Now cut that out

Dear Sure Deodorant,

Enough already with the rebranding.

I’ve been using your product since the early 1970s, after you employed actress Glynnis O’Connor as your spokesmodel for a series of commercials. I had a major crush on her at the time and the thought of her bumping into me and a) detecting the scent of Sure regular on me or b) actually seeing me pick Sure out from among the dozens of other choices in the supermarket and smiling at me could trigger daydreams that lasted most of Algebra II class.

Glynnis O’Connor

Though Glynnis stopped being your spokesmodel after a short while and took up with that awful Robby Benson, I held out hope. Whenever I ran low on deodorant, my spirits were lifted as I spied your familiar white can with the wavy blue shield and bright orange bar that contained the word REGULAR in bold white letters.

Imagine my chagrin last week, when I looked for the wavy blue logo and could not find it among the ever dwindling number of brands of aerosol deodorants that super markets carry these days.

“How could they not carry Sure any more?” I asked to no one in particular. “Right there,” a lady said, pointing to a row of cans with translucent purple tops.

Gone were the cans with clear tops and wavy blue lines, replaced by purple-topped cans with a purple and blue X. Not a lick of orange to be found on the darn thing.

Here’s the deal. I haven’t given up on Glynnis. And I fear that if you keep changing the way your can looks, she may walk up to me in the store when I have my perplexed, “WTF did they do with the can now?” look rather than the confident look that comes with scooping up that can with blue waves and an orange bar as I stroll through the personal care aisle.

You started this thing. I need you to stick with me.

Sincerely,

A loyal customer

Getting There

To most folks, the binoculars I bought last week on eBay might not seem like much. They are just Bushnell 10×50 wide angle binoculars. They cost less than $35. And while they are nice to have, I don’t really need them. But that’s the point. I don’t really need them, but I have them.

My new binoculars

A year and a half out from the divorce and my debt is down to a less onerous level. Cash flow is where it was before I got married and I don’t have to wait for a paycheck to come in to pay the light bill. Not wealthy by any standards, but not broke either. Able to own something like a nice set of binoculars capable of spotting Messier objects in the sky and an occasional comet.

I have always been fascinated with the night sky. I learned it from my dad. At an early age, I would follow him out of the house after dark on a clear night and watch him watch the sky through his binoculars. After a while, he’d take the strap off of his neck and hand me the binoculars and say, “Here, look at that.”

I’ll never forget the first time I saw the Pleiades. I thought my dad and I had discovered the “Question Mark” Galaxy. It was amazing to see those seven stars through the binoculars where they just looked like a smudge in the night sky without binoculars.

As a teen, my best friend Merrill and I would sit on the hood of the car out in a sugar cane field, leaning back against the windshield, drinking Miller ponies, smoking cigarettes, trying to name the constellations and marveling at the Milky Way while we talked about life, the universe and everything.

When I started working offshore, and no longer had to wait for a paycheck to pay bills, one of the first things I bought was a pair of binoculars. Jason brand. 7×50. $120 from Service Merchandise in 1977. Quite a bargain. I took them everywhere. You would not believe the stars you can see while laying on the heliport of an offshore oil rig at night. I loved watching the skies while camping along the Gulf Coast or at the beach at Grand Isle.

Comet Hale-Bopp, 1997
(That’s the Pleiades in the upper left corner)

When Haley’s Comet made its once in a lifetime visit in 1986, I got to know that unspectacular snowball through the eye pieces of my Jason binoculars. When I lived in Lakeland, Fla., I could see the space shuttle rise in the sky after launch through my living room window thanks to those binoculars.

In the mid ’90s, the comet bug continued to bite me and I followed Comet Hyakutake and Hale-Bopp with my binoculars. (And photographed them with my Pentax K-1000). And after the move to Tennessee and our new home on the edge of the city, I liked to spend quiet evenings in the back yard searching the night sky with my binoculars. I kept them on a cabinet in the corner of the dining room, out of the way but handy when I wanted to step out on the deck to gaze at the sky and just enjoy the stillness of the night. Watching the Space Station through them was always cool.

But once they started to build houses behind ours, I gave stargazing a rest because I didn’t want to have to try to explain to the police that I was looking at M-43, not the neighbors’ windows. But I kept the binoculars handy on the cabinet, just in case the mood hit.

About six years ago, I got a telescope for Christmas. Quite a surprise and something I’d wanted since using Merrill’s telescope in our Haley’s days. After I got the telescope set up, I reached for the binoculars to use to help spot a particular star. That’s when I discovered the eye pieces were bent at a weird angle. A closer look and I discovered that the body was cracked. Try as I might, I couldn’t make them work.

My heart wasn’t the only thing broke. I couldn’t afford to replace the binoculars. By that time, I had come to terms with the downside of trying to appease someone and live beyond our means. I had enough debt on credit cards and wasn’t going to add to it. Jason had gone out of business, which didn’t help matters, either. And I was devastated to realize that I lived with someone who couldn’t be honest with me about something as simple as a pair of binoculars getting accidentally knocked off of a corner cabinet in a room that we rarely used.

Fast forward to a week ago. News of Comet PanSTARRS caught my eye and rekindled my desire to sky gaze. I tried to see the comet on a clear night, but with my recent eye surgery, my glasses didn’t work on one eye and my repaired eye wasn’t able to focus on dim objects in the sky and I said, “man, if only I had my binoculars …”

You say “If only” a lot after a divorce and quite frankly, I tired of saying it almost as soon as the ink was dry on our settlement. So that night I went on eBay, found the Bushnell’s which look a lot like my old Jason’s and bought them. They came in the mail today. Too late for PanSTARRS, but I’ll get plenty of practice using them before Comet ISON comes into view in November. I can’t wait to pack them for my camping trip in two weeks.

Everything old is new again

War of the Worlds, 1953

I finally got around to seeing the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds. It was ABC’s Saturday night movie last week. It took two and a half hours to show the entire movie thanks to commercial breaks. I loved every minute of it.

In this age of DVRs (and VCRs before them), DVDs and video on demand, it was kind of nice to not have to look for the remote to pause the video when I needed to go to the bathroom or fix something to eat or drink. And it reminded me of how exciting it was to watch blockbuster movies on TV after we’d missed them at the theater.

In the days before video tapes and movie rentals, Saturday and Sunday nights on ABC, CBS and NBC were the only shot we had at seeing a movie once their theater run was over. That’s how I got to see Planet of the Apes, after my older sister told my mom that it had nudity and we were banned from seeing it when it played the Grand in Thibodaux. (The nudity turned out to be a man’s butt, which is something my brother and I saw every time we went to the public pool in the summer.)

I liked the Tom Cruise version of War of the Worlds. I loved Tim Robbins in it better than Tom, but all in all it was a pretty good movie.

And if I hadn’t liked it, I wasn’t out anything and I could change the channel. I think I liked that most of all.

War of the Worlds, 2005

There’s something to be said for a life with a timetable. That’s why I prefer network TV to cable and wish the networks would start showing football bowl games again. (If I ever run for public office it will be to break up the monopoly that ESPN has on college football.)

I like that the network news comes on at 5:30 p.m. and no one is shouting.

I was speaking with a friend a while back and his 6-year-old nephew interrupted us to say he wanted to watch a show and needed his uncle to find it for him. That kid’s generation has no concept of “That show’s not on right now.”  I think they’re set up to be disappointed frequently in life without that knowledge.

Good things come to those who wait, especially those who have a TV antenna made from wood scraps and old metal coat hangars.

Make your own chocolate syrup

The finished product

One of the things I’m doing as I build a simpler life, is eating healthier. Given, what’s healthier for me might not be the same as healthy to other folks. But one of my favorite drinks at breakfast is chocolate milk. I’m not a big drinker of plain milk. In fact, I won’t drink plain milk unless I’m at someone’s house and I don’t want to look like an idiot when they hand me a glass.

My love for chocolate milk was tempered by the knowledge that my favorite chocolate syrup is made with high fructose corn syrup. Lots has been written about the negative health effects of corn syrup. Much has been written on the negative affects of sugar. But if God really wanted me to eat high fructose corn syrup, he would have plopped me down in a corn field instead of the sugar cane fields I grew up among just west of Thibodaux, La.

So I’m always looking for ways to replace corn syrup with sugar or cane syrup.

I was really happy to see Anne Parr post a link on Facebook to a blog that had a chocolate syrup with sugar recipe.

I tried it tonight and it is really good. I base this on the residue left on the spoon. I can’t wait to try some with cinnamon rolls at breakfast tomorrow.

All you need is sugar, unsweetened cocoa powder, water, salt and vanilla extract. My next batch, I’ll use Jack Daniel’s Tennessee Honey instead of vanilla extract just ’cause I want to.

Homemade chocolate syrup

Here’s a quick synopsis of the recipe. Whisk together 1 1/4 cups of sugar and a cup of unsweetened cocoa powder to remove any clumps. Add 1 cup of water, stir well and bring to a boil over medium high heat. Stir frequently. (Use a spoon instead of a whisk, though. The whisk brings air into the mix.)

Once it starts to boil, reduce to medium low heat and simmer for about 5 minutes, until the sauce starts to thicken slightly, while still stirring. Take from heat and let it sit for 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, add in 1/4 teaspoon of salt and 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract. Stir well. Bottle and refrigerate.

I’m not sure of the liquid volume, but it filled a Smucker’s natural 16-ounce glass peanut butter jar. (You won’t catch me putting hot stuff in plastic … )

Simply clean

I ran out of Tide laundry detergent this week, so I’m trying something I’ve been wanting to do for a couple of years. I made my own laundry detergent.

The basic ingredients

I’ve seen dozens of recipes on how to do this on the Internet the past couple of years. A friend made some recently and I figured, why not, especially since I can buy all the ingredients here in Nashville.

It ain’t rocket science and come Friday evening, I’ll be able to tell you whether it works or not.

The total cost for ingredients was about $12. But I have enough raw ingredients left over that all I’ll need for a fresh batch is a bar of soap.

Here’s what you need:

• A bar of soap. I used Dr. Bronner’s All in One Castile Soap citrus scented bar. It’s olive-oil based and made from all natural ingredients
• 2 cups of Arm & Hammer Washing Soda
• 2 cups of 20 Mule Team Borax
• 1 cup of baking soda

Grate the bar of soap (I used a cheese grater) and stir in the other ingredients in a large bowl. Mix it really well. Lots of stirring. Then put your mixture in a container with a lid. (I was going to use old pickle jars but scored a tall Christmas tin from work today.) And shake the heck out of your mixture again. Shake it a lot. You want it to be as homogenous as possible when you use it. So shake it some more. Then shake it again before you use it. Keep it out of your eyes, though. (Who knew you could flush your eyes with a neti pot?)

I’ll start out using a tablespoon per load and let you know how it goes.

UPDATE: Dec. 21. Did 4 loads of clothes. 1 tablespoon per load is fine. Low suds, mild citrus smell out of the wash. No scent after time in the dryer with an unscented Bounce fabric softener sheet. Clothes are clean, but none were really soiled going in. A trip to Louisiana coming up should end up with some crawfish juice on something and we’ll see how this works on that.

All mixed together

The finished product in a repurposed Christmas tin

Peanut butter and pickles?!

I read an article today in the NY Times about peanut butter and pickle sandwiches. My first response was much like yours — ewww. But then I got to thinking.

I love peanut butter. It’s the perfect food for me. You don’t have to refrigerate it, you don’t need to thaw it out. It goes equally well on bread or on crackers, with jelly it’s a meal, and if all else fails, it can be eaten straight out of the jar with a spoon.

It has protein but no cholesterol. As I said, the perfect food for me.

In my early years, it was mostly with jelly, especially my dad’s blackberry jelly. I have pleasant memories of picking blackberries and taking them home and squeezing the berries through cheesecloth to get the juice so that daddy could cook it into jelly. I always imagined he was using a secret family recipe handed down by generations of Bernards. My bubble was burst a few years ago when he told me the recipe was on the package of wax he uses in canning.

My Uncle Bill introduced me to the finer points of the grilled peanut butter sandwich when I was 6 or 7. I think he got the idea from Elvis, or maybe Elvis got the idea from him, but whoever came up with the idea is a genius. It’s made just like a grilled cheese, only with peanut butter instead of cheese inside. The warm peanut butter and the crisp buttery bread make for the perfect breakfast or lunch.

Elvis liked to put bananas on his grilled peanut butter sandwiches. I tried one on a dare at Graceland once. Somewhere there’s a video of it. I’m not a fan, though if there was a plate of grilled peanut butter and banana sandwiches, I’d eat one. Ask my friends in Lakeland. I’ll eat a whole peanut or a pickled bar egg. All you have to do is dare.

So I got to thinking today as I read the NY Times column that he might be on to something. The author’s favorite is bread and butter pickles with Smucker’s Natural peanut butter. Being a recent convert to Smucker’s Natural (Ingredients: peanuts. Less than 1% salt. Now go read the ingredients in JIF.), I said why not?

I don’t have any bread and butter pickles, but I keep hamburger dill slices around. Not bad. Good contrast in textures. Thicker pickle slices would be better. The author said he also liked to slice Claussen pickles so I’ll give that a try. And I’ll toast the bread at some point, too, because that’s how I roll.

Of human Bond-age

The James Bond theme song is 50 years old this year, which is kind of cool unto itself. But the neatest thing about the theme is how it came to be.

This weekend, the Wall Street Journal published an interesting article on how the Bond theme brings out the manliness in men. It has something to do with linking the song to memories associated with our fathers taking us to see our first Bond movie in the theater. You can read the story at this link.

My dad didn’t take me to see my first Bond movie. My first experience with James Bond was through the Sear’s Christmas catalog in third grade after Goldfinger was released. My buddy David got to see the movie and filled us in on the details, like there was a naked lady painted gold and a woman named Pussy Galore. (Insert schoolboy giggles here.)

I didn’t get to see an actual Bond movie until they were edited for TV and broadcast a few years after their release in theaters. My first Bond movie in the theater was “Live and Let Die.” I saw it at the Grand Theater in Thibodaux when I was 16, on the day I got my driver’s license.

But enough about me. The WSJ article says the James Bond theme was thrown together at the last minute and adapted from the song “Good Sign, Bad Sign,” by Monty Norman. It was part of a musical that never got produced. (Which is a good thing.) Here’s the original song.

Producers of “Dr. No” turned to film composer John Barry to punch up the music for the movie. He brought in guitarist Vic Flick and they turned that horrible song into what would become the theme song for the lives of most men born since 1945.

One man’s trash turned to everyman’s treasure.