Landscaping Project - Day 1-5

We are under construction! Making the yard drain properly, be less dangerous and more usable! It is a total mess around here, but Jess' plans are coming to life finally!

Check out the progress so far

New York Rocks Smokers

New York is on a roll with the health policies. I found on David Hunnicutt's blog that New York has added a $2.75/pack tax on cigarettes!

Click here for the link to the short article.

Really?

If you have mad rock, paper, scissor skills you can go to Vegas and try to win $50,000. This years winner is off to China for the international competition.

Really, $50k for rock, paper, scissors?

Post Office

The United States Post Office can't figure out why they are loosing the game in shipping, it's pretty obvious to me. I ordered a pylon pole yesterday for Bill's boat so we can properly wake board (we were towing from the hook that you use for skiing and tubing, which doesn't work well for wake boarding). I received an email from USPS with a tracking number - this email seemed a little different than ones I had gotten in the past from USPS claiming to track packages. So I had hope that maybe they figured out how this nifty tracking feature worked. Nope, still pretending like they can track packages. See below the message you get:

"The U.S. Postal Service was electronically notified by the shipper on June 23, 2008 to expect your package for mailing. This does not indicate receipt by the USPS or the actual mailing date. Delivery status information will be provided if / when available. Information, if available, is updated every evening. Please check again later."

Basically it's just a technical way of saying at some point, like all other mail, your package will arrive. I'm sure the next time my package gets scanned will be when it arrives at the house and the website will be updated 1-2 days later to inform me my package arrived. Which may or may not get here before we leave for the lake trip this weekend. Guess I'll just have to hope that it will get here in time.

ps. Normally in a time crunch situation, I will opt to pay the extra shipping through UPS or FedEX, but that was going to cost somewhere around $60-$80 vs. the $40 for USPS. I had no choice but to put it in the hands of hope.

Saying Goodbye

Bill and I's beloved iguana, Stinky, is no longer with us. I knew at some point this day would happen, but I thought it would be a few more years so I think that's why it hurts that much more. When we returned from our trip to Germany I noticed he wasn't really eating, was hanging out in parts of his house that he normally doesn't go and had lost weight. I immediately called the vet and in the meantime Stinky and I hung out outside - this perked him up a little but not enough. The next morning we went to the vet and he really didn't protest to the poking and prodding so I knew something was wrong. I left him to get xrays and blood work. X-rays just showed a lot of gas, nothing significant. I picked him up after they had given him fluids and some food and he wasn't much better. I started to prepare myself for the worst. The next morning we got the call from the vet and his blood work was all off - nothing was within normal levels - all pointing towards the kidneys. They were shutting down and quickly. Since Stinky was appearing to be worse that morning despite the fluids and the banana he ate the night before (his absolute fave thing to eat) I knew there was only one option. So me balling like a baby we took Stinky back to the vet to be put down. Having worked at a vet hospital during college - I have always been on the other side of seeing someone putting their animal down. It hurt as much as I thought it would now being on the owner side of the situation. His ashes will be sprinkled over an apple orchard somewhere.

I will deeply miss my Stinky-poo and will never forget all the times he couldn't figure out that I wasn't a female iguana and he tried to mate with me and when we moved down to Georgia my plan that he would quietly sit in the back window for 6 hours would go horribly array somewhere on 85S.

You Are What You Eat

If the saying "You Are What You Eat" holds true, that means the vast majority of us are fake.
Meaning we are eating fake foods (aka foodstuff) all the time - food that if you looked at the ingredients you wouldn't be able to pronounce most of them even if you took organic chemistry. As I remember learning in junior high, the last thing you want to be is fake.

It's time to be true to yourself and stop being fake, become real.

A couple of tips on how to be real, not fake.

• At the grocery store - stick to the perimeter and only dash into the isles for whole grains, beans and few other necessities that are tucked away with the foodstuff.
• Visit your local farmers market - Blacksburg has an amazing one that is full of locally produced foods (even animal products)
  

Some good reads on the topic, Micheal Pollan has two books out
1) In Defense of Food
2) The Omnivore's Dilemma

stairs

orange lily

Canon Rebel XT $999

Simga DC 17:70 Lens $300

Photography class $250

Finally figuring manual mode on camera - priceless!

Resurrecting the professor

Today I am resurrecting my professor self. After my two semester stint at teaching 3 sections of the same class three times a week about a year ago - I said never again. Those kids wore me down and left me jaded. I had little hope for the future of college kids - unless the new official language of America was going to be IM lingo. But, given the fact that I really, really dislike not doing well at something I decided that I would give one more go at teaching to college kids. Oh did I mention that the class I teach is an Intro level nutrition course that counts towards a mandatory wellness core credit? That's the mentality I'm up against - give me my A for this and let's move on.

So today I will besiege upon my class the new Beth style of teaching - I will still teach the necessary objectives that have to met with this course but I will do it with flare and will take it beyond this is what a "carb, protein, fat, etc is and this is what it does and this is what happens when you eat too much or too little of it." My students will hopefully leave the semester demanding change in our current agriculture system for providing food; they will know how to be healthy without having to 'diet'; they will look back on their college career and say damn I learned a lot from that crazy food professor.