Monday Morning Quarterback 1.12

Cyber-Monday Morning Quarterback this week. I really don't know what all of the big hub-bub was about though. I haven't seen any increase in sales at SkeetzTeez at all! I'm still hoping that we will see some kind of sales increase before the holidays. If you think  about it, the designs in my shop are going to appeal, mostly, to people that fall into a demographic as mine... impulse buyers that often wait until the last minute. So there is nothing to worry about yet.

I've been off for the last four-days in observance of Thanksgiving and I haven't posted anything in five- or six-days so I have a lot to get caught up on and only a half-hour left on my lunch so let's get to my notes from the weekend:

• Ever notice that the Jewish community usually observes holidays while most others celebrate holidays? It's like one big party when you're thirteen and then no more fun until you get married or die.

• Did you hear of the tragic story of the Wal-Mart employee that was trampled to death by 2,000 Black Friday shoppers? I don't blame the store because they did not do anything different than thousands of other retail outlets across the nation but what does that have to say about our society?

• I went shopping for a short time on Friday and it was enough to turn me off for the entire holiday season. Besides being, literally, run into by a rude, fat man in one of those electric carts and having some DVDs taken out of my cart, I don't think I saw even one act of Christmas spirit in the three stores I was at. I'm doing the rest of my shopping online.

• We've had our first snowfall of the year. It was just a dusting but I'm surprised we've made it through alive. I left 30-minutes early for work this morning and still arrived 30-minutes late. This is surprising as I thought everyone would be at the grocery stores stocking up on milk and bread like they were going to be trapped at home for a week, instead of on the highways freaking out on black ice in the middle of my path downtown.

• More than several years ago a roommate of mine took a loaf of bread from a woman's cart that was stocking up for a big storm. She had a cartload and we just wanted to make a sandwich.

• We may have a new family tradition for Thanksgiving. We avoided the stress of visiting both sides of the family and went to the Holiday Parade and followed it with a family movie matinee (we were the only three in the theater) and an afternoon nap. May be the best Thanksgiving we had since being married because there were no fights!

• We have another tradition on my side of the family that we have been doing for several years now. I don't know who's idea it was but I think it is brilliant. My dad, brother, brother-in-law and I meet in the morning the day or two after Thanksgiving and help each other string up our Christmas lights followed by a leftover feast at Mimi's.

• Although I like white lights on the house, this year we are going green. The new LED lights cost three-times as much but they supposedly use much less electricity. In addition, they are more durable, so we may be able to use them more than one year and they are about 10x as bright. The traditional white lights look like yellow next to them.

• Watch later this week for my Top Ten List of Holiday Movies. I don't know what makes me an authority of the subject but, honestly, what makes anyone else an expert either?

• I noticed on Yahoo that today is World AIDS Day. Remember when we new very little about AIDS and it was all over the news? Now that we have been convinced that it is not a real threat to the average American we rarely think about it but it is still killing millions of people in the third-world.

• Those of you that follow my blog know that I was planning on sharing my post, From the Bottom of My Heart, at a special Thanksgiving service at church. I wasn't sure how I felt about opening up in front of all of those people but I am glad I did and I hope others got as much out of hearing my story as I got out of sharing it.

• Our pastor printed and handed out copies of my blog post on Sunday so my secret may be out and members of NC3 may be regular readers now. If you are... Welcome. I will have to be sure to keep it clean.

• Weighed in today at 186!

• Happy Birthday Asher! Just in case she ever checks in on the blog. I doubt it though since she is a big-shot college student.

• The one year mark of my stroke came and went without much fanfare. I have tried to write about it several times but just can't find the time to gather all of my thoughts into something worthwhile. I will try to get something done on it this week but here is the story summed up in a quick note. Good news: Remarkable recovery of close to 100% and I am probably in the best shape in the last 20-years. Bad news: No one cares to hear that I had a major brain injury except insurance companies and since it has been a year, I promised MLW that I would stop using it as an excuse for my incompetence. I guess I will have to go back to blaming my incompetence on being a male.

• Although many are tired about hearing my story, I am still on a mission to tell everyone I can reach about the risks involved in chiropractic treatment. If you or a loved one put your well-being in the hands of a chiropractor, you must check out my Squidoo lens Sroke-Chiropractor.

Buy T-shirts. Peace.

 

I'm Not Easy... but I'm Cheap

Today I sat in on a presentation about how the company I work for is "going green" with a more eco-friendly policy. Besides saving the earth's valuable resources, the new policy will reduce our energy bills and establish us as leading environmentalists in the industry. This, in turn, can produce additional revenue as eco-conscious customers look forward to doing business with companies that share similar beliefs. I know the decision-makers in the organization pretty well, having been associated with them for more than 15-years, so I have no doubt about their passion for "doing the right thing", but I am also sure that the additional revenue makes it a little easier to do it.

This was also my feeling when I bought our new car in 2006. If you would make it easy for me to do, I would get a lot of pleasure from reducing my carbon footprint. The main driving factor for the purchase of a hybrid vehicle, however, was the money I would save in the long run. Due to the steady and drastic increase in fuel costs the "long run" was shortened quite a bit.

I have forgotten most of the details but had it all worked out when I made my eco-friendly decision to buy the Toyota Prius-- the most fuel-efficient, standard hybrid car available at the time. Sure-- the upfront costs were a little higher but with the federal government tax credit the difference between this and similar, non-hybrids was minimal. In fact, I figured out that if I averaged 14,000 miles per year, I would make up the difference in less than 16 months.

Increases in prices at the pump brought that period of time closer to a year and further increases have allowed me to save, most recently, about $30-$35 per week. Through the life of the car, I have averaged almost 48 miles per gallon but on my last full tank, I reached the best milage yet, with 50.1 mpg. There are computer readouts in the dashboard that feed you all kind of information as you are on the road so you can really learn how to drive to get the best mileage. Factors like how you start and stop and if the air-conditioner is running make a huge impact in this automobile.

The Prius, in particular, has become very common on the roads but I still get a couple of questions a week about it. The main thing people ask is what kind of mileage I get and "How long can you go before you have to plug it in again?" I try to explain that it doesn't have a plug or need an electrical outlet, instead it has an gas engine that supplies power to the electronic engine that makes the car go. That's when they lose interest again so I go back to "50 miles per gallon" instead of how the braking system recharges the batteries.

The bottom line remains, if you can make it easy and inexpensive to do-- I will be as green as Kermit but it is, primarily, because I am cheap and, secondarily, worried about the environment. I can't and don't want to speak for others but, I would think, many would feel the same way.

I am happy to wear a sweater in the house in the winter and knock the heat down a few degrees to save a couple of bucks; or go through the trouble of separating my trash and put it recycling bins as long as the waste disposal company doesn't charge me extra to pick it up; and I am pleased (and you would be too) to use these cool canvass totes to haul groceries and such instead of paper or plastic, but ask me to spend too much time, money or effort and honestly I am going to conveniently forget about Mother Earth, most of the time.

I feel bad that I can't be more of a tree-hugger after seeing all of the evidence that we are destroying our planet in the presentation today. As a father now, one statement in particular, really hit home: We did not inherit the Earth from our parents... we borrow it from our children.

When you look at it in that perspective-- I figure, with as much as I will spend on my kids over a lifetime, I can afford to take a little credit out on their Earth. In addition, I know my kids, and probably their whole generation are going to be much, much smarter than me. Let them come up with a way to save the world-- I'm too old to make too much more of contribution than I already am in my little electric car.

Buy Tote Bags. Peace.