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I was thinking about Twitter the other day, and of course that reminded me of chocolate.

You mean it’s not that way for you?

If you’ve ever seen the classic I Love Lucy episode, the one where Lucy and Ethel get a job in a chocolate factory, you’ll know where I’m going with this. The chocolate candies come down the conveyor belt, and the intrepid duo must wrap each piece before it reaches the next stage in the packaging process. Things start out well enough, but the conveyor belt quickly speeds up, and the candies move faster and faster down the line. To Lucy and Ethel’s dismay, many unwrapped chocolates are swiftly making their way past the point of no return. Their martinet of a supervisor will be furious, the girls will lose their jobs, and the only way to avoid catastrophe is to hide the evidence —in their toques, down their uniforms, and in their mouths, as this picture illustrates.

My Twitter feed reminds me of chocolate speeding down a conveyor belt. I want to grab it all (i.e. read each tweet), but it can’t be done. I would have to either monitor my iPhone 24/7, or set other tasks aside to regularly review huge helpings of tweets at one sitting—dipping into a vast candy bowl of information. Other things clamor for my attention. One must sleep and eat. One wants to hug and kiss one’s husband, and otherwise participate in the analog world.

And of course, there’s all the writing and blogging that one must do to meet the November NaBloPoMo challenge.

🙂

So I do the best that I can, assiduously marking the tweets that I want to revisit for closer scrutiny, skimming linked articles with the alacrity of Lucy Ricardo twisting waxed paper on a chocolate, and tweeting or retweeting—lobbing little gifts out into the world that I think you might enjoy.

How do people manage all of this? I’m a late adopter, no question. I’m still learning my way around the Twitterscape. (A blogger called The Late Bloomer Bride wrote one of the best lines I’ve ever read about coming to the party late: “I knew at an early age that I was a late-bloomer.” Good stuff.)

One thing I did adopt early, however, was a love of chocolate. And it was a tweet last month, from the Huffington Post, that gave me the sweetest gift of all: the news that there are health benefits to the rich, dark, decadence that I’ve enjoyed ever since I cut my first tooth.

Huffington Post’s Healthy Living reported on a Swedish study that found a link between high chocolate consumption and a 20-percent decrease in stroke risk among women.

This is not the first report to determine that chocolate, not unlike red wine, can be good for you, and this is not to say we should all make a mad dash to the kids’ Halloween stash as if it were the prescription counter at Walgreen’s. As with all indulgences, moderation is key, especially since chocolate is not a low-calorie, low-fat, low-sugar food item. But if you are thinking of sneaking a bit from their haul, go for the dark chocolate. It’s better for you.

John and I just finished dinner, and will shortly be enjoying chocolate cupcakes for dessert. But if you’re following me on Twitter, you no doubt already know that.