Before we get to our yearly look at the Super Bowl commercials, let’s harken back to last week when we discussed all the weird bets you could make on the game. I’m sure you all read it.

It’s Super Bowl Sunday, or will be shortly depending on when you’re reading this. If you’re even a casual football fan, you’re probably dismayed that, once again, the New England Patriots are in the big game.

Are you a nice person? Do you try to do the right thing? If someone needs help and you can help, do you help?

Like a lot of people, I dutifully got my flu shot last fall. I’ve been getting one every year for long enough that I don’t remember the last time I didn’t get one. And while I have come down with a cold here and there, I’ve avoided the flu, knock on wood.

If you are planning on moving out of Tennessee in the near future, you’d be in the minority. According to United Van Lines, a lot more people moved into Tennessee in recent times than moved out.

As I write this on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, I’m doing so on an Apple laptop while an iPhone rests next to it and a pair of headphones, connected to the phone by Bluetooth, plays a sports talk radio program from an app that lets me play satellite radio without either a radio or a satellite.

While I wasn’t blessed with great looks or super smarts or the ability to charm people or a lot of money, I was ... hold on a minute, I need to crank myself back up again.

With Christmas right around the corner, the main thing you worry about is gaining weight and getting sick.

You’re either anxious and on pills or anxious and can’t afford a doctor’s visit. There is no in between. We live in an anxiety ridden world.

I’ve always been a walker. Let me clarify before somebody says they’ve been walking since they were 2 and they’re not impressed at all.

Not too long ago, maybe just a couple of months, the United Nations released a report that said horrifying things were going to start happening in 2030 because of climate change and that by 2040 the world would be uninhabitable.

It’s been said the millennial generation has been killing everything precious that came before it, including marriage.

One of the beliefs I’ve held onto is that, barring accidents and disease, I’ll live a relatively long life because three of my four grandparents made it into their 80s and two almost made it to 90.

It’s always fun to talk about how fat we’re all getting and I’m never one to ignore a study that shows just how much strain we’re putting on the planet.

It led to some jokes, some eye rolling and maybe even a little panicking, but the recent United Nations’ commissioned study that basically says the planet is doomed by 2040 if changes aren’t made in relation to climate change, seemed to come and go without much fanfare.

As someone who has watched his weight go up and down over the years (from a low of 167 to a high of 245 as an adult), I’m always looking for a pain-free way to take off the pounds.

I’ve always been fascinated by how much it is estimated to cost to raise a child to the age of 18. When I was a kid, the amount to get to 18 was $100,000.

Saw a story where the City of Houston is making a new law that forbids anyone from opening a robot brothel within the city limits.

When you get “old,” it’s human nature to look at the generation coming after you and think they don’t quite live up to your legacy. “Bunch of pampered babies,” you think. “They don’t know what real trouble is.”

If you’re the type of person who’s sensitive about their yearly income (i.e. it’s too low), you might want to go ahead and turn the page.

The other day I was searching for cat houses on Amazon. Now, before you get all excited or start harrumphing, understand I mean cat house as in a house an outdoor cat can take shelter in when the weather turns bad.

Like most of you, I dream of a shorter workweek. Actually, my dreams are much larger. I dream of a two-week work year. You know, instead of two weeks of vacation per year, you work two weeks and get 50 weeks off. And, you get to choose the weeks you work. No reason to work them in a row.

Whether or not you are a nice, polite person is in the eye of the beholder. What might make one person think you’re a horrible person might not elicit even the slightest reaction in another. It usually helps your standing if you’ve known the person for a long time and consider them a friend.

I’ll admit I was stupid about money when I was young. I spent every cent I had and if I wanted something and there wasn’t any money in my pocket, there were these wonderful little squares of plastic to help with all my “needs.”

If you were paying attention last week, and going by voter numbers most of you were not, we held what around here is referred to as “the big election.”

Since last week, I have filled out 20 different forms with the exact same information 20 different times. I have bought hand sanitizer, Kleenex, and colored pencils in bulk. New shorts and shoes and backpacks, paper and pencils and erasers; all are piled up on my dining room table.

I’m not a mother, something you probably figured out if you’ve ever even just glanced at me, so I wasn’t really aware there’s something on the internet called “mother/mommy shaming.”

Anybody that’s been within hearing distance of me in the past 15 or so months knows I turned 50 in 2017 and they also know that I am not happy about it at all.

I never had what most would think of as a summer job when I was a teenager. I mowed enough yards to fill Neyland Stadium with grass cuttings, but I never had to report anywhere on time and complete tasks under a watchful eye everyday.

When I heard about the shooting incident in Annapolis, Md., where a deranged man killed five people in a newspaper newsroom, my first thought wasn’t that it was a Trump supporter who had taken the president’s declaration of the “media being the enemy of the people” to heart.

New moms have a way of finding each other and sticking together. The bond made with friends who are going through the exact same things as you are strong. No one understands how hard (and how wonderful) learning how to “mom” really is — no one except for your Mom Tribe.

If there’s one thing Tennesseans are familiar with, it’s the slap in the face known as “sales tax.”

I’ve never been blessed with what one would call a “great bod.” In my adult years, my weight has gone up and down from a low of 167 to a high of 245. Unfortunately, I’m much closer to the high nowadays than the low.

How do you feel about your job? Hate it? Love it? Indifferent, but you need a paycheck?

I assume that most of you, like myself, have spent your lives in small towns. I’ve lived in Sweetwater all my life, and even though a country-dwelling relative once asked me how I liked living in the big city, Sweetwater is pretty small on the town/city scale of size.

We went to the zoo this week. It was a lot of fun and we saw a lot of animals, but I believe we could have just stayed home and toured the animals there.

I was at a recent high school graduation, and I noticed there were eight valedictorians and no salutatorians. This job has required me to be at a lot of high school graduations over the years, and this is the first one I can remember where you didn’t have a speech from both a valedictorian a…

Do you consider yourself rich? No, not rich in love or family or experience. I mean the kind of rich that really matters. The kind of rich you can count, the kind that makes people you don’t know become your best friend.

You’ve got bills. I know you do. And if somehow you don’t, then you’ve led a life about 98 percent of us couldn’t begin to comprehend.

If it is April you can count on two things making you question your life choices: the weather and Parade magazine’s annual report of what people make for all kinds of jobs.

Alex Jones has been sued by parents of children killed in the Sandy Hook massacre a few years ago after he repeatedly claimed the deaths of nearly 30 people, most of them children, were staged.

Everybody missed it, but April 4 was National Hug a Newsperson Day. I didn’t receive a hug during the day, nor any since, but surely somebody in the news gathering business was hugged that day. If I had known, I would have driven to Knoxville and given Abby Ham a hug. She surely would have a…

How you been feeling lately? Things getting to you? Can’t stand to hear the news? Want to scream whenever you learn what’s going on?

In case you didn’t know, March is National Nutrition Month and our survey friends over at wallethub.com decided to honor this celebration by ranking the fattest cities in the country.

I wonder about things sometimes, as I assume most people do. I wonder what people who scream bloody murder about switching to, or away from, daylight saving time gripe about the other 363 days of the year?

We all have vices, but a recent study by WalletHub (your go to place for surveys on literally everything you can think of) shows that we here in Tennessee are just about off the charts when it comes to being ticked off.

Have you done your taxes yet? If you’re the kind of person who normally gets a refund, you probably had that sucker filled out and sent off the day your W-2s came in the mail. If you’re not that type of person, you probably haven’t given it much thought yet.

One of the things that appears to be headed for the door because of all the recent revealings of sexual harassment is the office romance. Office romance is a catch-all phrase because you could also be talking about factory romances and store romances and school romances involving teachers, I…