Green/sustainability issues.  “Our children and grandchildren.” No.  Maybe if you are 80+ but for the rest of us it impacts us NOW, SOON, in our lifetimes.

But I’m posting this under inspiration, so my point is analyze yourself, and try to be a better person.  Don’t fall into hate, it’s too easy.

If you work for GM, get out. If you are one of the hourly workers, take the buyout. If you are salaried, leave ASAP. And if you are in a GM town, get out too. Even if you and all your family don’t work for GM, if they go down, your town is going down. (This applies to smaller cities where GM is the best/only option for people, not bigger cities where there are non-automotive options.) It might suck royally and be really really hard, but you will be in better shape than the people who hang onto the sinking ship and have to move on in a year or two (or five or whatever). You will be ahead of the curve.  Do it!

Source for Mr. Lutz’s remarkably stupid comment. 

I am working on several projects (free time) that I’m really excited about.  As they take shape, I will post more about them here.  My current favorite?  A video series (youtube) about “immigrants” to Columbus, including people from many different places.  Somalia, Mexico, Orlando, Miami, Wisconsin, wherever.  Basically people who have lived elsewhere, and and least temporarily, if not permanently, have chosen Columbus. 

Back in the late 1990′s I tried my hand at video (mini movies) and the camcorders were very bulky (clearly I was on a budget) and the editing software was so slow.  Compare dial-up to a fast T1 connection, it was like that.  So I’m excited about returning to video, but now with more lightweight eqpt, and of course the software is better/faster.

Apparently rickets is back.  Rickets sounds vaguely familiar, like some sort of British tea spoon or a dance your great-grandma would do, but no.  It’s not a fashion thing either, as in “rickets, it’s this spring’s hottest muumuu.”  Nope.  It’s a frigging disease.  Rickets!  R-i-c-k-e-t-s.

Rickets is apparently the “soft-bone scourge of the 19th century.”  It’s casued by too little exercise, too little milk, and not enough sunshine.  Wow.  Not exactly things that are hard to get, or find.  Vitamin D was added to milk (who knows when) to help prevent rickets.  Some of today’s doctors don’t even know it when they see it, because they never were taught about it because people figure in 2007 in the U.S. of A. there wouldn’t be rickets.  Lordy.

The bad news?

This potentially is a time bomb, says Dr. Laura Tosi, bone health chief at Children’s National Medical Center in Washington.

Excellent!  Really!  As if rickets didn’t sound scary enough, imagine a rickets time bomb!  But there is good news.

… the once-energetic child had quit running because his bones ached like an old man’s.  Fortunately, rickets caught early is easily cured with infusions of vitamin D and calcium.

Read the source article: http://www.columbusdispatch.com/live/content/health/stories/2007/11/27/ap_bones_1127.ART_ART_11-27-07_A12_CE8JISP.html?sid=101

While I agree with his quality over quantity principle, I think that it is good practice to force yourself to write sometimes.  If you have lots of ideas (whatever the point of your site is) then forcing yourself to write every day or every week helps to finish those posts.

Of course, November isn’t over yet, but I wish I had heard about these earlier.  I have another site (“blog”) which I update M-F, so adding 2 weekend posts would not have been too much of a stretch.  And I keep meaning to write some good novels.  I have all kinds of ideas, and the whole group-thing/peer pressure motivation of these events would help.

Typically Thanksgiving kicks off the “holiday season” where we focus on friends and family and being nice, but also buying lots of crap we usually don’t need.  Instead of waiting until New Year’s for resolutions, I’m feeling kind of inspired this Thanksgiving.  (See my last post.)  With that in mind, I liked Lisa’s manifesto, here are a few quotes from it.

“Cake day became the highlight of my job.  If I missed cake day, I was actually disappointed the next day.  I was sad about missing grocery store cake… I wasn’t healthy, I had all sorts of tummy issues, I couldn’t eat, I was an anxious wreck, and I felt I could not survive another minute under the florescent lights in our office, I applied for a promotion and I didn’t get it.  It was time for a change.

“I had a moment of crisis – I started studying for the LSAT, I looked into going back to school for my teaching certification, and then it hit me.  I was trying to do all these things to make other people happy, so I could quit my job in a frenzy and say “see?  I’m am smart!  I’m going to law school!”  (I never said I was mature.)  I was purposefully delaying my writing career out of fear.  I retired to my first job, restaurant work.  For about the same amount of money.  Of course, there’s no 401K, but there is a 30 hour work week.  And good food.  And witty banter.  And the only stress melts away the moment I leave the building.

“…Why did I tell you all of this?  Because in my last year at Giant Clothing Retailer, I made a New Year’s resolution to start writing.  Some people decry resolutions, but I think they’re great.  People have celebrated their various New Years by ritualizing regrowth, renewal, etc. for thousands of years, and there must be a reason.  It’s a good time to take stock and analyze our paths.  In the past I have made resolutions to not eat fast food for a year, to quit smoking, and to have some writing published.  I have kept all of those, even if some of them took longer than a year to accomplish.  I’m just saying if you have a dream you’ve been putting off, it might be the right time to re-investigate it.