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National Chocolate Candy Day 2024
Wrapping up 2024, we come to National Chocolate Candy Day. Well, how can you go wrong with a day about chocolate 💝🍫💝 candy?
🍫 Chocolate All Day Long 🕰️
I personally like different chocolates. I like milk chocolate during the day and, during the evening, I like something a little bit stronger with more personality, so maybe a 70-percent or 75-percent bar that’s hopefully made with good beans so it’s not acidic or bitter. ~Jacques Torres
Who doesn’t like chocolates? I’ve surely eaten my own body weight in them several times over in the last half century.
I’ve always had a sweet tooth. Donuts, cookies, candy, ice cream, all the sweets. Who doesn’t?
As adults, we’re supposed to grow out of that.
The sweetness in a grownup’s life comes from their spouses, children and pets.
A life well spent is far sweeter than a chocolate river.
Life will get even sweeter in this coming year.
I’ve finally got a counterpart at work again. It will take her a moment to get situated, but it will be a relief to have someone to share the workload with.
I’ve been on an A1C-friendly diet, so I’m looking forward to seeing the outcome of that effort.
I need to work with my wife to create a more balanced lifestyle. 2024 has been all about cramming and doubling down.
That can’t endure. I’m in no shape to keep that up indefinitely. I got no sleep through the summer and no relaxation over the holidays.
That officially sucks, and it had better be the last damn time it happens. I need to take control of things and make time for relaxation and recovery.
So, those are my New Year’s Resolutions. I never put much stock in the concept, but 2025 definitely needs to see some changes for the better.
Naturally, we’ll start that with a box of chocolates that I got as a Christmas present.
I’m fighting the temptation to nom them all down at once, like I usually would.
I’ve been spreading them out to ensure maximum enjoyment of this delightful treat.
As Forrest Gump said, Life is like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re going to get.
With a bit more forethought and planning than I usually engage in, I should have a bit more idea of what I’m going to get in 2025.
And none of it means a thing if I don’t have Kelly by my side for all of it. She’s been fairly impatient with me lately, but I’ve been too busy to give her what’s due.
That’s something else that will be changing in 2025. We’ll spend more time doing things together next year. Being busy all the time is no way to sustain a marriage.
Work is not supposed to be for its own sake. We work to make money to run our lives as we see fit. It surely doesn’t feel like it.
I’ve been getting busier and busier until I barely have a life at all. Well, enough of that. 2025 is going to be different in so many ways. I’m really looking forward to it.
How 🏭 It’s 🍫 Made
How It’s Made: Chocolate
When we think of chocolates, there is somehow still an image of hobbyists hand-dipping peanut butter eggs or using little plastic molds and colorful melting chocolates to make artisinal works of art. There’s something inherently charming about a candy kitchen with darling elderly women producing sweets by hand.
Naturally, nothing could be further from the truth. All the bags of fun-size treats, the shelves full of candy bars, the peg hooks full of tasty bonbons are cranked out by wonderfully complex machine processes.
Rather than an angelic chocolatier with an apron, it’s somebody in a hairnet and goggles flipping hundred pound bags of ingredients into giant mixers so the mixture can flow through a Rube Goldberg contraption that mixes, combines, drizzles and what all else to crank out infinite amounts of chocolaty goodness on a recurring cycle to keep the shelves stocked at dollar stores, big box retailers and grocers everywhere.
I Love Lucy | Lucy And Ethel At The Chocolate Factory (S2, E1) | Paramount+ST!
Even so, you can still take on the role of the aforementioned angelic chocolatier. You can be that person hand-dipping peanut butter eggs for Easter or using the colorful melting chocolates to make custom designs for people’s birthdays. As always, there is also a sugar-free version of pretty much any candy on the market. Here’s a fine example of that.
These Sugar Free Chocolate Covered Raspberry cream cheese bon-bon’s are the BEST!
🍫 Chocolate Is Life 💝
The only way I seem to be able to keep going while I’m writing is to munch my way through boxes of chocolates. ~Andrew Solomon
What’s not sweet is just-in-time fiction production.
My intention was to have this year’s story done before Thanksgiving. That was the plan.
Needless to say, it didn’t happen.
I’m writing the thing day to day. It is the exact opposite of what I wanted to happen, so I’m pretty bitter.
That’s something I’m looking not to repeat in 2025.
I’ll be taking a break in January after the book is compiled.
I don’t know that I’ll be able to take all of January off like I did this year. That was excruciating.
Even in the midst of writing The Lights of Pine Hollow, my mind has been churning on Sentinels and Tales Of Olde Auringia elements.
I’m itching to get back to The Sentinels: New Blood. I want to start charging through that series and figure out the touchpoints for the companion Collateral Impact story anthologies.
2025 is going to be a great year, and I hope it will be for you, too.
That’s it for this week and this momentous year. See you next year. 🕛🥂🥳