Trident White: Whitens Teeth and Helps Prevent Stains

We recently purchased some Trident "White" chewing gum. Gum is always a handy item in case one is looking to have a chew. Besides, Trident White is sugarless. And it whitens teeth as you chew it. And it helps prevent stains. With all of the benefits included, it was hard to pass up. We gladly paid the 85 cents for a cool rush of Trident flavored chewing gum that aided in the whitening of our teeth.

Once we got home I read the back of the package and took a closer look at the fine print. It reads:

The great tasting way to a whiter smile!
Chewing 2 pieces of Trident White sugarless gum after eating and drinking helps:
-Prevent stains
-Strengthen teeth
-Whiten teeth in as little as 4 weeks

Ok. Let me get this straight, Trident White people. I need to chew 2 pieces of gum after every time I eat? I would say that it is fairly accurate to assume that an average person eats 3 times a day. So the Trident people expect me to chew 6 pieces of gum every day? Excessive. Then it goes on - it will whiten your teeth if you do this for 4 weeks straight! So in order to really experience the "white" part of Trident White, I have to relentlessly chew 6 pieces of gum a day for 4 straight weeks.

I've done the math. That is 168 pieces of gum. Only after chewing 168 pieces of gum do you get your whitening results. And if 12 pieces of gum come in one package, you have to buy 14 packages of gum. Surely this much gum chewing can't be good for you. Assuming they are 85 cents a package (I'm not sure....could be more or less), that is going to run you close to 12 bucks. Just on gum alone. You could buy a CD for that.

So there it is people. Do you want whiter teeth? You can have them. It will only cost you 12 dollars, 4 weeks of time, and 168 pieces of gum to chew. Stupid.

Greek Week: Sneak Peek

3 weeks, 20 chapters, and 227 vocab words later, I have survived Greek 1. Endless hours forcefully cramming bizarre paradigms and strange vocabulary into my skull are over. No more daily quizzes. No more third declensions. No more memory clues to help remember tricky words. No more afternoons spent plugging away on workbook excercises when I could be tossing a frisby in the park. No more dreams about me studying (it is true, I did have several dreams....nightmares). It is over. Yes, it is over. And I have the scars and battle wounds to prove it.

I'm very excited to be finished with Greek 1. And I really am going to enjoy the 5 WHOLE FREAKING DAYS I have before Greek 2 starts. Good grief. It just doesn't stop. 5 days. That's all I get. And then the insanity resumes. More vocab. More quizzes. More translations. More weird memory clues. More afternoons spent. More dreams.

I Grilled the Grill

Summer time marks the season of lemonade, bathing suits, sun burns and hotdogs. For our household, it marks the season of near disaster. Yesterday I was given a simple assignment - Grill two chicken breasts. It was about 7 in the evening, we had just enjoyed a wonderful meal outside on the back porch, and Kathryn was in the midst of preparing some chicken/pasta dish for the week's worth of lunches. She needed two chicken breasts grilled. We have a grill. This shouldn't be that hard. But of course....disaster.

I turned on the gas and lit the three igniters (sp?) - so far so good. Let it heat up. Give it a good ten minutes or so. Nice and toasty. Kathryn sat outside and I swept the porch while the grill heated up. We enjoyed our last few moments of an insanity-free evening. After a few minutes I opened up the grill to check on the progress and as soon as I lifted the lid, thick, cobalt smoke came billowing out. Balls of flames were consuming the insides. And then I saw what had happened. I had left the black, plastic scrapey thing in there from the previous use. Laffy Taffy-like, strings of burning plastic, stretched between the lid and the grates creating what looked and felt like the jaws of some monster you'd find in a low budget horror film. Goodness, gracious, great balls of fire....in fact, great balls of dripping oil-like fire that was once plastic, er..solid plastic.

For some reason in the moment of terror and desperation, I managed to kindly ask Kathryn if I could borrow her glass of water. (She said yes.) I tossed it onto the inferno and quickly turned off the igniters (sp?) and the gas to the troubling chorus of hissing and wheezing as the strands of black plastic cooled down. 2 hours later I evaluated the damage and discovered that plastic cools down to a solid that is just about as hard as it was before it liquified. Now I have chords of frozen plastic threaded between my grill grates.

There is no help desk phone number for this kind of problem. This problem does not make the FAQ list. Now we're left on our own to decide: do we spend money replacing grill parts and/or grill or do we take a chance with that first burger, marinated and seasoned with toxins? Tough call. Honestly. Tough call.

[Written by both Mathryn]