Posted
​ NOVEMBER 6, 2024

It's The Journey That Counts!
Life's journey is not to arrive safely at the grave in a well-preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, at 90 miles an hour with your hair on fire, totally worn out, and shouting, "Wow! What a ride!"
Picture
Anna-grams
● My apologies for missing 3 months. Health issues have had me in an out of the hospital during September and October. 

● I missed celebrating Luciano's 95th birthday which was August 4, and my 84th birthday on August 16.







By the fountain where we met in Rome, 1963.
​​​Thanksgiving Anagrams  
●The American feast of Thanksgiving = Mightn't ask if no vegetarian's a chef?

●Thanksgiving day = Thy kind savaging.~ Jim Banholzer (2017)

●Thanksgiving = Saving Knight. ~ Harshal Madhavapeddi (2010)

●Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade = Advice: A grand sight may pan sky.~ Mike Mesterton-Gibbons (2006)

Thanksgiving Quotes
• “Thanksgiving Day—Let all give humble, hearty and sincere thanks, now, but the turkeys. In the island of Fiji they do not use turkeys, they use plumbers. It does not become you and me to sneer at Fiji.” ~ Mark Twain

• “What we’re really talking about is a wonderful day set aside on the fourth Thursday of November when no one diets. I mean, why else would they call it Thanksgiving?” ~ Erma Bombeck 

• “Before you marry someone, find out if their family drinks mimosas or runs 5ks on holiday mornings.” ~ @wwlwine

• “First family fight of the Thanksgiving season: no one knows the difference between yams and sweet potatoes but we do know everyone else is wrong” ~ @KarinKilgariff


You Had ONE Job....​
MY BOOKS
Works By R Ann Siracusa
Tour Director Extraordinaire Series
Humorous Romantic Suspense
Book 1 - All For A Dead Man’s Leg
Book 2 - All For A Fistful Of Ashes
Book 3 - Destruction Of The Great Wall
Book 4 - All For Spilled Blood
Book 5 - All For A Blast of Hot Air
Tour Director Series Short Stories
First Date
Halloween in the Catacombs
Christmas Plans Gone Awry
Elves For Christmas

​Other Books and Short Stories
A Timeless Melody 
The Last Weekend In October
All In the Game
Family Secrets: A Vengeance of Tears
Tiffany
Time in a Bottle

​Amazon Link to R. Ann Siracusa Books
Barnes & Noble Link to R. Ann Siracusa Books


Granny Mythbuster Rides Again 
Commonly Believed Myths that Aren’t True
Nobody has the time to look into everything, so people often have to take some things which we know are common knowledge for granted as true.

When searching for a Myth to fit with this month's blog, the only ice cream myths I ran into address making homemade ice cream. That seemed to have a limited audience.  Finally, I had to make up one up for myself.

ANN'S ICE CREAM MYTH
Everything In The Grocery Store Ice Cream Refrigerator Is Ice Cream.

TRUTH
If you believe that, you ought to apply your-self to reading labels. The grocery store or other retailer may have a sign on the cold case reading "Ice Cream" but don't be fooled: inside might be ice cream and/or iice milk, frozen yogurt, gelato, sorbet, sherbet, frozen dessert, frozen custard, soft serve, frozen dairy dessert, ad infinitum.

The U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) has very specific requirements (called Stan-dards of Identity*) for any product labeled and marketed as "Ice Cream." Not all food products have a standard of identity, but those that do include milk, cream, yogurt, sherbet, margarine, and different types of cheeses and breads.

According to the FDA, cream is an optional dairy ingredient in a product marketed and labeled as ice cream, but the product must have at least 10% or milk fat by weight and weight no less than 4.5 pounds per gallon.

The best known brands of ice creams in the US include: Dairy Queen, Baskin-Robbins, 
Ben & Jerry's, Breyer's, and Blue Bunny.​

Today's reality may be that many of these companies were started a long time ago, producing only ice cream. Bassets has been operating since 1861; Beyers began production in 1866. To the public the names implied without having to be said or labeled, that the product was "real" ice cream. During WWII, the US government forced ice cream manufacturers to use some vegetable fat in their products, the intention being to stretch butter fat rations. Thus, in 1942, production of imitation ice cream began.

Since then, demand has grown for ice cream with or without certain ingredients. It only makes sense that the commercial market has introduced new products to meet those needs. Now, brand names long identified with "real ice cream" are assumed by the purchaser as being that when, in fact, it is not (by FDA standards).
 
Personally, I believe that it doesn't matter to most of us what the product is made from as long as it tastes good, I enjoy it, and I'm not allergic to any of the ingre-dients. I also believe that people should be informed and know what they are paying for.  Real Ice Cream (or just about anything) will almost always cost more.

Sources:
https://www.eatthis.com/grocery-store-ice-creams-that-are-fake/
https://www.registrarcorp.com/blog/food-beverage/food-beverage-regulations/ice-cream#:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/nutrition/fact-check-we-looked-into-the-claim-that-breyers-ice-cream-is-now-called-frozen-dessert-because-its-50-air/ar-BB1n0Qai
https://www.mashed.com/223230/haagen-dazs
https://www.icecream.com/us/en/brands/haagen-dazs/products/ice-cream
 
November Observation Days
●  National Adoption Month
● American Diabetes Month
● Aviation History Month
● Banana Pudding Lovers mo.
● Bereaved Siblings Month
● Diabetic Eye Disease Month
● National Epilepsy Awareness Mo
● Eye Donation Month
● National Family Caregivers Month
● National Georgia Pecan Mo.
● National Inspirational Role Models Month
● National Long-Term Care Awareness Month
● Lung Cancer Awareness Mo.
●National Memoir Writing Month
●National Native-American Heritage Month
●National Novel Writing Month
●Peanut Butter Lovers’ Month
●Picture Book Month
●Prematurity Awareness Month
●National Runaway Prevention
Month
●Vegan Month, Worldwide

November Weekly Observations
●National Fig Week (1-7)
●National Animal Shelter
Appreciation Week (3-9)
●National Rad.Tech Wk (3-9)
●International Fraud Awareness Week (10-16)
●National Nurse Practitioner Week (10-16)
●Dear Santa Letter Week (10-16)
●National Young Readers Week (11-15)
●National Donor Sabbath (15-17)
●National Hunger & Homeless Awareness Week (18-26)
 
FAKE WORDS Which Ended Up in Dictionaries
Personally, I am not convinced there is such a thing as a "fake" word if it came out of a human mouth and had a meaning, but many dictionary editors believe in made-up words, so here goes.
Dord (n) = fake word that ended up in 1934 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary meaning "density."
Up until the preparation of that edition, abbreviations were in alphabetical order with full words. Editors wanted them in a separate section after the definition of words. When imple-mented, an editor mistook the note "D or d/cont/density" to indicate "Dord means -- is a synonym for -- the word density." It got printed that way and no one even noticed for five years
 Esquivalience (n) =  
Zero, Nada, Zilch, Niente, Nothing.
This is really a fake word. In 2005, the editorial world learned that the New Oxford American Dictionary had hidden a fake word in the E's specifically so the New Oxford officials could learn which, if any, other dictionaries were copying them. It worked. Several, particularly on-line dictionaries, were indeed identified.
How did that happen when words in dictionaries give the meaning of the word? Simple and clever. 
Esquivalience = "the willful avoidance of one's official responsibilities."

Source:
https://www.rd.com/list/fake-words-in-dictionary