Annual being sick sucks post

Well, I have a cold again. I feel slightly better than yesterday but not much. I just have a cold - and no, it's not GT's fault, I'm pretty sure I was sick before the football game, it was just in the incubating stage at that point. So anyway, short and sweet - being sick sucks and we have a organization dinner tonight with members of our board, where I'm pretty sure my husband will know more of them than I do - ironic, eh? Whatevs, at least there will be good food.

Oh yeah, and the Pats are going to kick Eli's ass all the way back to Giants Stadium from AZ!

The Plastic Ocean

Today I read this article about plastic. It is a bit long, but worth the read if you care about your health and the environment. I consider myself among those who are concerned about the planet. Plastic is a material that has many benefits and many harms. The invention of useful plastics has lead to the invention of life-saving medical devices, bulletproof vests, and silly putty. However, it seems that the harms are far outweighing the benefits: we breath toxic gases released by melting plastics during the recycling process, we breathe dust particles containing small bits of plastic, and huge volumes of plastic are polluting the oceans (one area in the Pacific contains a gyre full of debris the size of Texas.) Some food that we ingest (even if it is wild, organic - whatever that means) probably contains some sort of plastic, whether it be the sushi you had at lunch or the shrimp cocktail you had as an appetizer.

This information is disheartening on many levels. Plastic seems to be great since it can be recycled, however, the recycling efficiency levels are still so low, it hardly seems worth it; and the recycling process releases toxic fumes into the atmosphere. Alternatives to plastic are starting to get mass-produced, but some of those materials are made from corn, a crop when grown for food isn't so bad, but if we start to grow it for products other than food, land will become less available, the cost to process it will go up, more soil for other crops will be destroyed, and prices of most products will continue to increase.

I am having my own personal dilemma today. I received an email from the Body Shop informing me of a huge sale they are having. Many shower gels and body lotions are 75% off. This is a great deal. I love the body shop and everything it stands for. My issue is that most of their body gels are only 8 oz. They are on sale for $3 which, considering they are usually $12 is a great deal. Herein lies my problem. I know I can get 24 oz. of St. Ives body wash for $3 at Target. So here we go - one plastic bottle at 24 oz vs. 3 plastic bottles at 8 oz. each. The product inside is fairly similar: natural ingredients, never tested on animals. The one bottle is less plastic that the three bottles and is cheaper. Which of my morals do I go with? Less plastic? Community trade? I would just give up and go back to plain old soap, but every soap box is coated in some sort of waxy coating which probably has some sort of plastic base also. Maybe I should learn to make soap, with all my free time (yeah right).

Finally, I thought it was weird that this article was in the Men's Lifestyle section of MSN. I found it from the msn.com cover page. Shouldn't it be in the overall health section?

New Link

I have added a new link under the links on the right of the screen. It goes to The Breast Cancer Site and when you go there, you click on the big pink box and when you do, sponsors of this page will donate money so that a woman gets a free mammogram who cannot afford it. It's free and only takes a second. Do it every day!

Being sick and wedding video

**WARNING** The first half of this post is whiney but I swear it gets better by the end.

Yuck. I have been sick for the past week and a half. I am starting to get better but now Sean is getting sick which is no good. When your sick, the whole world sucks. I didn't go to work one day, I left early another day due to a coughing fit I had on the phone, your nose gets sore from so many kleenexes and you're usually in a fog most of the time. Like I said yuck. But, soon it's over and you can get back to your regular life.

On a completely different note, we got our wedding video yesterday. IT IS AWESOME!!!! I am so glad we had it done. The woman who did it for us did a great job, she put a great soundtrack to it and used some cool effects. It was great to watch it and see how happy everyone was. It starts with the rehearsal and ends with the reception. I was really amazed that so many people were smiling so often. There are some pretty funny parts too, like I had asked Sean to get the loop for my wrist from my train, and he's searching for it with an expression on his face like, "Really, there's a loop hidden in all these layers?"

So thank you all again for being part of our wonderful day.

Smokers

My friend Scott just wrote a great post about how smoking makes otherwise fantastic, smart, caring, loving people stupid, careless, mean, and selfish. Smoking destroys people's health, and I don't think destroys is a strong enough word. I started to write a response but then decided to post it instead.

Thank you for writing that, but, unfortunately, even if the people in your family who smoke read this (I know at least one of them), they might think about it for a minute, but then forget it. I know this because of years of trying the same thing with my dad. I hate to be such a pessimist, but that is what happens after years of telling someone you love that they are hurting themselves, wasting money and frustrating you to no end. This is not to say that those people won't respect your wishes of not smoking around you or your family, they will, and by doing this they feel they are justified in their disgusting habit. What they don't realize is that they are really eating into the time you have to spend with them and choosing the cigarette over you. This may be harsh, but it's true.

It really has to be up to the smoker to quit. My mom is a great example of this. She finally decided it was right for her to quit. And she hasn't smoked in 3.5 years and I am extremely proud of her for this. That the smoker won't decide to quit based on medical evidence and the pleas of family and friends may be very selfish on the part of the smoker, but there must've been something subliminal in the advertisements in the 60s and 70s for smoking telling people the smoking was as harmless as a fly. It is something I will never understand.

I usually think about the Different Strokes episode when Gary Coleman's character's uncle/some sort of relative has to go have a lung removed because he smoked for years, and the last shot of him is walking out the door to the hospital, lighting up a cigarette. It is just such a foreign concept to me, I can't even begin to comprehend.