BloggingThis

I knew I was in relatively poor shape, fitness-wise, but never realized it was this bad.  The other night I jumped on the treadmill for a run.  I was alarmed to learn after reviewing my stats that I had just ran my first twelve minute mile.  Back when I was in high school (we’ll call that the old days) I ran a sub six minute mile.

 I took another stab at it tonight.  This time it was better, if only a little.  I ran a 9:22 mile.  My time was better, but it felt like knives were being inserted into my lungs.  I’m going to see if I can improve on this little by little until I get to a reasonable time/speed.  I hope that after few attempts, my cardio respiratory stamina will improve and allow me to pick up the pace.

– steve

Get out of the kitchen!

– steve

Today is earth day.  The radio is all “Al Gore this…” and “carbon footprint that….” so I’m all “what’s a carbon footprint?”  I went to this website to calculate my carbon footprint.  I learned that the average person’s carbon footprint is about 17.8 tons of CO₂ per year.  Using the simple calculator I figured mine to be about 10.5 tons of CO₂ per year.  I drive a “standard pickup truck” so I’m a little high in transportation, however I travel infrequently so I am much lower in travel.

I may not be completely green, but I’m not as bad as a could be either.  I’ll call Earth Day a win this year, since this is probably the first time I’ve spent any considerable time thinking about it.  Baby steps.  Now excuse me, I’m off to trade in the truck for a Toyota Prius.

 – steve

P.S. - I do recycle at home, but it seems that no one is talking about that anymore.  That must be all 1990’s.

The man in this photo isn’t me, but I can tell you what happens next.  I drove to work this morning with my tall styro-foam cup of coffee riding on the toolbox of my truck.  It didn’t take me too long to notice, but by the time I did it was too late.  The cup was on its side rolling around in the wind.  There are now streaks of coffee running down the side of the truck bed - cream and sugar included.  Nice.  I had to drink crumby work coffee today.  It’s the worst.

– steve

Photo Credit:  Thomas Hawk @ Flickr.

I saw a show about the Dugger family on the Discovery Health channel last night.  This family has seventeen children.  Can you imagine?  Just think about the enormity of that size family.  Their family’s tax stimulus payment this year will be something like this:

$1,200 - per married couple

$300 - per child under 17 years old (15 Duggers qualify I think, 2 are older)

Totaling $5,700.00 in economic stimulus for that one family.

This amount probably covers only a couple of trips to the grocery store for this crew.  To think I can get overwhelmed with just three kids sometimes.  Just something to reflect on.

– steve