It's the most wonderful time of the year...For lovers of mint!

Thanksgiving has not yet passed, but it is undeniable that the holiday season is upon. The stores have ambushed us with holiday themed goods, decorations, and music as we stroll the aisles, there's no missing it. While I generally find the early arrival of the holidays a bit annoying, there's no denying there's one thing I truly relish...The arrival of holiday themed goodies featuring mint flavor.

I am among those who enjoy the flavor of mint. My favorite candy are spice flavored jelly beans with peppermint, spearmint, clove, anise, and cinnamon flavors.

Luckily, I have secured a reliable source where I can obtain these year round in bulk, allowing me to stock my desktop dispenser. We, the mint lovers of the world, must be a minority because most anything mint flavored generally enjoys a very short life cycle, only to disappear from existence.

But sometimes, a little holiday magic gets to working and these bundles of joy return. Today, perusing the candy aisle of my local Walmart, I came across a sight I had not beheld in a number of years, mint flavored Kit Kats. These appeared one holiday season of yore, only to vanish for years to come. I am pleased to say they are back this year, and I stocked up!

A more reliable treasure is Mint flavored M&Ms. These were around intermittently a while back, but seemed to have enjoyed a renaissance and are present on the candy aisle shelves all the time now. The holiday twist is they get a peppermint variety (as well as the holiday color treatment),

A recent find are the candy cane Joe Joes for Trader Joes. Basically an oreo with the filling mint flavored and including little bits of peppermint stick. Get them while you can, they are only around during the holidays, and once they are gone, they're gone.

My white whale of mint flavored yummies, Walmart carried some delicious chocolate cookies a few years back, made by Andes Candies. One year only, never saw them again. I can only hope those come back around.

Before you know it, New Years will be in our rear view mirror, and all the special goodies gone, hopefully to reappear next year. Sad as it is to see them go, I can start to pine away for the appearance of the Easter Goodies a few scant months later. Yes, I have a problem.

Small is the new Medium?

As previously stated, I am an average size guy. As such, I have always shopped for clothes in size Medium, which would stand to reason. However, lately, there seems to be a trend of upsizing.

I recently purchased a pair of comfy flannel pants, similar to those I've bought in the past. Without giving it any thought (or trying them on, banish the thought), I bought Medium size. When I got them home and put them on for the first time, they were falling off me, had to downsize to get a fit. I've witnessed the same phenomenon buying a sweater, a fleece jacket and underwear, of all things.

What could possibly explain this effect? Is it the clothing industry adapting to a 'super-sized' America? Is it our refusal to adopt the metric system and it's a conversion issue? Maybe I'm just shrinking as I get older? (I assure you I am not, especially in the waist line)

Whatever the reason, it's become clear that I will have to shed that male characteristic lack of desire to try on clothes and see if I am truly a Medium, or a new Small.

No Whitening Thank You...

We all want to look good, right? Well somehow, we have been convinced that the best way to look good is with a beautiful smile. Correction: a bright WHITE beautiful smile. We must use whitening gums, strip, mints and of course toothpastes to get that stellar white smile that we all desire. This is all ironic on a number of levels.

First, why aren't our teeth white in the first place? Could it be all the soda, coffee, tea, candy and snacks that are sold and marketed to us ad nauseam? Judging by the bottom lines of the companies that purvey these products, I'd guess that has something to do with it. There products all stain the enamel on the exterior of our teeth, leaving the objectionable shades behind.

The second irony is that the products that whiten our teeth are actually weakening them. The way most work is to wear the outer layer (the stained layer from above) of the enamel off to expose the clean layer underneath. Akin to polishing a dull stone to expose the lovely colorations concealed below. However, unlike the stone, our teeth are smaller and thinner and have a finite layer of enamel, once it's wore off, it's gone making our teeth even more susceptible.

The final issue is what made me want to rant on this topic in the first place, and that's the presence of these whitening products in toothpaste. Toothpaste is by its very nature something we use to protect our teeth, so the incorporation of something designed to essentially wear down our teeth is ludicrous. As I shopped in the supermarket today for a new tube of toothpaste, I searched and searched for a paste that not only did not include whitening, but did include products to rebuild enamel. The real joke is that some of these toothpastes claim to do both. That's like simultaneously applying paint and thinner at the same time and I don't see how that could work.

In the end, I found my unicorn, Sensodyne ProNamel Daily Protection (NO Whitening!) which I will happily use to protect my teeth and rebuild my enamel. I guess I'll just have to live with not being one of the beautiful people.

Setting up My New Phone: When Joy turns to Agony

"It's so easy". That's what I always hear from my wife about her iphone specifically and Apple products generally. She has drunk the elixir and is all in.

But that's not for me. For as long as I have had a smartphone, I've had an Android handset with all of its various quirks (compatibility issues, operating system bugs...), and advantages (I love widgets!). Every now and then I even get a "that's really cool" from my wife when I show her a certain feature.

So here I am with my latest foray into android, my new Nexus 6 (see prior post). Out of the box it came with the rawest form of Android available, with no corporate skin or carrier bloatware for a fast streamlined user experience, sort of. With the set up process came a multitude of issues that have severely tainted my initial impressions:

1. Apps: I had to go the Google Play store and manually locate and download all of the apps that I had on my former device (individually), then set them up/log in for each one. Such a tedious process!

2. Music: Instead of transferring my music from the old device, I decided to just re-sync from my computer. A relatively painless process, however, Google Play Music (the default music player on the device) no longer supports WMA format and wouldn't you know, half my music library is in that format. So began the process of locating a new music app that would support my music, a lengthy, but successful process. BUT...This new player was not supported by my bluetooth app so when I got in the car, it started Google Play. Left with no choice, I had to convert all of my WMA to MP3, an hours long foray, but it was successful and I am back to using Google Play.

3. Contacts: Between Google and Verizon, my contacts should have transferred seamlessly. Google lived up to that billing, but Verizon wasn't playing ball, so I had to manually sync up my contacts. A day later, those same contacts were gone and there was no way to restore them, even though they showed up on my cloud. After another lengthy chat with Verizon, they finally decided to load (again). So far, they're still there.

4. Sticking Accelerometer: Twice the accelerometer stuck and the phone would not recognize being turned sideways. A restart corrected the issue, but twice in two days seemed troublesome.

5. Weather Widget: As I said above, I love widgets. They give you quick access to info right from the home screen. I decided with a new phone, I was due a new home screen widget. Easier said than done, there are literally hundreds of apps with thousands of options, none perfect. This is probably more a result of my pickiness than the phone/app store, but challenging nonetheless. Finally settled on a basic clock widget with a nice 5 day forecast band underneath.

6. Voice Mail: Because the phone I got is 'unlocked', it is not carrier specific. While my carrier, Verizon, was willing to let me activate it on their network, it did not come with any of the carrier software (My Verizon, Voice Mail) so I was unable to get visual voicemail, as I was on my previous phone. After tons of looking on the internet (and attempting to side load the voice mail app) and talking to Verizon it appeared I was out of luck and I was going to have to call in to get my voice mail and get weird texts every time one came in. So I skipped to step 4...

7. Software updates: The handset shipped with Android 5.0 (Lollipop), a year old build and I was very aware that there were at least a few updates since. However, the phone would not update. I called Google and they said it could take up to a month for the updates to push. Convinced that if I updated the phone, it might address some of the issues above, I decided to manually load these updates. While the process was not hard (thanks to all the geeks on the web that detail this process and make all of the info available), it did take a fair amount of time as I could not simply skip to the latest version, had to do all the incremental updates, but in the end, I was updated to Android 6.0 (Marshmallow). While the changes to the operating system didn't mean much to me, it magically fixed a number of the above issues; no problems with the accelerometer since, and I was able to side load Visual Voicemail).

With all of the above completed, the phone is up and running like a champ. So I jump on and make my first phone call and my client says, "you sound funny". Ugh....A change in my phone's location seems to have remedied that (the speaker was picking up an echo from the wall behind it), so now I am in what I consider the actual trial of this device (3 days later). I have a narrow window of time to decide if I should stick it out, or just send it back (and then start over again with another device!). With all this work, I almost feel like I have to keep it, but we shall see...Let's just hope that accelerometer holds up!

My Technological Harvest Moon Has Risen

Our lives are marked by various recurring events; birthdays, anniversaries, haircuts, etc. But sometimes, it's the occasions that come with infrequent regularity that stir us the most; The harvest moon, an Olympics, elections for state representatives and the like. The ritual that has me writing today is a modern rite of passage, familiar to any smartphone owner, a new device. For most of us, a new device is a biennial occurrence determined by a contract period, payment plan, or one's desire/means. Today I find myself giddy as a schoolgirl as I am the bearer of a new Google Nexus 6 (Shamu as known within certain camps).

I have upgraded my Motorola Moto X (2014) to this new beast. While it has been just over a year since I acquired the Moto X, it has reached that magic time in its life cycle, around 1 year, where the gremlins have begun to appear (reduced battery life, worse cellular reception, and all around quirkiness) and I decided that rather than cursing it for the next year, I would jump to another device.

The question I ask myself at this, the dawn of a new era, is "Why am I so excited about this new device?". Is it really all that different that the one before it? Sure it's bigger, with more memory, faster processor, blah blah, but the old device (when it was working right) was perfectly ample. The answer I find is that I am attempting to use this device to make a lifestyle shift.

Perhaps I'm being a bit over dramatic, but I am seeking to use the large 6" display on this phone to supplant not only my old phone, but also to replace my 8" tablet. Device consolidation seems like a worthy venture, since when I travel I seem to be bogged down by a multitude of devices and the various accouterments that go with them. That's the upside, the downside is that I have also taken another step towards device reliance.

We'll see if this new phone has any profound effects on my life, but for now, I am reveling in the excitement and challenges of setting this baby up. Hopefully this is the greatest device I've ever owned, at least until the next Harvest Moon.