Bendaroos: They're awesome!

I've had the pleasure this fall to share in the "take the kids to school" task with Janelle. I didn't realize what fun little conversations can be had in a 6 minute drive from our house to the school.

One day last week we discussed TV commercials:

Madilyn or Blake (I forget, which): I want (some toy) because I saw it on a TV commercial.

Madilyn: It is cool to have things that we see on TV.

Me (in fatherly tone, capturing teaching moment): You know kids, that's the reason they make TV commercials - to make you think you want things.

Blake: I do want things!

Madilyn: And Dad , if we didn't have TV commercials, we would never know what Bendaroos are.

Me (stupidly): What are Bendaroos?

Madilyn: They're awesome. And they're only $19.95!

New and Improved ... fork?

Finally, someone has improved the design of the fork. I've been searching for one that was not only stronger, but also tougher (two vital fork qualities) -- now I've found it.

I can sleep again.

It does make me wonder, though, if the purchaser of the 600-piece plastic fork box was somehow influenced by the blatant marketing declaring these forks different in some way to the last 50 years of plastic forks.

I have to admit, if they were on a Sam's Club shelf next to plain old forks, I'm going with stronger and tougher every time.

Chip clips make me happy

Do you ever avoid doing/buying something, and then when you finally do you ask yourself, "Why in the world didn't I do that weeks/months/years ago?"

We've had a lack of "chip clips" in our house for quite awhile. There was a daily struggle to determine which bag of chips or other food were "chip clip worthy." It consisted of a tiered system of criteria that looked something like this:

1. How many chips are left? (more chips = more loss if they go stale)
2. How new is the bag? (new chips gone stale seems more wasteful)
3. Which chips am I personally more likely to eat (for me, Santitas got the clip before Lay's)
4. Which chips taste OK stale? (Doritos are passable; chewy pretzels are not)
5. Which chips cost the most to replace if thrown away? (I'm looking at you, Gardettos)

Also, it seemed the number of chip clips dwindled year to year. We received a bunch for our wedding (granted, that was ten years ago), and we've picked up a couple along the way -- including a random clothespin here and there. But items like this have a way of disappearing or finding other uses. One currently clips the Costco-sized bag of cat food in the garage (Otis does not go for stale food. Also, see #5 above.), and others end up clipping various bags inside the refrigerator or around the house.

Of course, every time I fought through this decision tree I asked myself the question, "Self, why don't you buy some chip clips?" But the feeling soon passed, and it never happened to occur while at the store.

Then something very special happened. I was in Wal-Mart and happened to think about this issue. I sprinted to the chip clip aisle (ok, it's not an entire aisle - but there are options) and made this vital purchase. It has changed my life.

I am a rich man. Rich with chip clips. Now every bag of chips, no matter its race, creed, color or flavor, is properly clipped and fresh for eating at our leisure.

Chip, chip, hooray!