Illegal Eating

Recently, a smoking ban was passed where I live which bans people from smoking in public places. The idea behind this is that smoking is clearly bad for you and anyone who is smoking around someone else is forcing that person to share in their bad habit whether they want to or not. I can totally understand the need for this and as a nonsmoker I applaud society for making this a reality.

So if you ask most nonsmokers why they don't smoke, I'd be willing to bet a lot of them will tell you all about the unhealthy risks involved, not the least of which is lung cancer. They might tell you that it just seems silly to partake in that particular "pleasure" because the risks and illnesses are so well documented. The ironic thing is that that same person might take you out to eat at McDonald's later that day.

The effects of eating nothing but junk food and trans fat and processed foods is just as documented and just as deadly. More so, if you consider that heart disease is above lung cancer, I believe, on the list of top causes of death in America.

Now it's clearly easy for me to stand on my soapbox right now because I'm all about health and nutrition these days as my regular readers know, but I won't claim to be a perfect eater by any stretch of the imagination. I know that there are others who could look at my diet and still find all sorts of problems.

My point is, that most people don't look down upon eating junk like they do smoking and I'm not sure why. Sure we all know that it isn't good for you, but whereas most people look with horror at someone who smokes around a baby, hardly any of us think anything about a parent feeding french fries to a toddler. (My kids have had fries plenty of times, but I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't change that)

I'm guessing a junk food eating ban isn't going to be on the public docket anytime soon, but I have to wonder when the perception of healthy versus unhealthy eating is going to change? Will it be ever? Or is it just to hard sometimes to differentiate good food from bad food? Everyone knows that the only safe cigarette is no cigarette but I think nutrition is not quite so obvious for most people. I have already read one book recently that has told me that despite all my diet changes, I'm still not doing the right things for my body.

So anyway, just say no the next time the fast food dealer in your area tries to get you hooked..

New Link

Check out the link on the right side of my page to my other blog if you are interested. That is the space that I use to practice fiction writing. Let me know if you like any of the stories because they are mostly just practice for me unless people tell me that they would like for me to expand on one of them.

Thanks for your input.

Shane

Ice Ice Baby

So we went ice skating yesterday as I alluded to earlier. It ended up being a lot easier than I thought it would be. I didn't fall any and neither did Crystal although neither of us would consider ourselves an expert at this point. We had fun but I think the kids got the worst of the thrills and spills.

One kid was gliding along beside me and the next thing I knew he must have found a phone booth to change in because he was in full superman flight, albeit on the ice. All I can figure is that the cape must have gotten caught in his skates...

The one thing that neither Crystal or I could figure out how to do was to stop properly. Running into the wall pretty much became the choice method as "plowing over people" just seemed a little rude, and I'm personally not all that fond of the superman method.

When we got back to the church I had a bit of breakdown. I have been exceedingly good at watching what I eat for the better part of the last month but they had free pizza and I caved. It had been a long time for me and I didn't hold back much. I'm feeling a little bad about that but I guess one day won't hurt me too much. I just have to be good today as free pizza is again on the horizon for lunch. I'm really hoping for a good body fat test on February 11th to make up for the bad one in January so I want to be extra good.

At least I burned a few calories on the ice. Hopefully we'll be able to take Kylie the next time we go. It would be hard to get her to try it I think but she'd have fun.

Lack Of X

This is a tough weekend for me. Due to our decision to get rid of cable, I'm forced to miss all but 3 hours of the winter X games that are going on this weekend. My only solace is that I will get to see a lot of the snowboarding coverage during those three hours.

This will be the first year since the original winter X that I didn't watch almost every minute of the coverage. I can't complain though, because our decisions to be tougher with our budget have paid some good dividends. God has really blessed us lately, both with a little extra money here and there, to a nice tax return when we were very worried about having to pay this year. Also with the lack of big problems that typically drain our account or add to our credit card woes.

At this point I can see the light at the end of the tunnel as far as correcting some of the financial mistakes we have made in the past. I've definitely learned some lessons that I won't forget in the last few years.

Now all I have to do is not forget to set the VCR to tape the 3 hours of coverage tomorrow that will be on regular tv. I will be ice skating with my wife and the children's department from church tomorrow, so I can feel a funny blog post coming on.

Extra Cash

I'm sure like most of you, I'm always looking for ways to make extra money. One bad idea after another, constantly bombards my head. Unfortunately most of them aren't worth a hoot. I would love to own my own business but most things I can think of are either too hard or not lucrative enough. For instance, a Painting Business would be easy to set up but the work would be really hard. Writing a book could be lucrative, but would take tons of work and luck to ever make happen. Maybe someday I'll figure it out, but for now I'll just keep trying new ideas.

Smart Browsing

At this point you do just about anything on the web that you want to if you know where to look for the right things. I don't have cable anymore but I can legally watch about any tv show that I want now thanks to bit torrent. Have you ever downloaded printable greeting cards before? I did for my wife for her birthday once. Online banking anything you want seems to be available if you know where to look and have the inclination to do it. So look around and see what you can find.

Differences

I'm a Christian but I was raised protestant. There are so many things about other religions, even different versions of Christianity that I don't know. For instance, I know very little about the Catholic way of doing things. What are rosaries even for? At one point I was at a wedding at a Catholic church and many of the rituals seemed very foreign to me. It's just so interesting to me that we could serve the same God in such completely different ways.