Amy Currioman

My aunt is allergic to olives and olive oil. Sounds crazy, but it is true. So she finds it very difficult to go out to eat at restaurants, since so many chefs have been using olive oil to prepare their dishes. They claim that it is healthy for you and it is hard to get away from. She was telling me about a time when her brother-in-law, knowing full well that she was allergic to olives, gave her a gift card to The Olive Garden for a Christmas gift! Can you SAY passive aggressive?

I cannot even imagine how difficult it must be for someone to have food allergies and have to check the labels of every thing that they buy at the grocery store, or ask the wait staff at a restaurant to find out what is used to prepare the meals. That must be a major pain in the neck! I’m really glad that so far I have not found any food that makes me ill, other than an occasional heart burn.

My sister was telling me that she wants to take clogging lessons and wants me to go with her. I had never heard of clogging before, so I looked it up on YouTube. It is a type of dance that is similar to what I call “Riverdance.” To be honest, I didn’t know what to think about taking classes. We found out that there was a day-long workshop going on in Haymarket yesterday, so I agreed to go and watch.

It looked like it was a lot of fun, but let me tell you this, I don’t know if my poor body would be able to take it! I do agree that it would be great exercise and probably would lead to some much needed weight loss, so I agreed to take a few classes with her. I hope it doesn’t kill me!

Don’t you think that these $6.95 prescription eyeglasses from zennioptical.com are gorgeous? My sister is always telling me that her grandson is constantly losing his glasses and at least once a month she is buying him a new pair. Every time she tells me about it I remind her about the great purchase price on prescription eyeglasses from zennioptical.

Zenni sells eyeglasses for children and adults, safety glasses, sports glasses, and sunglasses, all for incredibly cheap prices. You may think that because the prices are so cheap that you are only getting the frames, but the low price includes the lenses – even progressive or bifocal. Buying the glasses are really easy to do; when you go to the eye doctor and he (or she) writes the prescription for you, ask the eye doctor to include the pupillary distance on the prescription. Ask the doctor if you need to have prism or not. If you do not need prism in the prescription, then you just need to pick out the pair you like, send in the order with the prescription and before you know it you will have a brand new fashion-forward pair of prescription eyeglasses. The prices are so low that you would be really smart to buy a spare pair or two to keep in case you lose or break a pair.

My husband and I usually manage to plan our days around not having to drive during the rush hours, but today we could not avoid it. I had to go have a medical test done in Fairfax, and when it was over rush hour was starting. I suggested that we go to the BJ’s that was only a few blocks away to get my hubby his membership card, and then go visit my brother that lives a couple of miles from that and wait out the rush hour.

Well, we did go to BJ’s and get the membership card, and then we walked around the store for a while. It was the first time my hubby had ever gone to a BJ’s and he wanted to check it out. So we spent about an hour there and then we paid for our purchases, bought a hot salted pretzel to snack on and started our trip home in rush hour. My hubby said he didn’t want to go to my brother’s; he just wanted to head home, even if it was rush hour. Within a few minutes we were in the HOV lane of I-66 headed home. Smack dab in the middle of rush hour. The HOV lane was moving at a whole 30 mph, but at least it was moving. All in all, what would have normally taken 60 minutes to drive home took 90 minutes, so I guess it wasn’t as bad as it could have been. Since my hubby was driving I used the time to call friends and relatives on my cell phone while heading home. I was glad my hubby was driving; I don’t like rush hour traffic at all.

One of the great debates that I see almost every day on Facebook is the one around health care. One of my Facebook friends wrote that she had just seen a documentary on television about a group of cancer patients who had lost their jobs, and therefore lost their health insurance benefits. Since there are no affordable health insurance plans available to them, they cannot get the treatments that they need to fight the cancer, and they are going to die.

This is a very sad state of affairs. Most all of the other modern countries have a health insurance plan that ensures that everyone that lives in the country will get life-saving medical care. A lot of people here in the United States feel that if the United States adopts a socialized health plan that the entire foundation of the American way of life will be broken. I think that a lot of people are confusing themselves, not realizing that a democracy is different than a republic (and the USA is a republic) and the difference between capitalism and socialism. There is an old saying that too much of any good thing can kill you. I think in this case too much capitalism is killing Americans. What do you think?