Does your wife and/or girlfriend make more money than you?  Follow up:  Are you ok with it?

Lebron James may have the skills to achieve the same sort of greatness that Jordan achieved, but his mental game is just not where Michael was.  Nor do I think he will ever be.  Michael beat you with his physical skills but destroyed you with his mental game.  He was always in control, always.  Lebron can not even keep controlled during a victory?!  Add this to the whole handshaking incidents, man win or lose you shake your opponents hand.  Sour grapes.  He needs to get his mental game up or he will just be another talented player that will not be remembered.  So what does everyone else think?

Cavaliers forward LeBron James has been fined $25,000 for kicking a water bottle during Wednesday’s 109-95 victory over the Minnesota Timberwolves, league executive Stu Jackson announced.

I never understood why tanning beds even existed, but since so many people use them the Food and Drug Administration will be debating how to give people stricter warnings that tanning bed sunlamps pose a cancer risk.

The World Health Organization’s cancer division last summer listed tanning beds as definitive cancer-causers, right alongside the ultraviolet radiation that both they and the sun emit. They’d long been considered “probable” carcinogens, but what tipped the scales: An analysis of numerous studies that concluded the risk of melanoma jumps by 75 percent in people who used tanning beds in their teens and 20s.

So it looks like in March, the FDA advisers will open a public hearing to hopefully give tanning beds more regulation which would include more warnings and maybe even classify them in a way that they can do even more to regulate their use.  The Indoor Tanning Association is all ready to fight this, along with the pending legislation to tax tanning salons.  I think people can become addicted to the tanning process and maybe something like is instituted for Zyrtec-D could be imposed, checking your license with a linked database so you do not overdo it.  The linked database part is where it could get costly and how would you actually regulate it.  The Zyrtec-D regulation is at a pharmacy where they already have to have some  things put in place.

Also education could be a help here, as most of the people that are over using the tanning beds are in their teens and 20s.  You have to be comfortable with the way you look.  The FDA though can not tackle that rather large prospect though, that is more of a parents job I would think. 

Source: Associated Press

My family currently consists of 2 boys with a girl on the way and we eat LOTS of cereal.  Since I become quite bored with the same cereal over and over again we try a lot of the new ones that come out.  Today I will be telling you a bit about Chocolate Cherrios which has just come to market from General Mills.

I think when you talk about chocolate based cereals you have to talk about two distinct areas of consumption.  The cereal itself and the milk after the cereal is all gone.  Chocolate Cheerios did well in only one of those categories.  There is some sort of weird aftertaste to the cereal for me.  Like an overpowering grain or bran type of taste that ruined the whole cereal.  It was not so bad that I had to throw the bowl away, but after first seeing the cereal in the box, I thought this one was going to be something special, which is was not.  The aftertaste destroyed any hope of cereal love I might have with Chocolate Cherrios.  The chocolate milk left in the bowl was fine, but it could have been I was so underwhelmed with the cereal that I gave the milk the benefit of the doubt. 

Overall, Chocolate Cherrios was nothing special and if I did not eat another bowl I would not feel like I was missing out on anything.  My favorite chocolate cereal is still probably Cocoa Krispies from Kellogg’s

I will be the first one to admit that I do not suffer from seasonal affective disorder (SAD), but I do know a few family members that do.  According to Dr. Cliff Arnall, a researcher from Cardiff University, January 18th is the most depressing day of 2010.  Dr. Arnall’s forumula accounts for things post-holiday blues, debt, failed New Year’s resolutions and, the chilly weather as it makes itself felt further south.

For me the weather outside does not affect how I feel on the inside, but I can see how the letdown from the holidays along with feeling isolated can account for the winter blues.  I feel like vacation return blues affect me more than winter blues, so if you are reading this today, keep your head up!  If winter blues are making their way intor your life you might want to seek some professional help.

I just finished reading this WSJ article and it seems that they have broken down the game of football to find out how much real action takes place during a game.

According to a Wall Street Journal study of four recent broadcasts, and similar estimates by researchers, the average amount of time the ball is in play on the field during an NFL game is about 11 minutes.

In other words, if you tally up everything that happens between the time the ball is snapped and the play is whistled dead by the officials, there’s barely enough time to prepare a hard-boiled egg. In fact, the average telecast devotes 56% more time to showing replays.

Now for me, I started to figure out something like this when I got my first DVR.  You see I could start a game over an hour after it started and when all was said and done I would be watching the last few minutes live saving me a ton of time.  If you get good with the remote control you can actually speed through everything except just the plays.  It might not be the social experience you come to expect from the game, but honestly it saves a whole lot of my time, and time these days is precious.

The thing that networks really have to worry about is making sure you have real good team of people doing the color commentary for the game, because they will be doing a lot of talking.

I know that there will be many things that I will get to teach my boys while they grow up, but the one thing that I might have needed a bit more of myself growing up was dealing with love and how it affected my life.  What I came to learn for myself though, is that just because you fall in love with someone, does not mean that you should spend the rest of your life with them.  Thank goodness for me I did not make that mistake or we would be talking about me being on my second marriage.  Lucky for me, and I want to tell you how I see it.

There are three things in my opinion that are not greater than love, and they happen to be, children, family, and money.  Yeah stop the grimacing, I already told you this is how I see it, so feel free to tell me how you see it after you read the whole piece.

Children – The easy one is, do you want to have children?  Does the other person feel the same way?  If you stop there and figure that you both are on the same page by that question you will find yourself in a world of hurt later in your marriage.  Here are some other questions to think about.  Do you have the same thoughts on when you want to have children?  What about how many children?  Do you feel the same way about parenting?  About how you will handle your child’s learning, and even things as naming the children. 

Family – Ah you thought it was all about you family?  Well you are going to be in for a shock as a family can ruin a relationship on either side of the playing field.  As a man I may not have to like my wife’s family, but a few things do need to be understood.  They must respect the rules that me and my wife have come up with to raise our children.  That is really the biggest one for me.  Plus you have to make sure on your end that you keep your family respecting your partner.  You also have to remember that your new family should take precedence in relation to your old family.  Even if you do not agree with precedence they should be on the same level at the minimum.  I know for me I had a big blowout with my wife’s mother when we had our first child because of who was going to be the godmother.  Even though we do not see eye to eye, we have come to keep it civil and I attend most events that her family has to keep the peace.

Money- You think you can leave money out of the equation?  If I remember correctly money is the cause of most fights in a marriage.  It isn’t even just about the money you have, but also about how you spend it, how you want to stack up in the rat race of the class sytem, and who is going to take care of the finances at the end of the day.  I remember one day coming home to the phone not working because we had been splitting the bills and my wife did not pay the bill.  At that point I told my wife I was going to take care of all the bills and I would just give her money each week.  It is funny because with my parents it is the opposite, my mother does the bills and gives my father money for the week.  You have to be able to agree on that.  Plus you have to be able to agree on what you are buying.  My wife is real good with me buying new televisions as long as everything else is paid for.  You have to come to a money understanding.

Maybe if people read this article there would be less divorce going on in the US, ok that is stretching it a bit (lot) but you really should think about these things before getting married, I am glad that I did and now have a wife that I love very much, and also a wife that I can live with.  I do not believe that there is a single person in the world that you are meant to be with, I believe that there are many people that you love and think you could be with.  The piece to the puzzle for me is tempering that love with the three things above and finding a person that you can love and live with.  Imagine if you thought there was only one soul mate for you in the world and they lived 1000 miles away in a place that you would never visit?

I had recorded the first three episodes of season 3 and I am not impressed or in love with this show anymore.  The biggest thing that NBC did wrong was give a show like Chuck such a long time between Season 2 and Season 3, do they not know that this by itself can kill a show?  Also this whole thing with Chuck being able to access these martial arts moves and have access to everything in the intersect 2.0 just does not work for me.  I am a fiend for new television though so I doubt I will stop watching, but currently I am watching disappointed.  Stay tuned for more thoughts though as the season progresses.