Being Thankful

Not only is it respectful, it will change your life.

The Pyramid of Luxuries

The Bespoke - $1,000 Grocery Gift Card

The Ultra High End - Christmas Tree

The Superpremium - Arin Krin Garlic House

The Premium Core - Ducky Tran Keychain

The Accessible Core - Being Thankful

The Affordable Luxury - TRIVIA: What is the “T” in TENS, referring to therapy?

The Everyday Luxury - What We Are Thankful For!

The Bespoke

Click on the banner to enter The Bespoke Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $1,000 Grocery Gift Card [ARV $1,000]

• Odds: For every 130 Ducky Tran premium member by the time of judging, I will give out one (1) Grocery gift card

• Contest Period: October 30, 2024 at 10 AM CST to December 3, 2024 at 10 PM CST

The Ultra High End

Previous Contest Winner

The winner of Issue 52 Ultra High End Contest is TAYLOR from RICHARDSON, TEXAS! Here’s her submission for “something that come in pairs”:

Congratulations to TAYLOR, get ready to use your chopstick skills on Honey Baked Ham’s feast. Let’s see some other submissions of pairs:

Let’s continue with the holiday festivities, the next prize is for Christmas!

This Week’s Contest

Click on the banner to enter The Ultra High End Photo Contest. Click here for the Official Contest Rules.

• Prize: $100 Christmas Tree [ARV $100]

• Odds: For every 70 Ducky Tran premium members that submit a valid entry, I will give out one (1) Christmas Tree

• Contest Period: November 20, 2024 at 10 AM CST to November 26, 2024 at 10 PM CST

Even though many Christmas trees nowadays are reuseable, they don’t last forever. I should know, my wife likes to decorate 5-7 trees every year. Even with the stash for trees, we still get rid of 1 or 2 every few years. Or maybe you have been eyeing a specific tree for a while, then here’s your chance.

This week’s prize will allow you to pick any Christmas tree of your choosing under $100. I’ve seen 7.5 feet pre-lit trees going for this amount, so that’s a decent size for every household. Or it could be a gift to a Christmas tree collector like my wife. Whomever it will be for, this Christmas there’ll be one more tree.

The Superpremium

This week’s Superpremium topic is Arin Krin Garlic House. This is an Izakaya-style restaurant in Okinawa, Japan that focuses on garlic as its central ingredient. As you may know by now, I love cooking; and if you cook, you know that garlic is one of the key ingredients to amazing savory flavors. I think I use some form of garlic is 80-90% of all my hot meals. So, when I found about the Garlic House, you know I was all about it.

First, a warning, you WILL smell like garlic from head to toe after entering this restaurant and for several hours. You will smell so garlicy that you and all patrons won’t know about the garlic barrier around you until you approach outsiders and they repel them like kids in a bounce house. However, it is worth it.

There’s no point wondering, you can just assume everything has garlic in it. And not just a hint of garlic. Some of the items are just straight garlic! Baked garlic, garlic bread, garlic pizza, vegetables in garlic, garlic fried rice, and garlic with beef. These are just some, but you get the idea. This place knows how to use garlic, the food is very good and keeps vampires away. The real caution is the Plinko establishment across the street.

After eating a few items, you won’t even realize there’s garlic in any dishes. Garlic becomes a little muted yet the flavors are still amazing. If this happens, you have acclimated to the garlic fumes and are probably beginning to sweat garlic from your pores. Despite the amazing food from Garlic House, don’t bring your favorite jacket, unless garlic is the fragrance you want to wear.

The Premium Core

Hooray! Ducky Tran has just passed it’s 1-Year with 52 completed newsletters full of prizes, content, and deals. Thank you to all the members that was part of this journey, I hope to have more exciting information and prizes in the future.

Deal #1: In celebration, I will be giving out one (1) Ducky Tran keychain to each member this week that emails [email protected] one thing you’ve learned from the newsletters until now. One (1) Ducky Tran keychain per member and only valid if sent during before November 26, 2024 at 10:00PM CST.

The Accessible Core

Being Thankful

Growing up, I’ve always heard to be thankful for what you have and not to covet things that others have. However, I wish there was more emphasis on why. Why should we be thankful? That’s what I’ll be discussing today, the reason to be thankful. Even though the outward gestures of being thankful is important, I’ll be discussing the inner feeling of gratitude for most of this article.

There has been many research studies on gratitude and its effects. Nearly all found that gratitude has a direct correlation to your well-being, especially if there are negative factors in play. And if no negative factors are in play, how we remind ourselves can have just a big of an impact. To make it easier to digest, let’s use a single example to show how gratitude can improve your well-being.

Imagine you are at the gym and you struggle to finish your last rep and drop your free weights. Someone runs up to you to check that you are not injured and helps you up to rest.

1. This act of kindness is rarely reciprocated equally and is often forgotten shortly after its occurrence. But gratitude in this moment can later be used as fuel for the day, because gratitude can produce endorphins that make you happy even if the moment happened in the past. Think about this moment throughout your day, to give a boost of energy to fuel you.

2. This was just one act of kindness and many more may be stacking up throughout your day, but if you don’t recognize them, you may be stressing yourself out. Gratitude towards this act of kindness can liven up your day and make you less depressed. With enough gratitude, due to the chemical change in your brain, you can physically change how you feel on a day-to-day basis.

3. Sometimes these small acts of kindness are forgotten. Writing a few things that you are grateful for throughout the day or before you sleep can improve your memory of these moments. Also, this allows you to have a book of memories you can revisit when you are down.

4. Gratitude is a motivator to act. When you are happier and in a good mood, you will take more action than if you were depressed. Gratitude is a motivator for you to do the things you set out to do that day and meet the goal you’ve set for yourself. Maybe by the end of the week, you will no longer struggle to push that last rep.

5. Gratitude is contagious, the same as happiness. When we show gratitude and joy, through words, actions, or nonverbal cues, other people will also benefit from it. Your own gratitude can show, to the person that helped you, that they are a good person and have purpose. This person will then feel good throughout their day, and the contagious joyful mood may extend to everyone they meet.

These are some of the things that gratitude can do for you and others. But don’t forget, that forgetting is the only thing stopping you. Write it down, tell someone, and look back on these small moments that can change your life forever.

The Affordable Luxury

Issue 52 Community Poll Results

Here’s results from last week’s poll:

1. About 90% of you believe gratitude is a learned behavior, the rest believe it to be innate.

2. Everyone chose: yes, gratitude can affect your health.

3. I will list the things we’re thankful for at the end.

This Week’s Community Poll

Here are this week’s poll questions:

The Everyday Luxury

I’ve asked you for things you are thankful for so I can compile it here so we can all share the purpose for the season. Ducky Tran members: I am thankful for:

• my family.

• my career I find meaningful.

• work from home.

• a safe home with utilities.

• my friends.

• a working car.

• 2-ply toilet paper.

• food on the table.

• a stocked fridge and pantry.

• my coworkers.

• my parents.

• my senses and mobility.

• my children.

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Visit shop.duckytran.com with the weekly password: garlic