Stuipdest Idea Ever

Uh, change the shape and kids will drink more water? Lame.

http://www.aquapod.com/

Especially in light of recent news awareness about bottled water and it's effect on the environment (and seeing how the US has some of the best tap water in the world), it seems morally reprehensible that companies are marketing bottled water directly to children. Do they really think that a "new orbatstic shape" makes boring old Poland Spring bottle so exciting that kids won't be able to keep their dirty little mitts off of it? Shame on you Nestle.

Now, I'm all about kids drinking more water. At work I see kids drinking sugary crap all the time. But as a society, is this really the best we can do? In college it was encouraged to be environmentally friendly in your drinking habits. Why can't we get the younger generation in those same healthy habits?

Of course, I'm not entirely blameless here. I still drink bottled water myself, though I do try to recycle my water bottles, both personally (I almost always use them more than once, braving toxins from the plastic) and in the bigger picture (NYC recycles!). I should follow the good example of my good friend S, however, and make it a point to carry around a grown-up version of my good ol' enviro-mug.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Pet Peeve

When I open my oven and go to move some food around and the mascara on my eyelashes melt together.

Powered by ScribeFire.

We're gonna make our dreams come true. Doin' it our way

This coming weekend, my husband and I are going where the greats have gone before us (See: Laverne and Shirley, Gene Wilder, Frederick Pabst, Fredrick Miller, Joseph Schiltz and Valentine Blatz!!) and heading to Milwaukee, Wisconsin!

You may ask, "Milwaukee? Why????"

In fact, we get that a lot. (You can picture my very pretty friend and Milwaukee resident K sticking her tongue out at you here for deigning to ask such a question). Firstly and foremostly, we're going to visit the above mentioned K and her husband B (names have been adjusted to initials to protect the innocent). Secondly, we're going because of my husband's love of baseball stadiums. We have sweet tickets to Saturday's game of the Brewers versus the Reds and number 7 clicked off the list.

Thirdly, we're going for the beer.

I have never really liked beer. In college I had a wicked "beer face" that I made whenever I tried to take a little itty bitty sip of beer. My lips would pucker and my eyes would close and my entire countenance was one of unhappiness. However, in the past ten years or so since I first developed my face, I have become much more tolerant towards beer. One might even go so far as to say that I like it.

I attribute this change in tastes to my brief sojourn in Bath, England where the beverage of choice is beer. However, like most of the other women on my trip, I would order pints of British cider. Unlike American cider, which tastes more akin to a malt beverage than a beer; British cider is very dry (which is easily remedied by having your local barkeeper add "black" or black currant syrup-- called a "cider and black" yum!) and resembles beer more than it resembles the apple-y goodness of Woodchuck. While in Bath I fancied myself as something of a cider connoisseur, adjusting my palate so I preferred the sharpness of Blackthorn to the smoothness of Strongbow, and weaning myself off of the currant syrup. By the time I got back to the States and tried to continue my cider obsession there, I found I couldn't. Some people will argue that American beer is inferior to English and Irish beers. I would argue that it is more the cider that can not stand up to the Brits. And so began my slow decent to becoming a beer-drinker.

Once graduated from college and working an entry-level job, this trend strengthened. Back up at my good ol' alma mater, a trip to the bar for an evening of mixed drinks would cost you $6-$10 and get you throughly hammered. A basic Vodka Cranberry would cost a whopping $2 ($2.50 if you were all fancy and wanted Absolute or some such pretension) and be 90% vodka, 10% cranberry. But down in NYC, one single vodka cranberry costs at least $6 and is not nearly as potent, whereas you can buy a domestic beer for a piddling $4! So, beer it is!

Nowadays I tend to order wine or beer instead of standing at the bar perplexed, contemplating exactly what fancy drink I want to order (though my drinks of choice are: Vodka Cranberry with lime juice; Jack and Ginger; Rum and Coke with lime juice; or anything that they can put a cherry in), annoying the barkeeper and all of the friends I am with. I'm still a kind of wussy beer drinker, but I know what I like and what I don't. I don't like the flavor of hops (!?!) so I prefer Lagers to Ales. I don't like dark beers. I will happily sit with my husband and down Miller Lites (sic) in perfect bliss. On fancy occasions I'll go all out and order a Stella or a Harp.
But if on tap I see the siren draw of Blackthorn or Strongbow ciders, I smile in contentment, knowing this is a true Irish pub and I sigh in a blissful way and go back to my roots.

So Milwaukee, we're looking forward to coming. We plan to eat Brats, drink beer and watch baseball like locals...

Give us any chance we'll take it.

Give us any rule, we'll break it.



When I return, I promised K that I would post on the top 10 awesome things about Milwaukee. But in the meantime I have a few other posts up my sleeve...

Powered by ScribeFire.

Ten Awesome Things About Vermont

Warning: I can only think of about 3 awesome things about Vermont offhand. That means that some of these awesome things are going to be stretches, and might not be altogether awesome. Sadly, "Three Awesome Things About Vermont" just doesn't have the same ring to it... They are listed in order of "perhaps not so awesome" (#10)- to "definitely awesome" (#1). So now that you've been properly warned, I give you....

Ten Awesome Things About Vermont


10: There are no billboards in Vermont. I did not really notice this offhand, but this website swears to it, and now that I think back on it, I kind of agree with them!

9: There is great outlet shopping in Vermont, where I got two awesome pairs of pants and a cute pair of shoes.

8: Vermont has interestingly shaped trees (I told you this was going to be a stretch).



7: There aren't too many roads in Vermont, so if you get horribly lost at 10'oclock at night, it's not too hard to figure out where you're supposed to go (not that we would know from personal experience or anything...).

6: Vermont has the Simon Pierce Glass Company where you can visit and watch as guys make wineglasses and say, "Huh, maybe that $50 per glass price tag is kind of reasonable seeing how it takes 3 guys ten minutes a glass...." They are also environmentally friendly, making their own sustainable electricity by dam.

5: Vermont is easily drivable from NYC. This makes it an easy weekend getaway without feeling like we're somewhere we've been fifty million times before.

4: Vermont's off-peak season is summer! Take that all you suckers who wait to see the beautiful fall foliage and great skiing! We got a bed and breakfast to ourselves and lovely weather to go boating, swimming and to sit and relax with a good book and friendly inn-keepers on the front porch!

3: Vermont has fun breweries like Long Trail and Harpoon. We would have liked to have gone to Magic Hat as well, but it was too far away. And might I say that Long Trail has a very good lunch menu with generous sizes, including hot wings.

2: Vermont has beautiful nature! Every so often I would look around and just sigh about how pretty everything was. Yea nature!

1: Vermont has street signs that tell you how far away popular destinations are. It was awesome. We would be ready to keep an eye out for a turn or a road when all of the sudden, there would be a sign announcing the exact destination we were looking for. It was surprisingly like a road-trip business plan that Brianna and I had envisioned during a particularity nerve wracking trip from school to NYC.

The worst thing about Vermont is that things close really early-- we went into Woodstock, VT at 5:30 on a Saturday and the only things open were a coffee/tea shop (which was super cute, but was closing any second) and a restaurant/bar. Luckily, this gave us a good excuse to drink yummy local beer (see awesome thing #3).

Powered by ScribeFire.