Peacefield

"John Adams" finished this week with the seventh and final episode. If you don't have HBO, be sure to rent it when it becomes available. Although I will warn you, the final episode is just a sob-fest.

The last episode ended with this quote, which I can't get out of my head:

"Now, posterity, you will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you make good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in Heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it."

I wonder if he has yet begun to repent...

Happy Earth Day!

Reduce. Reuse. Recycle.

Your planet thanks you!

10 Ways You Can Help the Earth

To Dew or Not do Dew

So in my quest to eliminate just about all enjoyable foods from my diet, I have recently learned (er, accepted) just how evil High Fructose Corn Syrup is. This makes me sad for one main reason: I must forfeit the Dew. I love the Dew. We go way back. Granted, it glows in the dark but that doesn't mean it's inherently bad for you, right?*

I'm not saying bottoms up for normal refined sugars... those have their downsides as well. But HFCS seems to be a little "extra" nasty. Insulin resistance, leptin resistance, kidney and liver malfunction, you name it. Scary stuff.**

What's scarier is how pervasive it is. Check your bread, your ketchup, your bacon, your Quaker bars, etc.. I guarantee you'll see it listed in the ingredients, usually towards the top. (Note: I just checked my box of Triscuits and they are HFCS-free. Whew. That could have gotten ugly.) Why? Cause it's cheap! And given our "Walmart" mentality as a society (individual and industrial), why worry about your long term health when you can save $.08?

Here's the alternative... opt not to buy products with HFCS in the top, say, 10 ingredients. I wonder how hard a hit manufacturers would have to take in demand to switch out one ingredient? Interesting experiment; I think I'll give it a try. Any other takers?

So off to Trader Joe's I shall go to buy alternative cereal, ketchup, bread, etc... to try to get as much of this junk out of my system as possible. We'll see how this goes.... I'll keep you posted.


*OK, this is stretching. Simple logic would lead us to avoid substances that glow or, at the very least, not to purposefully swallow them.

**Citations:
Sugar Coated
The Double Danger of High Fructose Corn Syrup
Does High Fructose Corn Syrup Have to Be in Everything?
(The link above is a publication of Lew Rockwell which is, of course, a pro-Libertarian site. But I don't think that makes their reporting on corn syrup any less valid.)

Improv Everywhere

This group is too cool. Check out their vids. The "Frozen Grand Central" is phenomenal!

Rockin the Capitol!

So my friend Robyn and I left for DC yesterday at 5am. It's now 11:30pm a day later and I'm sitting back at my own computer. That's right kids: 42 hours, 790 miles, 4 Metro rides, and two fantastic days later, it's over.

The Freedom Rally was great. It wasn't an enormous turnout which is good and bad. It's bad because it gives creedence to the haters that want to say, "See no one cares about Ron Paul." Which, if you've met any of his followers, is just an abomination. We love him like mice love cheese.

It was good because there wasn't a huge crowd and I got this phatty picture:

HA! YAY ME! Dr. No Himself!! He also delivered a short albeit riveting speech which if I can figure out how to convert from film to a file, I'll post on here. Wish me luck with that one.

This picture has now claimed the ranking of Coolest Picture of Megan with a Famous Person. The previous (13 consecutive year) holder was this photo, taken in the summer of '95 when The Grind came to Carowinds. When I went to have my picture taken with the lovely Eric Nies... he could not stop himself. Who can blame him, really?

Anyway, so the Freedom Rally was the shiz-nittle bam. We met lots of cool people from around the country, heard lots of cool people speak, and for those of you in NC, met this guy: BJ Lawson. He's running for Congress in NC and he's a really neat guy. Highly educated, very bright and is pretty much on RP's platform. So give him a look. Robyn has decided she wants to run for Congress. That is until I told her how much it will cost. I suppose we should start planning the car washes...

Our shirts said, "I just saved a bunch of money by switching to..." and then RP's mug.

The back said, "Ron Paul Revolution: Change our Fate in 2008!"

Look at this little guy!!!

Need an upper?

This will get your adrenaline pumping!

US National Debt


Have you really thought about who you're voting for?

Something Creepy Under Boat, Andy.

So I was re-organizing some things in my closet tonight because things have just gotten way out of hand up in there. I came across my bag of SCUBA equipment. I got certified to dive three years ago. Ask me how many times I've dove since then. Nill. Not once. I can't even tally up the amount of money that cost because I will be reduced to tears. Don't get me wrong, fully worth it. I had tried to get certified several years before but I wasn't prepared for the mental game of SCUBA diving, not to mention being ill-equipped and easy to go hypothermic in water. I digress.

So trying again years later and succeeding even though parts of it still scare the crap out of me, (do you know they make you take off your mask and breathe underwater? You can't see. You can't hear. And you are to breathe, calmly, while water floods your nose. It utterly feels like you're drowning and I'm not demonstrating my "proclivity for the dramatic" as my friend Brennan would say) was a big achievement.

And what have I done with that achievement? Nothing. Although I will say that dive flash light comes in handy when the power goes out. That thing could light a village in Guam. And the dive bag works well for packing for a week's vacation. I have no idea where I'm going with this, but I had a hair to blog and I felt like it would lead to some enlightenment....

I guess the moral of the story is, do things that scare you. Even if, at the end of your life, all you have to show for it is a picture of you looking totally ninja in a wet suit.

And if you are still puzzling over the title, it was from "Boy Meets World." I used to love Will Friedle. Did you know Topanga got arrested for a DUI recently?