Hows my little bagger?

Paper or Plastic?
Since moving south I think I can safely say I've only heard this phrase only a small handful of times. Which is amazing since I frequent places that give me this option. As someone who likes to think of himself as an environmentally conscious individual I I like to think I give the best answer. As usual though, this isn't such simple answer to come to.

A little research on the interwebs will tell you, quickly neither is the correct answer. One should choose a reusable canvas bag, screw both paper and plastic. Sadly as most of you know I forget things all the time, including my canvas bags. So what to choose? Let me guide you quickly:

If you have two items or less, proudly tell your clerk, I don't need a bag for those, Look! I've got two able hands and only two things here. Save a bag and please hand my things to me. This goes especially for Best Buy because if you buy just one DVD or CD they throw them into a little bag and won't think twice! You have to catch them early though, I've caught more than a few clerks throwing the (not quite used) bag into their trash can after I said I don't need a bag for this, thus defeating my bag saving effort. This is frustrating.

Sadly at most retail stores you can only have plastic and that is a crying shame because who doesn't like options.

For the pure environmentalist, you should go out and educate yourself on your bag choices from the grocery store. Broken down simply, Paper is the natural one to assume is better choice but it requires trees to be turned to pulp, washing, bleaching, heating, and printing. While a tree is a renewable resource and the bag can be infinitely recycled it is a very energy intensive process to create(or recreate) one. A plastic bag is actually slightly less energy intensive to create, but it comes from a non-renewable resource and takes ages to biodegrade, and can only be recycled once or twice. (don't forget, reusing it is a good thing, but quite different than recycling).

So this naturally leaves the canvas bag, it can be used probably for 200+ shopping visits, they aren't that expensive and you can feel really good about saving some landfill space. Not to mention, many stores are beginning to offer an albeit small discount for using said reusable bag. I believe Target gives you 3 cents off your entire purchase.

My observations while actually using the canvas bag are amazingly striking. Generally when I go to the grocery store or Wal-Mart, I notice clerks stuffing 1-3 items in most plastic bags. AMAZING! counting out cereal boxes, I think the average plastic bag could hold at LEAST 5-7 items. A Paper bag is generally more thoughtfully packed, and when loaded to the max with I would guess up to 12 items. A canvass bag though, present one of those to a clerk and they look at them like puzzles waiting to be solved. I would say every clerk honestly tries to efficiently pack a canvas bag significantly better than I have ever seen with paper and easily for plastic.

So remember kids: Reduce, Reuse, and Recycle. If you keep those three 'R's in mind the next time you are leaving your local supermarket you can easily help our environment.

Hows my little Titan?

Last weekend Laura and I ventured south for a change to visit my sister and brother-in-law (AKA Sister's husband) in the great land of Tennessee. Like the last time I approached the Mason Dixon line I realized, gosh the area around here is so pretty! Aside from the massive culture shock I would love living in this part of the country in the just about every time of year, except spring, summer, and fall, because I'm sure those months are way better just about anywhere else north of there.

Amanda and Andy were gracious hosts, we ate their food dirtied their sheets and I didn't find myself anywhere but my bed in the middle of the nights, so that was good.



Saturday we Adventured out into Tennesse where we Checked out a cotton field (which was legitimately interesting, and fun). Then we headed farther South to visit the Jack Daniel distillery, where they brew all four of Jack Daniel's Whiskey. Boy was that fun. Now that we are becoming pros at visiting places that make alcohol we can appreciate a good tour when we get one and Jack pulled through. (We only have one more wise man left!)



Fun fact that you may or may not know, the distillery is located in a dry county (only in the south right? haha) where during the prohibition era a law was enacted that made it basically impossible to repeal the alcohol prohibition from the county. The best part of any tour is trying a brewer's wares, at Jack Daniel you get a nice glass of their fine Lemonade. Although in fairness you can purchase a souvenir bottle of Jack Daniel's, which happens to have the whiskey inside.

After Jack we headed to a wonderful place to eat called Cahoots. It's an old jail and we got to eat in one of the old graffiti (not the good kind) cells. We had some fried pickles which were AMAZING! I drank a Yuengling, not sure how to say it still but this beer apparently hails from America's oldest brewery. It seems to me that it is a tragedy that they are still producing the same kind of gross recipe to this day.



After that we nailed 5 Geocaches in Lynchburg (none at the distillery surprisingly) and headed back to the Harvey residence to get ready for our Halloween shenanigans.



Halloween was a grand time. We went to a party, rocked out as Mickey and Minnie Mouse and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly. I managed to drop my mouse ears in a toilet, which was a little gross, but it was ok, I didn't pee yet. We saw lots of really great costumes including a sheriff, cavewoman, the new mad hatter, some queen woman, scary dead people, the progressive girl, a troll doll, a scary old lady and a few superhero looking people I couldn't place.





My Mickey Mouse costume was sexy to say the least. I wore all spandexy things and some itty bitty red shorts over it all, with a tail and ears. The shorts and tail was my Dad's from I'm pretty sure before I was born, when shorts that short may have been fashionable. Laura ever heard one girl exclaim I was wearing a speedo. which was not true although that might have been even better. My outfit was obnoxiously out of my comfort zone, but I still had a grand time. My Minnie mouse was cute as a button.


Laura lost her dots EVERYWHERE. We found them all over during the next few days. It really was amazing that we found dots in the weirdest places.

Hows my little 30's Husband?

Now that I'm a husband I can take worthless online quizzes that tell me the quality of my husband-ness.

Here is a good one:

8 As a 1930s husband, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

I scored pretty well, eh?