Stop Drinking Bottled Water, Save Hundreds of Dollars

As is becoming very clear, bottled water is a total rip-off. It's more expensive than gasoline, it creates unnecessary waste, the plastic in the bottles permeates the water inside with phthalates and puts our health at risk, and it's not any safer to drink than normal tap water.

Yet somehow, the bottled water industry has created this impression that it's much better than tap water.

Let's see just how much money you can save per year by avoiding tap water by using the bottled water cost calculator at New American Dream:

Now let me preface this by saying I haven't been drinking bottled water for over a year, so this isn't actually money I'll be saving as I've already kicked the habit. I drink from a 40 ounce stainless steel bottle, at least one bottle full per day. Figuring that into bottled water terms, it's about 913 sixteen-ounce bottles per year.

According to the calculator, I save $1367 per year. Plus I'm not putting anything into landfills or poisoning myself. Plus, I have this impact:

Impact
Total Water Consumed:	143 gallons
Extra Water Required for Production and Purification:	285 gallons
Energy Required for Manufacturing:	92 megajoules
Oil Required to Produce the Plastic Bottle(s):	23 gallons
CO2e to Manufacture Plastic Bottle(s):	171 pounds

I got my bottle at Whole Foods, it's an Enviro Products bottle. It's sturdy and holds plenty of water, so I don't have to refill it all the time (which is good, as I sweat a lot and can put down a sixteen ounce bottle in two swigs most of the time). My wife and son use bottles from Sigg and they both love them. The necks are a bit smaller for Jenn's, which is 1 liter, and Duncan's is .4 liters and has a twist-top that allows him to drink more easily and close it more easily. Plus it's got glow-in-the-dark astronauts on the outside and he loves that. Moira will be getting hers as soon as she's out of sippy-cups.

We got ours at Clintonville Outfitters on High Street - support local business and get yours there!

Why Geography Courses Are Necessary in the USA

I fear for our country.

Dispatch Shows Irresponsibility in Crew/West Ham Fracas Aftermath

It's official - the Dispatch is not interested in improving things at all in the City of Columbus.

In the online version of their article about the fisticuffs being thrown between rival groups of fans during halftime of the Crew/West Ham match yesterday, the Dispatch included a poll with the following title: "Does hooliganism make soccer more interesting to you?"

For those who only know about soccer via the hooligan problem, this may seem to make perfect sense. But as someone who has witnessed hooliganism first hand and seen friends affected by it (including a good friend of mine getting punched in the face because he wouldn't give a Chicago Fire "fan" a banner or scarf with a Crew logo), I can only recall the efforts that I and other US soccer fans have made to keep US soccer hooligan-free.

Let me ask you this: if the Dispatch had run such a poll after Buckeye fans showed just what wonderful fans they are when the Texas Longhorns came to visit several years ago, would the Buckeye Nation have stood for it? Not at all. So why do we stand for it when it's the Crew? They represent Columbus just as much as the Buckeyes; more, in some people's opinion.

Hooligan fans everywhere need to be treated as what they are: terrorists. They should be rounded up and sent to prison camps for causing terror for decent people who just want to attend a sporting event, but instead have to deal with issues of public safety.

And the Dispatch needs to be censured for their exhortation of such behavior.

That's One Short Plunge...

The AP is reporting that oil prices have "plunged" by $10 a barrel! Wow! We're saved! Now oil only costs...

Um... $138.00 a barrel.

I'm sorry, but this is the same stupid snow job that the oil companies have been trying to foist on us for years. Gas is up from around a $1.50 a gallon to over $4.00... but in the meantime, we've seen them raise it up to say... $2.50, then back to $2.25 in a HUGE cut! Then up to $3.00, then back to $2.75...

Folks... there's no price cut going on here. Oil is going up and it's going to stay that way. They oil companies are just waiting till we get used to a certain price level and then they lower it to a level that would previously have gotten us up in arms. It's a big joke and a snow job.

I'm Voting Republican

And the scariest thing is... I actually used to BE a Republican. Guess you get smarter as you get older.

Unless... well... oh, never mind.

What Kind of Fish Are You?

Watch it, I'm armed!


I'm Jamie and
I'm a Swordfish.

I've Been Meme-Tagged...

What can I say, Dale got me.

So here goes.

1. I was in ROTC in college, and was commissioned into the Army as a 2nd Lieutenant of Armor. Then the first Bush conducted the post Gulf-War-Reductions in Force and I was unable to find even a reserve unit, and I spent the majority of my term of service in the Individual Ready Reserve. I was officially discharged in October of 2001. I took advantage of the time and attended both Basic Parachuting School and Armor Officer Basic Course. Good times, good times.

2. I was drafted onto my high school quiz bowl team after a trivia contest in one of my classes caught the attention of the team's captain.

3. I didn't own my first car (actually OWN, that is - not got as a hand-me-down from my parents) until I was out of college. It was a 1987 Mercury Lynx wagon and was possibly the best deal I've ever gotten on a vehicle until my current vehicle - my bike.

4. In fifth grade, I played Winthrop Paroo in our community theater version of The Music Man. Yeah, the Ronnie Howard role. According to my dad in the audience, I was so convincing that one of the old ladies watching the production said that it was too bad I had that awful lisp, otherwise I'd have been a fine singer.

5. When I was 11 or 12, I got two stitches in my face when I ran into a friend's brace while playing football. According to hearsay, he hit me so hard that it pushed his orthodontia schedule forward by six months (he was a bit bucktoothed at the time). I never saw a cent of it.

6. I used to be a lifeguard at Alice's Wonderland in Alma, a waterslide park that has gone under at this point (my brother refers to it as "Alice's Eyesore" now). That was my first real summer job.

7. I took classes after graduating from Notre Dame to try to get a teaching certificate, but got so fed up with living at home that one day I scoured the newspapers for a real job just to get out. I found one as a computer trainer... and that's what led to my current position.

How Long Has It Been?

I've been a Columbus Crew fan for a long time. Not as long as most of my friends, since I didn't move here till after the end of MLS's first season, but from the time I saw my first game in April 1997 I've been hooked.

And it's been an up and down ride with them. After being one of the better teams in the league the first two seasons I followed them, getting to the conference finals in 1997 and 1998 before losing to DC United (both times,the bastards), they started to lose it. Sure, they'd GET to the playoffs, and even back to the conference finals one year, but they really haven't been a team with any gusto. And I'm not asking for constant wins... well, maybe I am... but I would like to see them play with some fire under them. And in the Tom Fitzgerald and Greg Andrulis years, that just didn't happen.

Now, things are different. After a couple tough years of getting the players he wants and the system he wants, coach Sigi Schmidt has put together a team of hard playing winners. And for the first time in... a few years, honestly, I sat up on a weeknight and watched a whole MLS game. And it felt good!

I was looking forward to this game (Columbus at Washington DC) all day. For a couple days. My son and I wore our Crew shirts to school/work today. He watched the beginning of it before heading to bed - we let him stay up for a while so he could see it. He was excited. I was excited. Jenn would have been excited if she didn't have a headache... and honestly, she was still excited! I'm surprised I didn't wake the kids up when Ale Moreno scored the first goal.

It just felt so nice to be excited about the Crew again... makes me feel like I'm ten years younger. And this team plays like... well, like I used to play. One hundred percent, all the time. Rushing the keeper. Running through people. A nose for the goal - a hungry need to score. Too often we've seen Crew teams pass it around, afraid to score. No longer. Moreno, Guillermo Barros Schelotto, Robby Rogers, Adam Moffet, and Eddie Gaven are all up there dying to put the ball in the ol' onion bag.

No game this weekend, unfortunately - the price of having the weeknight ESPN game. But next weekend they'll be back against the Houston Dynamo. I'm thinking about making a flag, even. That's how fun this is again.

Go Crew!

I'm Learning More About Myself Every Day

8

Useful to know, in case I ever become a Kindergarten teacher and the kids get ornery.


41%

Also useful to know, in case Mike Huckabee ever gets elected president (proof that we're surrounded by zombies!).


93

Not bad... I was hoping to break 100 but typos kept screwing me up.


78% Geek

Oh, I'm definitely a geek.

36

Apparently I need to brush up on the Land's End Catalog a bit.

$4325.00
Um... is this good?

Indiana Jones is Returning!

Two years ago? Batman. Last year? James Bond. This Year? Indiana Jones!

This is my Graceland!

How Much of a Boozehound Are You?

Labels can be so nasty sometimes...


95%ALCOHOLIC

Workout Tips!

Yeah, that's right, here I am to share with you a workout tip that I have been running with since the beginning of the year. It's really simple, but it's a tip that I've used to build an exercise habit that I actually feel the NEED to continue with.

Too often we take on exercise routines as a New Year's Resolution and it's too much to do all at once. We get sore, we take a day off, and then we lose the habit of exercise. This tip removes a lot of that.

What I did: on January 1st I did one pushup. I kid you not.

On January 2nd? 2 pushups.

January 3rd? You guessed it: 3 pushups.

And every day, I've added a pushup. So here it is, March 14, and last night before going to bed I did 73 pushups. I don't do them all at once, but I try to do them in no more than four sets. Usually I do them in three, right now.

If I miss a day? Yep, you guessed it. Make them up at some point. I missed a couple days somewhere in the 60s and did 100 a day for a few days to catch up. It wasn't easy, but I did it.

What are the benefits of this? Well, obviously, pushups are good for you. That's one. The gradual progression helped me not get sore and demoralized early on. That's two. And the consensus I've heard from many self-improvement experts is that it takes 21 days to make something a real habit. So without the soreness and need to rest a day early on to remove the habit, I've kept going almost nonstop for 2 1/2 months. It helped me create a habit, and now I get antsy if I don't do my pushups before going to bed.

It's worked so well that at the beginning of March I started doing Hindu Squats (adding two a day) and Situps (adding one a day) as well. That means that by the beginning of March, 2009, I'll be doing 730 Hindu Squats a day and 365 situps, as well as whatever number of pushups I'm up to by that point. My goal is to get to 500 pushups per day before I stop adding so much.

Next month I want to add pullups to the mix as well. As they're a little harder, my goal will be to add a pullup every week - doing one a day for the first week, two a day for the second week, etc. till I'm doing 52 a week.

And I mix up the types of pushups I do from day to day. Some days I do all Hindu Pushups. Some days I do a set of 20 narrow armed pushups, 20 wide-armed pushups, 20 diamond pushups, etc. Some days I just do regular drop-and-give-me-20 pushups! The variety is endless.

I've put together a spreadsheet for myself to keep track, too - keeping records of your workouts is another great motivational tool.

I list:

• the day
• the number of exercises I'm supposed to do that day
• the number that I should have done thus far for the year
• the number I've actually done per day
• the number I HAVE done thus far for the year
• the number I am behind (to remind me to keep going)
• Any notes I want to make (# of sets, how many per set, what kinds of pushups I've done, etc.)
  

It's a pretty easy spreadsheet to put together, but if you'd like a copy I've published it to Google Documents and you should be able to download a copy.

Let me know how this works for you! It's working great for me so far...

Spider-Man if I'm a Good Guy, But...

Your results:
You are The Joker

The Joker 46% Venom 46% Juggernaut 45% Dark Phoenix 44% Dr. Doom 43% Riddler 40% Apocalypse 40% Lex Luthor 38% Catwoman 37% Kingpin 34% Mr. Freeze 33% Poison Ivy 32% Magneto 31% Mystique 21% Green Goblin 9% Two-Face 9%

The Clown Prince of Crime. You are a brilliant mastermind but are criminally insane. You love to joke around while accomplishing the task at hand.

Click here to take the Supervillain Personality Quiz

McCain '08: Like Hope, But Different

This cracked me up... and scared the living bejeesus out of me. I do not want my children having to fight in a war that we're in because of Bush and McCain being too stubborn to realize when it's time to stop.

I Kind of Figured This

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 75% Superman 70% Robin 65% The Flash 65% Hulk 60% Iron Man 45% Catwoman 45% Supergirl 45% Green Lantern 30% Batman 30% Wonder Woman 20%

You are intelligent, witty, a bit geeky and have great power and responsibility.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test