Some New Pictures

Wyoming Service

We stopped in a gas station in some small town in Wyoming to get gas. I walked up to the counter with a big bag of sunflower seeds and a gatorade. I intended to drink the gatorade and used the empty bottle to spit seed shells into. Instead the lady at the counter asked me if I would like a cup for my seeds. Of course I said yes and I thanked her and told her that that was really good service. She said “Only in Wyoming!”

Montana Boat Ride

We are in Seeley Lake, Montana for Mandy’s cousin’s wedding. Caleb had his first boat ride.      

Colorado Post Can Wait

If you want to see how Colorado is going read Mandy’s blog. Here is the link.

http://web.me.com/mandygibson

I have a baseball post. I was talking to a friend of mine before the move and he told me that he hated the St. Louis Cardinals. I have always liked the Cardinals and rooted for them in most situations. I started thinking about this and realized that there are about 6 or 7 teams that I will root for if I happen to catch them on TV. I am leaving out the Astros and the Rockies since I have some hometown bias for them. Here are the teams I root for in this general order.

Red Sox, Cardinals, Dodgers, Braves, Orioles, Mariners and Tigers. That is really about it. 

I also have some teams that I root against for whatever reason. They are:

Mainly the Mets and the White Sox. I also tend to root against the Cubs, not really badly but a little.

All of the other teams are take or leave.

Anyone else have teams outside of their homes that they really like or dislike?

Fish Tacos

A big thanks to my friend Ryan for ruining all other fish tacos from here on out. Mandy and I both thought that homemade fish tacos would be OK but not as good as ones at a restaurant. Boy were we ever wrong. Thanks Ryan.

Top 5 Video Games

Mandy and I were talking about our all time top 5 video games (our favorites, not the best).

Mine are (in no particular order):

1. Super Mario Brothers (NES)  less than 5 minutes, I have witnesses

2. Mario Kart (Wii) Mandy and I are kind of obsessed 

3. Legend of Zelda (NES) the first game (and really only one) that I played for more than two consecutive days with minimal breaks

4. Contra (NES) updownupdownleftrightleftrightstart

5. Q-Bert (ATARI) I had to include an atari game

 

As you can see I don’t really like game systems with a million buttons, a joystick, a wheel or a two button controller are about my limit.

 

Anyone else have a list?

Green Communities

I just came across an interesting idea. Going Green is most effectivley carried out at a community level. An individual is too small to make much difference. Yes you should be greener individually but that does not get the job done. The nation and state have a role to play, but they are too big and have too much else going on to be the main force. Each community that does its part for the earth is really the key. A community organizes hundreds and even thousands of people to a cause that is not abstract at the community level. “Look at our river over there. It is pretty gross. We should do something about that.” “Hey, why doesn’t my town recycle?” You get the idea. Communities are big enough to make real change and small enough that an individuals voice can still be heard.

Another great benefit of community action is that it molds the next generation. Kids don’t really care if we choose one lightbulb or another or if Congress passes a Clean Water Act. They do see their parents and neighbors and teachers doing something positive in their community and it makes a huge impact on them.

Parity in Baseball

I was listening to sports radio last night and they wee talking about parity in various sports. This seems to be really important to people. They want to think that everyone has a reasonable chance to win year in and year out. Football has been making this argument for years. The NFL has the most parity among the major sports. Baseball has always gotten a kind a bad rap in this area. I thought to myself that baseball has had a lot of different winners in the last few years. Maybe marketing of teams and players has more to do with the idea of baseball being dominated by a few teams than reality. Here are the numbers for the past ten years.

Baseball has 30 teams – 24 have made the playoffs in the past ten years. The only teams not to make it to the playoffs are the Blue Jays, Orioles, Pirates, Royals, Reds and Nationals.  The Blue Jays have been good but play in the same division as the Yankees and Red Sox. In any other division they probably would have made at least one playoff appearance. The rest of the teams are in various states of disarray.

Another interesting fact is that exactly half of the teams have made at least one World Series appearance over the last ten years. This is due in large part to the wild card system which I think has improved baseball.

Lastly 8 different teams have won the World Series in the past ten years. The only two repeats are the Yankees (99, 00) and the Red Sox (04, 07).

I think that this qualifies as parity to me. I need to go back and check against football to see how it compares.

Pikes Peak Library District

I think that I am going to like the Pikes Peak Library District. They offer sets of books for people who want to do book clubs. One person can check out a set of 12 of the same title for six weeks in order to facilitate a book club. They have a pretty long list of books to choose from. Now I just have to make enough friends to start a book club.

Closing the Loop

I have read something in two places lately that I had never really thought about before. The idea of closing the loop is to buy recycled products. If no one buys recycled products then there is no good that comes from it in the first place. I don’t know why this had never hit  me before. Maybe everyone else already realized this but it was an epiphany to me. I am going to begin to seek out as many recycled products to buy as I can. (Things I need anyway, not going to buy more stuff just because it is recycled). Mandy and I need some more printer paper so I will probably start there. After all, if all anyone wanted to buy was recycled stuff then every business would start producing it. When going green actually makes companies money is when they will begin to see the light.