Sip all day, get decay...

Just found this chart as I was trying to clean the spare bedroom. It ranks all of the popular sodas (pops, cokes, soft drinks depending on your geographic location) based on acidity all the way from water (pH= 7) to battery acid (pH= 1).....




And don't forget about the sugar. The bacteria native to your mouth eat up sugars and the byproduct is, you guessed it, more acid! Taking into account that enamel begins to demineralize (breakdown) at pH of 5.5, you can see why soda is so hard on your teeth. Other fun dental facts about soda while we're on the subject.....


*Brushing w/in 20mins of drinking soda is actually BAD for your teeth. The acid makes the enamel soluble (softer) and brushing can actually abrade it away. A better option is using a fluoride rinse.


*Quantity of drinking is less important than duration. Sipping on a 12 oz. can for 2 hours bathes your teeth in acid for 2 hours whereas slamming down a 20 oz.-er only exposes your teeth to acid for a few minutes.


*Mt Dew is especially bad because of its high sugar content and the fact that its drinkers don't mind drinking it when it gets warm. Most sodas taste bad when warm, but Mt Dew drinkers don't mind warm Mt Dew therefore they are okay with slowly sipping it....

One year and counting....

June 13th was just around the corner and Josh and I were set to have a beautiful weekend on Dauphin Island, Alabama enjoying the beaches, blue water and celebrating our one year anniversary. Well, we can thank BP for putting an end to those plans. Although Dauphin Island beaches haven't been plastered in oil yet, tar balls are showing up on shore and the stank of oil is in the air. Needless to say, Josh and I bailed on the wonderful B&B my parents gave us for Christmas and headed towards New Orleans.

We left on Saturday in the wee hours of the morning ( 7 am) and took our tour guides with us. It just so happens that a friend from work lives in the same apartment complex (literally down two flights of stairs and to the right) as Josh and I....and wouldn't you know it, he has a girlfriend who is a gem to hang out with and they both happen to be from the area. So, as disgruntled as our dear friends were with the departing time, they were happy to accompany us to tour a couple plantations of Louisiana.


Oak Alley Plantation



The name of the plantation is self explanatory, an alley of oak trees that are hundreds of years old lead the path to the front entrance of this gigantic plantation. It is absolutely magnificent. Here is what I learned: the saying "he got the short end of the stick" originated back in the day of candlelight. When a daughter had a potential suitor over at the house, the father would raise or lower a candle via a spinning holder. The suitor was only allowed to stay at the house as long as the candle continued to burn at a certain level. Thus if her father enjoyed a young man, he would raise the candle stick allowing the candle to burn longer before sending the young lad on his way. Now, for those gents who were not so fortunate, the candle stick was lowered, thus eliminating the amount of time spent with an impressionable daughter.



Next up, the Laura Plantation
Below is a picture of a slave cabin. Descendants of slaves continued to live in these cabins until the 1970s.


Compared to the rest of the world, slavery in LA was different than the rest of the world. Slaves were bought and sold, but these people were not allowed to be separated from spouses or children, they were not allowed to work on Sundays unless they wanted to and were paid to do so, and if their owner was abusive they had the right to turn the owner in and sue.


Now off to the beautiful hotel overlooking the Mississippi River. We stayed at the Westin for our anniversary. I'm pretty sure this was the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in......well at least the nicest hotel I have ever stayed in when Josh has had a say in where we're staying. The soap looked like huge mint leaves. It took everything I had to not grab an extra to bring home. I have been a little wary these days about what I bring home since Josh has been threatening to put me on the TV show Hoarders. After a couple of hours out of the 100 degree weather and humidity, we showered off the sweat and slipped into some going out clothes. We headed to the casino to test our luck.

As you all might know I am a thrifty, coupon cutting kind of gal. It is kind of ironic that I enjoy to gamble like a drunken sailor. It turned out to be a lucky night and our dinner at Rio Mar was on the casino. Crawfish bruscetta and a hanger steak put our appetites to ease. Next up, we took the New Orleans haunted tour. Our walking tour took us our through the haunted hot spots of the French Quarter. Lots of freak accidents and fires (much like Chicago, New Orleans once burnt to the ground) have left trapped spirits throughout NOLA. Definitely a fun day.

Our 1st year of marriage...
It started with a beautiful wedding, darting off to spend time with family, a quick camping trip to Medora, ND, a whole bunch of tears and then Josh was off to commissioned officer's training. We spent 6 miserable weeks apart and then together we left MSP airport together to make the drive to MS. A new spouse, new military life, new job, new home, new friends, and a new region to explore. With all of the changes we have faced, the one source of stability and consistency has been Josh. Let's talk consistency.....Josh consistently leaves the toilet seat up, drinks out of the milk carton, leaves the shower curtain open, lays on the bed with his dirty shoes and on and on. BUT, he also consistently strives to be a better person, help others, the calm in chaos, dependable, trustworthy, and a true friend. We have learned a lot over the past year....mostly good things, but most importantly the guy I married is still my best friend. Life and all that life has to offer is so much better when you have the right person to enjoy it.

The puppies are.......GONE!

So some of you know that Jo and I have been entrenched in a tug-o-war over getting a dog for the past 9 months. Jo is dying to get one now, I wanna wait til we get a house. It was basically one of our usual ongoing arguments right up until February when things took a turn for the worse for me. Our neighbor's Great Dane had a litter of puppies. Advantage: JoAnna.

A couple of times daily the owners would trot these puppies out into their front yard (in plain view of our front window). And they'd do all sorts of cute little puppy things like nip at each others ears and sleep in a big heaping pile on top of one another.It drove JoAnna berzerk! (See photo below--I'd find her in this pose often, just staring at these puppies for minutes at a time followed soon thereafter with a tearful plea to get one). The floodwaters got pretty high a few times, but the levees held up and I was able to avoid caving in.





Well the puppies eventually got whittled down from 12 to 4. Those last 4 just hung around for like a month and then last week they all vanished. Advantage: Josh. Where'd they go? I think 3 scenarios are possible A) Someone came and bought all 4 overgrown/not-so-cute-anymore puppies. Highly unlikely. B) The owners dropped them off at the Humane Society. Maybe. C) Those 4 puppies have graduated on to puppy heaven. Probably.

Our neighbors are shady to begin with, I wouldn't put it past them. They park their cars on their front lawn, have tons of random late night visitors, front lawn shouting matches, etc. Mostly smoke, no fire, but still. So we bid a melancholy farewell to the formerly cute little puppies who used to make my life difficult.

Movie Review: Killers

Romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl (Grey's Anatomy) and Ashton Kutcher (Ashton Kutcher); trailer here. It was pretty lame and forgettable. Don't go to it.

On a different note, Jo and I still sneak pop and a bag of popcorn into theaters. Every single time. We don't even talk about it, its just routine. I'm not sure we'll ever outgrow it. However, movie theaters are now fighting back against cheapskate cheaters like us. They've designed cup holders that won't hold a can or a 20 oz bottle, only the large soda containers they sell at the theater. Have you seen these? Pretty ingenious on their part, hats off.
FINAL VERDICT: This movie gets a 4 out of 10.

Never Too Old For Disney

So early last week we decided on a whim to make a trip over to Orlando for the long memorial day weekend as I had a 4 day weekend and Jo had a 3-dayer and was able to get Fri. off as well. Both of us had been to Disneyland (apparently the inferior of the 2 Disneys in the U.S) but it'd been a while plus it was Jo's b-day weekend. We went w/ Jo's coworker/best friend down here, Brooke, and her fiance James who works for the Dupont company.

DAY 1: Made the 8.5 hr drive to Orlando. Drive time break-down...Josh:6.5hrs, JoAnna:2.0hrs (aka the usual).

DAY 2: We got our tix at 50% off thanks to the Salute To The Military promo by Disney, very nice of them. We started off at Magic Kingdom (the park you most think of when you think Disney World) and had a blast. During Pirates of the Caribbean I had some fond memories of the exact same ride at Disney Land from our 1987 trip and riding it with Lisa and our cousins Aaron, Luke and Jason. (For some reason when we returned we talked ourselves into believing that my uncle Tim's basement was haunted by the characters from the Pirates ride, odd memory).

DAY 3: Epcot Center. For those who haven't been it's mostly a walking tour of select nations from around the globe. We had lunch in China and a beer in Germany. At U.K. we ordered a Scotch Egg (pictured below) upon advice from a co-worker at Keesler. Its a hard boiled egg wrapped in sausage and then deep fried. It was delicious. There was a ride there called Soarin. Thee best ride I've ever been on. It's a very life-like hang-gliding ride thru California around the Golden Gate bridge and thru Yosemite, etc. Very, very fun.

(Norway, the homeland) (Scotch Egg) (China)

Later made it to Hollywood Studios. More rides, more fun.

DAY 4 (aka Jo's b-day): Just as we parked at Blizzard Beach water park we heard a loud thud (like when you hit the release button to open your trunk). Turns out a kid getting out of the car next to us rammed his door into the side of the Caddy and left a nice dent and scratched the paint.

Josh: "Sir, I think your son may have dented my fender."
Wife (in thick British accent): "Georgie! Did you hit this man's cah?"
Little Georgie (again, thick Brit accent): "I didn't moth-ah, I swear."
Wife: "Patrick, did your broth-ah hit this man's cah?"

Anyways, it probably doesn't sound that funny but it was. You had to hear their accents. For the remainder of the day we spoke in Brit accents. Unfortunately for Georgie we had the CSI-like idea of opening his door to see if it matched my new dent. GUILTY. The father was super nice about it and luckily they had insurance w/ the rental co. and we're working it out now. Hopefully I didn't ruin Georgie's big day at the water park. I saw them later inside the park and pretended not to recognize them.

<------We ended the night back at Epcot for the fireworks show, very nice.

.................DAY 5: Josh drives, JoAnna sleeps.

Welcome

Here it is, we've thrown our hat into the ring and finally decided to start a blog. We have several friends who are keeping in touch with their friends/fam thru blogspot and decided to follow suit.

As we're getting set to move again in 2 months and see more friends scatter about yet again, we really wanna stay in touch with everyone. Hopefully it works. Our goal is to keep this blog updated every week, but you know how that goes. Enjoy!