Villainous Vittles! - The WINNER!

Welcome to Villainous Vittles!, the great blog-based game where you had to guess which foods I'm supposed to avoid!

I was torn about how much longer I should continue this game - especially since there are so many great food that I'm supposed to avoid - but decided to end it now while we actually have a winner. After an incredible ten-way tie in Round 2 and a narrowing of the field to five in Round 3, Round 4 saw one lucky person come out ahead. Instead of hosting another round and taking a risk that the game might get dragged on forever, I am officially declaring the victor.

The winner is...

Clare from The House and Other Arctic Musings! Clare was the only one to correctly guess that I should avoid flax.

Clare's prize, when I figure out what it is, will be likely be sent to him via UPS. He'll love that.

Thank you all for playing, and if you were wondering what other foods I need to avoid for the next year or so, here's a short list:

• Cow and goat dairy
• Beef
• Eggs
• Lamb
• Turkey
• Barley
• Buckwheat
• Gliadin
• Gluten
• Malt
• Rye
• Wheat
• Flaxseed
• Safflower
• Spelt
• Triticale
• Crab
• Lobster
• Oyster
• Shrimp
• Almonds
• Brazil nuts
• Chili Powder
• Ginger
• Mustard
• Poppy Seed
• Vanilla
• Avacado
• Blueberry
• Pear
• Pineapple
• Alfalfa
• Asparagus
• Beets
• Garlic
• Green Bean
• Kale
• Kidney Bean
• Mushroom
• Navy Bean
• Pinto Bean
• Squash
• Tomato
• Water Cress

Shopping for food has never been so fun  -- and eating at restaurants has never been so impossible!  Have you ever tried to avoid garlic?  It's everywhere!  No wonder we don't see any vampires running around.

Happy eating! :)

My Northern Strategy for Canada

The federal government is very keenly rolling out Canada's Northern Strategy. It starts like this:

"The Government has a vision for a new North and is taking action to ensure that vision comes to life – for the benefit of all Canadians."

As someone who lives, works, and plays in Northern Canada, my first reaction is to go, "Uh, oh.  Here we go again."

You see, there is a loooooong history of Southern Canada doing what it thinks is best for Northern Canada.  Sometimes, things work out.  Other times, we end up with disasters like residential schools, forced migration, economically destructive and starvation-inducing policies (i.e. beaver hunting restrictions that were based on over-harvesting problems in southern Canada), slaughtered sled dogs, under-resourced and dependency-based programming, ineffective drug and alcohol treatment services, struggling school systems, and so on and so on.

It happens because of ignorance:  decisions that are made based on incorrect assumptions about the North, no matter how well-intentioned those decisions may be.

You may be wondering, "How ignorant can people possibly be about the North"?  Check this out.  The comments in the original CBC articles are downright frightening.

If Canada really wants to roll out a strategy that's going to strengthen Canada's North, it needs to deal with that ignorance first.

In response, I have developed my own Northern Strategy.  I call it "Meandering Michael's Northern Pilgrimage Program".  Here is what I propose:

• Educate Canadians about Canada's North.  Forget the idea of having each province incorporate northern studies into their curriculums; Give every Canadian a free flight from their closest major city to one community of their choice (excluding the capitals) in each of Canada's three territories.  Of course, not everyone will take the Northern Pilgrimage, but those who do will return home better informed and can share their experience with their friends.  Would the Northern Pilgrimage Program be expensive?  Heck yeah, but the government plans to spend $3.1 BILLION on a measly eight Arctic patrol vessels, so why not spend that on a million flights instead?
• Promoting Social and Economic Development.  This priority is already part of the federal Northern Strategy, but the federal approach is based almost entirely on natural resource development.   The amount of tourism traffic (and tourism spending) flowing through the North as a result of the Northern Pilgrimage Program would be substantial, especially by northern standards.  Air transportation links to northern communities would be greatly improved, which would have the following benefits:
• Increased flight frequency and reduced fares, thanks to improved economies of scale;
  
• Lower cost of living for northern residents (i.e. fresher food at lower cost) because of lower air transportation costs;
• Increased economies of scale and subsequent growth for northern-based tourism ventures (accommodations, restaurants, outfitting, cultural experiences, air transportation services, etc.);
• A higher profile in lucrative overseas markets;
• A greater national understanding of northern issues, which would - hopefully - result in support for northern-led solutions to those problems;
• Attraction of potential new employees to address chronic human resource capacity challenges;
• Attraction of potential new partners for lonely northern singles.  Hey, it's a serious problem in some of the smaller, more remote communities.
• Development of economy-driven (as opposed to government-driven) housing to respond to the economic growth within the communities.
• Protecting Northern Sovereignty.  The Prime Minister has said "use it or lose it".  What better way to use it than to give Canadians an easy and inexpensive way to travel to and visit the North?

I'm not all wet behind the ears.  I know the Meandering Michael's Northern Pilgrimage Program isn't perfect and can bring about a whole new set of problems (i.e. the plan has the potential to strengthen northern cultures, it also has the potential to dilute them), but the benefits are immediate and huge - for everyone in Northern and Southern Canada.  Talk about a major stimulus to the entire nation's economy!

If you think that Meandering Michael's Northern Pilgrimage Program should become a reality:

1. Comment here and show your support;
2. Pass the link to this entry on to your friends; and
3. Share it with your MP.  Most of them are taking a break to "re-calibrate and focus on the economy" anyway.

On Ice.

A couple of Christmases ago, a friend of ours gave Jade a pair of bob-skates. Shortly after, we set about teaching her to skate.

Jade on bob-skates, waaaay back in 2007.

By the next winter, after her seizures started, there wasn't much point in going out skating. The subclinical seizures (and the not-so-subclinical ones) messed up her balance and sent her flying towards the ice. There was too much falling down and we called it quits.

This winter, we tried it again. She took to skating on her bob-skates like she had been doing it all her life. "Jade," I declared, "It's time to get you some big girl skates!"

I still haven't gotten her any big girl skates, but we were out at a birthday party this afternoon and had the opportunity to borrow a pair from a friend. With the big girl skates strapped to her feet, Jade spent a little bit of time using a skating scooter (a metal frame with handlebars that slides along the ice in front of the skater so beginners can keep upright until they get a feel for skating). Before long, she ditched the skating scooter and was skating on her own!

I was flabbergasted at how quickly she took to it!

And wouldn't you know it, I didn't have a camera.

I'm definitely getting her some big girl skates now!

We have come so far.

One of these things is not like the other ones...

When you hear the word "seizure", do you picture someone flopping around on the floor in big jerky movements? Most people do. There are a many different kinds of seizure, though. Although she's doing well now (with just one type after she falls asleep), my daughter Jade has had six different types of generalized seizures and, depending on which definition you'd like to use, seven.

She has had:

1. Myoclonic seizures.  You know when you're drifting off to sleep and... BANG! ...your body jerks?  Imagine having those while you're awake.
2. Tonic seizures.  Imagine certain muscles in your body flexed (no matter what you were doing at the time) and stayed that way until the seizure passed.
3. Tonic-Clonic seizures (previously known as a "grand mal").  This is the flopping on the floor kind of seizure.  This was the first type of seizure we saw Jade have.
4. Absence seizures (previously known as "petit mal").  Jade has had two different kinds of absence seizure:
1. Typical.  When Jade had these, she looked like she was spaced out, usually staring at something in the distance or her eyes would roll into the back of her head.  She would stop in the middle of whatever she was doing while the world stopped existing for a few (fortunately) brief moments and then she would continue where she left off (if it didn't totally derail her train of thought.
2. Atypical.  When Jade had these, she looked like she was having a typical atonic seizure, but she could hear (and was aware) of what was going on around her.
5. Atonic seizures.  Oh, I hated these ones.  Imagine you're walking along and then BOOM! Your body goes limp and you fall, straight for the ground with no hope of cushioning the landing.  Poor Jade's face got so banged up, even with a helmet.  It almost seemed like she was trying to land on her nose and mouth, her "aim" was that good.

The final type of seizure was status epilepticus which, according to Wikipedia, is

defined as one continuous unremitting seizure lasting longer than 30 minutes, or recurrent seizures without regaining consciousness between seizures for greater than 30 minutes.

I share all of this because 1 in every 100 people have epilepsy (more than one unprovoked seizure with the tendency to have more).  Yes, it's that common.  And it doesn't always manifest itself the way we tend to think it does.  Sometimes, it's very, very subtle.  When something is that common, it's worth knowing what to watch for - and it's worth knowing how to respond to a seizure if you need to.

Here is a video produced by the BC Epilepsy Society.  It's meant for teachers/educators, but does a good job demonstrating a variety of different seizure types and has a nice, quick overview of first aid for seizures.

Oh, and the doctor that's featured in the video?  That's Jade's epileptologist.   (Neat, eh?)

My Cyborg Child

We were in Vancouver last week for a series of hospital appointments.

Over the Christmas holidays, we knew there was something wrong with Jade. She wasn't eating well (even by ketogenic diet standards), she was throwing up, she was sometimes lethargic, very whiny, pale, and her lips would turn a strange, deep blue colour.

Bloodwork revealed that her liver was failing.

Acting fast, the keto team decided we should take some stress off her liver. The ketogenic diet is hard on the liver as it is, so we reduced her fat ratio from 5:1 to 4:1. That's a huge drop. 4:1 is where we started. That night, heard her have a seizure. It was the first one we'd heard in a wonderfully long time.

Near-daily draws of blood showed that the change was working. Her liver was improving, but we were worried. She was definitely having seizures on the 4:1 ratio. Could we go back to 5:1? Would we be forced to choose between her liver and her brain?

With Jade's epilepsy, seizures can mean cognitive impairment. But what good is having good cognitive functions if you don't have a liver to keep things going?

Our first appointment in Vancouver was for an abdominal ultrasound (after having more blood drawn). Over-tired from the travel, Jade screamed through most of it. I don't think she liked the way it tickled her sides.

The next day, we hooked her up for her first-ever ambulatory EEG. Before the liver stuff, we were thrilled that she was having a 24-hour EEG. With her typical EEG appointment, they require sleep deprivation, which makes seizures more likely to happen (Odd that we would try to trigger seizures when what we really want to do is prevent them from happening, eh?). With the 24-hour ambulatory EEG, we were hoping to see what Jade's brain would be like under more normal circumstances. Unfortunately, down on the 4:1 ratio, we weren't going to get to see that after all. Still, the ambulatory EEG would be enlightening.

As with any EEG, it all starts off with a head measuring and marking, the application of adhesive and conductive paste, a little bit of tape here and there, and a fancy little net to keep it all from getting knocked off.

Wired.

The ambulatory EEG uses a self-contained battery-powered unit that fits conveniently into a child-sized backpack. Although it was disconcerting to sign the form saying that I take full responsibility (financial and otherwise) for the $16,000 unit, it was heartwarming to see how well Jade liked wearing the purple backpack. For most of the day, she was Dora the Explorer.

Dora, the cyborg explorer.

Some watermelon for her latest adventure.

Jade was great about not messing with the attachments and making sure that her heavy little backpack stayed near enough that the wires didn't get tugged out. The next day, we were back at the hospital to get the whole thing removed. With the seemingly non-stop Vancouver rain, keeping everything dry was a bit of a challenge, but we succeeded.

"It's wet out there!"

The solvent to remove the goop smelled and, in spite of our efforts, a little bit got into Jade's eye. Fortunately, she recovered quickly and before long she was disconnected, shampooed, dried, and ready to go.

Being disconnected.

Scrub, scrub, scrub!

The day after that was our appointment with the keto team. Although we didn't speak about it much, I think it's safe to say that Fawn and I were both preparing for disappointment.

The look on the epileptologist's face didn't belie any disappointment, though! She seemed thrilled with the progress. Her liver? We'll take blood every week and monitor. When things are back to normal (as normal as they get for the ketogenic diet, anyway), Jade will go back onto the 5:1 ratio. They suspect it was a virus. Another keto kid had the same problem around the same time. They're going to do ultrasounds of the keto kids more often, just to get a baseline of what's "normal" for a child on the ketogenic diet. Jade's liver was "fatty", which is to be expected of someone on a high fat diet. Also, the ultrasound showed no sign of kidney stones or the sludge that would indicate the growth of kidney stones (a typical side-effect of the ketogenic diet).

Her EEG results? Absolutely no seizures during the day, subclinical (hidden) or otherwise. None whatsoever. She had only two during the nighttime. None during her nap.

What does it all amount to? We had one setback, but have made many, many steps forward.

And we're going to keep moving that way.

Fashion for modern travel...

When you're an international traveler, it's so hard to protect yourself from the latest pandemic and still look fashionable. Well, Jade has the stylish yet functional fashions to keep you looking good and healthy!

Ready to join the jet set!

The Plan

We bought our sailboat with seven-to-ten-year plan.

Years	Plan
Years 1 and 2	Sail our MacGregor 26M around Yukon's Southern Lakes, maybe taking a special trip to the East Arm of Great Slave Lake while we're at it. Get extremely comfortable with both our boat and life aboard. Take lots of courses, get lots of practice, and improve our sailing skills.
Years 3 to 5	Move to tide water, exploring the Alaskan coastline and sailing the Inside Passage to Vancouver and Victoria (and maybe beyond). Get comfortable with saltwater sailing and life aboard ship for longer periods of time. Take lots of courses, get lots of practice, and improve our sailing skills. By then, Jade (and eventually Halia) will be old enough to start acting as crew.
Year 6	If we like the cruising life, and everyone is happy with saltwater sailing, start looking for a blue-water cruiser. Upgrade as necessary. Get comfortable along the coast with a few jaunts further out to sea.
Years 7 to 10	Prepare for some extended cruising. Explore the Pacific and, maybe, beyond.

Of course, this plan is contingent on many stars moving into alignment. One of those stars is finding a suitable cruising sailboat and having enough money to buy it. One model that I've had my eye on, hoping that they'll go back into production, is the MacGregor 65. I love the interior and exterior design of this boat. Check out a few minutes of this (old) video and you'll see what I mean:


MACGREGOR 65 YACHT from Rod Williams on Vimeo.

Today, I found out that Roger MacGregor's very own yacht, the MacGregor 70 ketch "Anthem", is for sale for $250,000 USD.



Sigh. Five years too soon.

Villainous Vittles! - Round 4

Welcome to Round 3 of Villainous Vittles!, the great blog-based game where you get to guess which foods I'm supposed to avoid!

Last Week's Results
The answer to last week's challenge was "mung"! I can eat mung beans, but most beans are out of the picture - which is too bad because when I eat beans, I eat them like this:



Congratulations to those who guessed correctly. After our incredible ten-way tie, five lucky guessers have taken the lead - but the game's not over yet and anything can happen! Here are the standings after Round 3:

Name	Points
Captain Momma	2
Carolyn	1
Clare	2
Colleen C-C	0
Heather	1
Hillarie	0
Indigo	0
Jennoit	1
Jennybell	0
Kathleen O	2
Laura's Garden	1
Megan	1
Paul Banks	0
Sarah	1
Scientific Chick	1
Sharl	0
Speaka	2
Dogsled Stacie	1
Susan	2
Taibhsearachd	2
Teepe	1
The Life of Karyn	0

And now, without further ado, it's time for Round 4!

The rules are simple. I'll list five foods and you guess the one that I need to avoid. Leave your entry in the comment section below, but remember to include a way that you can be identified! "Anonymous" is not allowed to win.  You can guess only once per round. With each correct guess, you get one point that will be allocated to your final score. The highest score wins!

Get your entry in by midnight (PST), January 22^nd.

This week's theme is Grains.

1. Corn
2. Flax
3. Millet
4. Oat
5. Psyllium

Good luck!

Cyborgs and telepaths.

We're in Vancouver where Jade is doing a 24-hour ambulatory EEG. She's got wires protruding out of her head, monitoring her brain activity. If it wasn't for such a crappy reason (epilepsy) it would be very, very cool. She looks like a cyborg! (Yes, yes, I'll post pictures later.)

I'm not going to write much about the whole experience because Fawn has suddenly developed telepathic abilities and has actually read my mind, written out my thoughts, and posted them to her blog before I ever got the chance. You can read what she wrote here.

WANTED: A female perspective.

If you had the opportunity to go on a one-week, all expenses paid date to Tahiti, would you do it? What if it was the first date? There's only one catch: Only one lucky lady will get to go!

We're trying to find the right lady to join a friend of ours (a nice guy and eligible bachelor), but it's going to be hard decision to make. If you're female, single, and adventurous (or if you have single friends that you think would like to experience the date of a lifetime), we want your input.

Check out our Focus Group on facebook for more details. Let us know what you think!

Rosy Red.

Halia's lips are rosy red. That's bound to happen if you've been chewing on an ink pad.

This kid gets into everything!

Villainous Vittles! - Round 3

Welcome to Round 3 of Villainous Vittles!, the great blog-based game where you get to guess which foods I'm supposed to avoid!

Last Week's Results
The answer to last week's challenge was "ginger"! Congratulations to those who guessed correctly. For those who didn't (and for those who have yet to play), it's not too late to win! Especially since we are now faced with a TEN-WAY TIE!!! Here are the standings after Round 2:

Name	Points
Captain Momma	1
Carolyn	1
Clare	1
Colleen C-C	0
Heather	0
Indigo	0
Jennoit	1
Jennybell	0
Kathleen O	1
Laura's Garden	0
Megan	0
Paul Banks	0
Scientific Chick	1
Sharl	0
Speaka	1
Dogsled Stacie	1
Susan	1
Taibhsearachd	1
The Life of Karyn	0

And now, without further ado, it's time for Round 3!

This week's round is a little different.  The rules are still simple, though.  Instead of choosing the one that I can't eat, choose the ONE that I can eat. Leave your entry in the comment section below, but remember to include a way that you can be identified! "Anonymous" is not allowed to win.  You can guess only once per round. With each correct guess, you get one point that will be allocated to your final score. The highest score wins!

Get your entry in by midnight (PST), January 15^th.

This week's theme is Beans. (Remember, this week you're supposed to choose the one that I can eat!)

1. Green
2. Kidney
3. Mung
4. Navy
5. Pinto

Good luck!

It's confusing, I know...

After we finished university, Fawn and I spent a couple of months hosteling and riding the rails around Europe. At a hostel in Lucerne, Switzerland, we met some American girls who were trying to pass themselves off as Canadians. Their Kansas accents and their "Let's Go" travel guide were dead giveaways, but they had sewn the Canadian flag onto their backpacks and even had cover stories. They said they were from Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. When quizzed, they could spell "Saskatoon", but not "Saskatchewan". They also thought that Saskatoon was the capital of Saskatchewan (it's Regina).

We played the "Canadian Geography Quiz" game a little more. I gave them the names of capital cities and let them try to guess which province or territory they belonged to. They believed that Yellowknife was the capital of the NWT, but refused to believe that the Yukon could possibly have a capital with a name like "Whitehorse".

They kept saying it over and over. "Yellow Knife. White Horse. There's no way. No way.  You're making that up." They thought I was trying to trick them but, of course, I wasn't. Why would I try to trick them when the truth is so much funnier?

It is confusing for people (including Canadians) who don't live in the NWT or Yukon, though. Yellowknife and Whitehorse are often attributed to the wrong territory (as was the case with tonight's google searcher who ended up on my blog after doing a search for "Whitehorse, NWT").

So, for the benefit of anyone who can't keep them straight, I'd like to share a handy-dandy technique for remembering which capital goes with which territory.  All you have to remember is this simple phrase:

"Yukon (you can) ride a white horse."

I can't think of a clever one for Yellowknife, NWT, but if you can remember that "Yukon ride a white horse", the other sorts itself out.  Good luck keeping our territorial capitals straight, and may you never spell Iqaluit as "I-Q-U-A-L-U-I-T".

Parents ask the dumbest questions.

Me: "Jade, you're being very quiet. Why are you so quiet?"
Jade: "Because I'm not talking."

I am now calling my Internet search bar's auto-fill feature the "search ejaculator".

For reasons that don't matter, I was looking into the idiom "eating your own words". I started typing the phrase into my handy-dandy search bar. What appeared in the auto-fill was shocking and frightening. Google, is this seriously what ranks highest when one searches for phrases containing the words "eating your"?

Hear Ye, Hear Ye!

A long time ago, when I was still living at home with my parents, I was sitting at my desk getting some work done. As I plugged away on my computer, I suddenly heard a high-pitched ringing noise.

Oh no! I thought, It can't be!

Not an hour earlier, I had been listening to a CBC Radio feature on tinnitus - and now it was happening to me!

No, no, I thought, more than a little concerned, It can't be. It's just too much of a coincidence to be possible! There's no such thing as "suggestive tinnitus" is there? It can't be possible to develop tinnitus just by hearing about tinnitus!

Thinking and hoping that the noise was coming from my radio, I turned it off. It wasn't my radio.

Thinking and hoping that the noise was coming from my computer, I turned it off. It wasn't my computer.

I unplugged everything in my room. The high-pitched whining sound remained.

Walking into my dad's home office, I asked him if he could hear the squealing, infuriating "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeee". He couldn't.

My heart fell. It was so loud! Would I have to live with this my whole life? It was going to drive me crazy! I started thinking about how I could get immediate treatment for my spontaneous tinnitus.

Trying to ignore the ringing in my ears, I went back to my room and turned my computer back on, trying to get some more work done. It was hard to focus. I couldn't concentrate. The ringing was enough to drive any person INSANE!

Desperate, I looked down the vent. Maybe the noise was coming from the forced-air furnace! Yeah! The air was blowing as I bent down and stuck my ear over the vent. The noise got louder! It must be coming from the furnace!

I ran down to the basement, the noise following me every step of the way. When I reached the furnace, the furnace turned itself off.

The noise remained.

Confused, I went back upstairs to the kitchen. I opened the sliding door at the back of the house just wide enough to stick my head outside. The noise was quieter when my head went outside! I tried it again for good measure. It was definitely coming from somewhere in the house!

Search as I might, I could not find the source of the infuriating ringing. I checked with my dad again, but he couldn't hear what I could hear. How could he not be hearing it? It was churning out more decibels than a lawnmower!

Having run out of places to look and not knowing how to stop it, I resigned myself to getting some more work done.

It was hard. I was literally squirming in my seat. My eyes started watering. I was being tortured! After an hour, I had hardly made any progress in spite of my best efforts.

When my sister came home, she ran upstairs and asked, "What's that awful noise?"

With sudden relief I exclaimed, "You can hear it?! You can hear it, too?!?"

"Yeah, it's really annoying!" and with that, she locked herself in her room.

Leaping up out of my seat, I dashed to her room, flung the door open and asked, "Where is that noise coming from?!?!"

"You!" she exclaimed, "It's coming from you!"

It was only then that I looked at my watch. My trusty old Timex Ironman had gone bonkers: The watch, with its normally-quick hourly beep, had turned into a wrist-mounted sonic torture device.

I share this story to illustrate, not how much of a moron I can be at times, but my dad's hearing loss. At the time, I could not comprehend how he couldn't hear that infernal noise.

Or course there are studies that show hearing loss, especially in the high frequencies, occurs as we age. The use of the mosquito ring tone is an applied example of that (Click here to see what frequencies you can still hear). Lately though, I've been gaining an understanding of why we lose our hearing as we age.

It's because of kids. Little children are to blame.

Halia has discovered the joys of shrieking - and the kid has a powerful set of lungs. Jade, not to be outdone, reciprocates. It becomes a competitive shrieking match where each child seeks to outdo the other on both volume and pitch. The loudest, highest shriek wins. I can feel my ears failing a little with every shriek, and with every shriek battle, my sympathy for my dad's high-pitch hearing-loss grows. Sorry, Dad. Now I understand that I had something to do with that.

As for me, if you call my name and I don't respond, I apologize. I'm not ignoring you, I just can't hear you anymore.

Why don't kids come with volume control?

The Bloody Battle

I've got one blood type. Fawn's got another. We've often wondered what our kids' blood type is.

Today, we found out what Jade's blood-type is. It's the same as Fawn's. When I told Fawn, she declared, "Ha ha! I win!"

What the heck? I didn't know it was a contest!

I'm going to try harder next time.

Villainous Vittles! - Round 2

Welcome to Round 2 of Villainous Vittles!, the great new game where you get to guess which foods I'm supposed to avoid!

Last Week's Results
The answer to last week's challenge was "beef"! Congratulations to those who guessed correctly. For those who didn't (and for those who have yet to play), it's not too late to win! Here are the standings after Round 1:

Name	Points
Captain Momma	1
Carolyn	1
Clare	1
Heather	0
Indigo	0
Jennoit	0
Jennybell	0
Kathleen O	1
Laura's Garden	0
Megan	0
Paul Banks	0
Scientific Chick	1
Sharl	0
Speaka	0
Dogsled Stacie	0
Taibhsearachd	1
The Life of Karyn	0

And now, without further ado, it's time for Round 2!

The rules are simple. I'll list five foods and you guess the one that I need to avoid. Leave your entry in the comment section below, but remember to include a way that you can be identified! "Anonymous" is not allowed to win.  You can guess only once per round. With each correct guess, you get one point that will be allocated to your final score. The highest score wins!

Get your entry in by midnight, January 7^th.

This week's theme is Herbs and Spices.

1. Anise
2. Cinnamon
3. Peppermint
4. Ginger
5. Oregano

Good luck!

Wikipedia, you know I love you, but...

... that's a lot to ask just for the use of a website.