Beautiful flowers.
G-d made them for us.
Soft petals.
Magnificent colors.
Fresh sweet smells.
The sound of rustling in the wind.
Absorbing the rays of sunshine.
Drinking the rain water.
Planted in the soil of the earth.
Magical flowers of life, love, and peace.
(Credit Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
I’m not really into perfumed smells.
But I thought these bowls and batches of potpourri were pretty attractive.
The fruits and petals mixed with spices looked good.
I guess anything that can improve on room odors is a positive thing.
I sort of imagine the scent of the potpourri battling the odors in the room and pushing and pulling back and forth until one smell wins out.
Better keep that potpourri new and fresh–the nose knows. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Great sign at the nut stand at Sugarloaf Festival.
“This Is What You Smell!”
Hot cinnamon pecans or almonds.
Wow, did that smell nice.
I got a tiny bag of the pecans, and when I opened it, the smell and taste that hot cinnamon really took over.
Were there other smells present as well?
Probably, but I chose to focus on the cinnamon nuts.
The other smells will have to wait for their special sign and appropriate attention to deal with it. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
Just wanted to share this saying (translated from Hebrew) that I like:
On taste and smell, there is no argument.
What tastes or smells good or bad to one person versus another is not up for debate.
Each person has their own taste buds and odor senses.
Some people may be more or less sensitive to different tastes and smells.
So there is no arguing there.
You either like or you don’t like.
That’s your prerogative!
Don’t make a big stink about it. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So this is a novel way to sell socks.
Roll them up and package them like a sushi roll.
Socks are the colors and textures of various fish.
Not sure why anyone would want socks that mimic sushi…
Unless of course, you feet stink like raw fish!
My wife knows this true story about this one girl that I dated before I met her, and she came over to my parents house and was waiting for me.
When I got there, she was sitting on the couch and her shoes were off.
It was after a long day at work apparently, and her feet smelled worse than any fish I could imagine.
Literally, I think I could’ve passed out right there on the floor.
Date was over and quick, and I never forget those sushi feet. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
My daughter, Rebecca sent me this photo she took.
A little lady bug on the plants outside.
She told me how important it is to pay attention to the beauty in even the smallest ways out there.
I was very proud of her!
It’s not the biggest, the loudest, or the baddest that necessarily makes the most impact in the world.
I hope she (and us) keep on noticing what is really amazing in this world.
(Source Photo: Rebecca Blumenthal)
So I’m at the doctor’s office for a checkup.
The doctor tells me to lie down on the exam table.
There is also a 3rd year medical student in the room as part of her training.
The exam starts and there are all these devices for checking things out.
It’s feeling a little tense.
I jokingly say, “I feel like a cadaver lying here (being studied).”
Then the medical student says, “Oh you smell much better than a cadaver! I just took that class.”
Oh, how comforting is that–smelling better than a stinkin’ dead person whose been embalmed!
At which point, there is some ridiculous talk about dead people and formaldehyde, body odor, and decay.
This was quite a lively visit, but I hope it was helpful to me and to medical science. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
As kids, there always used to be someone who would run around holding their nose, and yelling at the smallest sign of someone’s flatulence…Eew!
In turn, the other kids would all chime in: “The person who smelt it, dealt it!”
Might as well push the responsibility where it rightfully belongs–uh, maybe.
This is what kids do–they are not politically correct in the slightest!
Are adults any better really?
I’ve seen grown men and women start holding their noses and waving their hands in front of their faces when someone is stinking up the local air.
In particular, this happens quite a bit on places like the crowded Metro and elevators…going down.
People are unforgiving when the air is foul.
Personally, I am very sensitive to bad smells and hot air–my A/C is running full blast all around the year…even in Winter, seriously!
When I saw this sign in a storefront window that said, “Free Smells,” I thought to myself, gee we got enough smells to last a lifetime, and that’s why fresh air and nature is so appealing to the good ‘ol olfactory senses.
Free smells…unless it’s fresh flowers or some savory dish to eat–you can have it–free or not, I frankly don’t give a damn.
My personal belief is that an odor is far more likely to cause you a gag sensation than put a refreshing smile on your ugly face.
Good etiquette, keep your smells to yourself. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So I can’t believe they actually made a “strategy card game” about cholent.
The only strategy that I know of with cholent is to make it hot, goopy, meaty, and savory.
Cholent is a beef stew typically eaten for Shabbat lunch.
Basic ingredients: beans, barely, potatoes, fatty fanken meat, sometimes a kishka is thrown in, onions and other veggies, salt, pepper, and lots of savory spices.
Usually it cooks in a crock pot overnight.
The sephardim call this dish Hamin (instead of cholent) and typically put in some hard-boiled eggs as well.
With cholent, you can essentially throw in the kitchen sink as long as it add to the heartiness and flavor of the dish.
Eating cholent is such a tradition that it is almost considered a special mitzvah to do it. Ah, would that make it commandment #614?
When cholent is served at the kiddish (the meal after Shabbat services in synagogue), it is usually the highlight where everybody gathers around with big laddles to dig in and get the nice portions of meat bopping around in the stew or often sunken to the very bottom to be found and surfaced by the lucky lunch patrons.
In New York, my friends used to have a running joke that there was a secret ingredient the Rebetzin used to make it so good–what it was, all bets were on.
The biggest problem with cholent are the loads of beans (“the musical food”) and the most unpleasant odor-filled aftereffects–and of this we will not speak again!
What type of game can you play with cholent? You can probably just toot out the answer when you’re ready. 😉
(Source Photo: Andy Blumenthal)
So apparently data mining can be used for all sorts of research…
In the New York Times today, Seth Stephens-Davidowitz tries his hand with google search results to better understand people’s feelings about sex.
Though Stephens-Davidowitz doesn’t explain how he gets these google statistics…here are some standouts:
As you might have guessed, the biggest complaint from men–and women–is that they don’t get/have enough sex.
For both (as you might imagine in a primarily–95%–heterosexual world), traditional surveys show that it’s about once a week.
However, the author says this is exaggerated (yeah, is it surprising that people exaggerate about this?) and it’s actually only about 30 times a year–or once every 12 days.
So there are a lot of search on “sexless” or “won’t have sex with me.”
Observing that “sex can be quite fun,” he questions, “why do we have so little of it?”
And he concludes that it’s because we have “enormous anxiety” and insecurity about our bodies and sexuality.
Again, you probably wouldn’t need data mining to guess the results, but men’s biggest worry is about their penis size, and one of women’s most toxic worries–a “strikingly common concern”–is about the smell of their vagina.
For men, they actually google questions about genital size more often than they have questions about any other body part; in fact, more than “about their lungs, liver, feet, ears, nose, throat, and brain combined.”
So much for health consciousness versus machismo pride.
The funny thing is apparently women don’t seem to care so much about this with only about 1 search on this topic for every 170 searches that men do on this.
Surprising to most men, about 40% of the searches women do conduct on this topic is “complaints” that it is too big!
Not that size doesn’t matter to women, but for them it’s about the size of their breasts and butts–and again, bigger being generally considered better.
In this case, most men seem to agree.
Another issue men are concerned about is premature ejaculation and how to make the experience last longer.
However, here women seem to be looking for information about half and half on how to make men climax more quickly on one hand, and more slowly on the other.
Overall, men are from Mars and women from Venus, with lot’s of misunderstanding between the sexes.
The conclusion from this big data study…everyone calm down and just try to enjoy each other more.
Amazing the insights we can get from data mining! 😉
(Source Photo: here with attribution to Daniel)
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