Notes From A Bear's Journey

     Blink and you'll miss it.  Okay, you really can't  miss it because advertisers began marketing the "holidays" before Holiween (may as well just blend it all together). From a capitalistic viewpoint, you bought the candy to appease the kids and now begins your turn.  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Christmas and Super Bowl!  Wait, did I leave something out?  Like Thanksgiving (which generates little money for retailers, unless you're an airline or a gas station) or Giving Tuesday, a very charitable idea carefully placed after  you've spent your cash on things you probably didn't really need.  Here's an idea: have Giving Tuesday come on Thanksgiving week, a time when people are feeling full of gratitude and thinking of others.  Heaven forbid...that would leave less to spend come Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the grandaddy of them all, Christmas.  Ho, ho, whoa...how dare I try to dampen the holiday spirit?  But while Jimmy...

     Quick warning: this post will sound a bit depressing but it does end on a happy note.  And while it begins with medical issues we could all face, it may prove helpful to know a few symptoms of the unexpected.  But to start, what's with that title of clea r ing vs. clea n ing?  It's amazing the similarities a single letter, or phrase --say, inside vs. outside-- can change not only a meaning but also change how you say it.  As an example, you can say IN the house, and have it make sense, but not OUT the house, unless you add "side" or sometimes a preposition such as "out OF the house."  To wit, if asked where are the keys, one could answer "in the house" but you couldn't say "out the house" unless you added "outSIDE the house."  Why is that?  Now imagine you're from Albania and trying to learn such nuances.  The bottom line, English is often a funny language when it comes to such odd and sometimes strict rules of gram...