Let me get this straight...

I've been watching the hullabaloo over bottled water gain momentum over the last month or so, and I understand some of the concern. After all, here in the US, we have pretty reliable sources of potable water in most areas. Those who chose to live "off grid," and away from governmentally arranged water lines obviously still have to bring in their own potable water. But otherwise, most of us have water that's safe to drink coming out of every tap in our homes, presumably obviating the need for bottled stuff. I have, from time to time, been able to drink this water; most notably, when I lived in Chicago, I found the city water, once filtered by a simple Brita pitcher to remove the chlorine nastiness, to be plenty agreeable. But for most of my life, I've lived in Florida, and with very good reason, I've pretty much invariably drunk bottled water. I use tap water when cooking, or when making coffee, tea, or drink mixes, but the water down here, consumed alone, just tastes awful, and my Brita pitcher did not have the strength to remove that nastiness.

I did, when I owned a house, have a reverse osmosis filter installed under my sink. This REALLY spoiled me as regards the taste of my water. Over time, however, I've readjusted to the somewhat-mineralized taste of bottled waters again. Now, however, folks like me who prefer our water to taste like water (that is, to be tasteless, as pure water HAS NO FLAVOR) are being demonized. It costs more than gasoline, I've heard (true, perhaps, for the 12-oz bottles of Dasani to which my mother is partial, but I go for the 69-cent gallons of the local supermarket brand. Don't think I've ever filled my gas tank THAT cheap). For folks who have more dollars than sense to spend their money wantonly, however, has not yet been criminalized, to my knowledge (though whenever I encounter a Hummer or a redneck truck, I do tend to wish it would be). The bottles, folks say, are going to the landfill (I recycle mine whenever it's an option). Moreover, the creation of the bottles, the other packaging, and most notably the transportation, all cause mass expenditure of fossil fuels, contributing to global warming. These are the things that environmentalists seem to be screaming about most loudly. OK, they DO have a point. BUT.

Where have they been for the last twenty or so years? Am I missing something, or has not the soda bottling industry been culpable of all of these same sins for much, much longer, and on a scale as great or greater? More importantly, their product contributes absolutely nothing to the health of the nation; quite the opposite, it's been repeatedly proven a contributing factor to diseases such as obesity and tooth decay (and if groups such as the FDA ever get out of bed with the chemical lobby, I daresay substances such as aspartame and sucralose will eventually be shown to be even more detrimental). Yet who is screaming about their use of plastics, and the massive packaging and distribution network in place that pumps gazillions of tons of CO2 into the air annually? I hear nary a peep.

So let me get this straight; those of us who want to rot our teeth and bodies with glorified sugar water are A-OK, but those of us who prefer to go the healthier route of consuming purified water from the same sort of distribution system are evil? There's some great "liberal media bias" if ever I've encountered it...

Margo? Is that you?

Holy cow! So good to hear from you! Sounds like you're having a bit of a sea change! I am sitting in a Krystal restaurant near the Georgia border (just started a two week vaca) so I will keep this brief, but I hope to chat with you more extensively once I return home to my reliable internet connection. I would love to hear all about what's happening with you these days! Since you posted anonymously, I didn't get a current email for you, but hopefully you'll check back here. :)

Take care till I get back,
Michelle

A Very brief post, for a very brief thought

Something occurred to me today as I was scouring the web for information on ghost towns to visit on my next trip. The main ghost town site is a wiki sort of affair (although it, and it's concept, predates wikipedia by several years), with input from ghost town enthusiasts all over. As I was reading through the various submissions, I was trying to balance my horror at the utterly appalling spelling and grammar with the fact that I was getting useful information that I would likely not find elsewhere. Then it dawned on me; "kids today," and all who follow, essentially, all those who are being raised on such content, will probably never have the spelling and grammar skills of the generations before them, as they will not have properly formed notions of what our language is supposed to look like. To them, "burgandy" and "lavendar" are colors. These are two misspellings that I run across with frightening frequency, but trust me, it doesn't come close to ending there. I wonder, if I had taken in sufficient quantities of misspellings and grammatical errors from the web, rather than the professionally written and edited book content that comprised the majority of my reading during my formative years, would I have wound up with the skillset I have? It seems unlikely, to say the least.

I missed the obligatory Valentine's Day post

It seems that everyone in blogdom is required to post something on Valentine's Day (or as soon thereafter as is humanly possible), detailing how they and their significant other spent the day. Given that this is the first time in many years that I've not had a significant other with whom to observe this day, I didn't feel obligated to follow through on this ritual.

Actually, I was a bit apprehensive in the days leading up to the big VD. Even though Jeff was never the type to acknowledge it, and I'll admit that even I have a certain dislike of Hallmark holidays, I do think that any event which reminds you to focus on the wonder and love your SO brings to your life is a good thing. Rather than a mandatory chocolate-and-flowers holiday, if we could just take advantage of it as a day to really cherish one another, it would be a lot more meaningful. Fat chance of the commercial establishment allowing that to happen!

Since I have no SO to cherish these days, though, it was much like any other day. Get up, do whatever I have planned, go to work...yada yada yada. Although I did actually have a lunch "date" on Wednesday -- albeit with one of my married friends. :) So all in all, it was a pretty good day. Just not the super-special type which, as a romantic, I'd love to once again experience.

Oh yeah, and that "go to work" bit...I sorta went and got a job a little over a week ago. Essentially, the book biz was not paying what I had been used to, and the high gas consumption involved in finding paltry numbers of books that may not even sell has grown less and less endearing. I'll still do it on the side, but I'm content to give Jeff most of the territory, most of the time.

My new job is a part-time gig in a medical lab. Not too strenuous, but somewhat mentally engaging in that there's a lot to be learned (and it's all medical terminology, which has always been right up my alley), so it seems to be a pretty good fit. Not to mention the fact that the hours are compatible with the rehearsal times for the upcoming play in which I intend to be involved. Once I get all that going, there won't be time for book scouting anyway, so...c'est la vie.

Wahoo!

Time to start planning my next trip to Europe! :D

Read about the EU's proposed smoking ban.

Monthly update?

I'm not so good about posting to this blog any more, am I? Ah well, here goes nothin' again, I suppose.

I spent a good chunk of this past weekend backpacking in a local state park. This was due in part to the fact that I had a great deal of reading on which to catch up, but even moreso due to the fact that I needed a lot of uninterrupted thinking time. I had a few relationships that required mulling over so that I could put them to bed, or not, as appropriate. One was a pretty easy call, and I had more-or-less already made up my mind about it. Another, I spent a great deal of time thinking about, and finally decided that I could, with an open mind, offer this person one final opportunity to be my friend. Upon my return however, and waking up in the middle of this night, I gave the matter more thought, and decided that that would not be the best course of action. It would leave me open to not only further rejection, but also the possibility of myself becoming nasty or defensive, should he aim for certain nerves. So, despite whatever benefits I might be passing up by allowing this friendship to die, I think it is best to leave this person behind. Naturally I will want for closure, but...let's just say it won't be the first time.


Which brought me to pondering my own tendencies. I've been reading a book on Rational-Emotive Therapy (RET), and actually find very interesting the fact that it essentially takes the core beliefs of several Eastern religions/belief systems, and rolls them neatly into a set of thought patterns and practices that are fairly accessible to the Western mind. Will it help me with the matters at hand? Perhaps, assuming I apply it diligently. Considering these are not new concepts to me, I do have to wonder how much value they will have. At the same time, I do find that most humans, myself included, tend to benefit from re-visiting the same material more than once over the course of their lives. That is, what you take away from a certain teaching at an earlier stage of life may vary widely from what you can take from that very same teaching a few years later. So I am perusing this book in a leisurely fashion (considering I have quite a bit of required reading to do for school that pre-empts it), and trying to see what will come of it.

Essentially, I seek to exorcise a few old demons. People from my past (most of them more distant, temporally, than he with whom I considered reconciling) who, for one reason or another, left my life without a proper goodbye, and thus deprived me of closure. Whether they were lovers or just friends does not seem to matter; only that they left my sphere of influence without so much as a backward glance. Perhaps I am wrong about this; perhaps they, too, think of me, and wish they could rekindle our friendship. Those few whom I have seen fit to contact, however, even if they are welcoming at that first re-connection, do not seem to have it in them to maintain an open line of communication, even half-heartedly. I will be the first to admit that I gravitate primarily toward what I refer to as "low-maintenance friendships." That is, friends who only require occasional (and by occasional I mean as little as once or twice per year) contact to continue considering themselves my friends. This is especially true of my far-flung friends, since actually physically seeing them is generally out of the question. As much as I enjoy visiting friends while traveling, I also hate to put anyone out, and I realize most everyone has "a life" that would easily supercede my visit in importance. But I digress...

Since most of these folks with whom I have previously sought closure do not seem likely to become even low-maintenance friends, I feel I must resume my quest to put a period on the end of our friendships. I don't know if the "new" tool of RET will help me find closure, or (as seems more likely), help me relinquish my need for closure with these people, but I am hopeful.

Now, for the part of this y'all actually want to read about...

I took off Friday afternoon and hiked in to my first camp site with plenty of time before dark to make camp, eat, etc. I didn't bring any stove or food that required cooking on this trip, as it was to be so short, and I really didn't see any reason to add that excess weight to my pack. Slept pretty well there, except for a couple of times during the night when the local coyote population decided to begin yipping away fairly close by. Saturday I hiked the ten miles to my next campsite, and slept pretty well there, with the exception of a couple of hooters...er, owls...that were wont to disturb my slumber. I also had occasion to refill my water supply at that campsite, and was dreading the sulfurous malodor of Floridian well water. Much to my delight, however, my filter did a very good job of removing most of the flavor from the stuff, so my seven-mile hike out on Sunday was not as unpleasant as it could have been. Interestingly, I did not encounter a single human as I walked the hiking trails or while I was in the camps, despite the fact that the ranger with whom I made my reservations made it sound as though they were almost completely full all weekend. I ran across a few people when on the roads open to bike traffic, though, and flushed out more deer, pigs, quail, raccoons and armadillos than I can count. Overall, I traversed a little over 20 miles in just under two days. My knees are complaining to me about it as I type, although I suspect they are more upset about the 40-pound load I carried than the walking itself. Hopefully they will get over it in a day or two, and I can resume my boring old habit of working out at the gym.