game for the Super Bowl. What did you think about this year's commercials? Seemed a little bland this year. At least the ones I understood.

While we sat glued to the TV, like most folks, I remembered  an article in the Wall Street Journal that said "... the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes." That's from the snap to the whistle. "...the average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays. So what do the networks do with the other 174 minutes in a typical broadcast? Not surprisingly, commercials take up about an hour. As many as 75 minutes, or about 60% of the total air time, excluding commercials, is spent on shots of players huddling, standing at the line of scrimmage or just generally milling about between snaps." It goes on to say that 3 seconds are spent on cheerleaders. That's just not right, folks! Cheerleaders ought to get  much more time than that!

Now these stats were based on research conducted in "normal" games. I'm pretty sure the Super Bowl skews every statistic - except the actual amount of time the ball is in play. It may have been even less than that this year.

Note to self: Pay more attention to the time difference between Texas and California. It is not a good thing for your California-based daughter to receive an early morning text that says, "All is good. We are on the way home" BEFORE she has a chance to check Friday's blog to see what we were on our way home from.

And speaking of my "procedure" - I have pictures! And for a reasonable sum I will not show them to you. Let's start the bidding!

Somewhere I saw reviews of several of the "As seen on TV" products that are often seen on late night TV. This review said "Don't waste your money" on the Bumpits Volumizing Hair Inserts, Slap Chop, and Wearable Towels; gave a less-than-warm "Works, sort of" to other products, like the PediPaws and Bottle Tops (for cans), but they liked the Shamwow and raved about Debbie Meyer Green Bags. I've not seen ads for several of these, including the Green Bags, but the reviews were so positive I checked the Internet and found there are many "green bag" style products out there.

We checked at Central Market and they had "Peak Fresh Produce Bags" so we got a box see if we could solve our banana problem. You know, when the bananas get all brown and mooshy before you get around to eating them. Well, they do at our house. Bought some green bananas, as is our custom, popped them in one of the plastic bags, and when I ate the last banana nearly two weeks later it was still unblemished and crisp! Wow!

And here are some plastic bags that do just the opposite - "age" your food artificially. No more lunches stolen from the break room.