Now that I'm home for Mexico and have had two whole days to loaf around my house, I have come up with fresh blogging ideas. Yay! First I'm sharing with you two things I recently discovered that kind of pushed my buttons.
1) When I order a Lite Latte at Dunkin Donuts, it bothers me that they ask me if I want whipped cream. I realize that they are just being polite and offering me the very American "choices." I'm ordering a Lite Latte. Obviously I want to save myself fat and calories. I have the will power. But then, they have to ask, "Would you like whipped cream on that?" And all my will power? It just fades away. "Yes! And while you're at it, can you add a side of fried lard and roll me out to my car?"
2) There is a Cheerios ad that shows the grandfather talking to his grandsons about tests and the grandfather is saying he has a test that morning that he hopes to score a 190 on. The grandson, of course, is astonished and says "oh you must be smart grandpa" or some such thing. The grandfather is obviously talking about a cholesterol test he's about to leave to have. While he's eating cheerios. This occurred to me as I was on my way out the door to my own cholesterol test yesterday morning. You can't eat before a cholesterol test! I wonder how many people walk into their cholesterol tests each day, puffed up with pride that they ate their Cheerios to get their cholesterol into the absolute highest range it can possibly be in without being considered unhealthy (because that's what I aim for all the time, I just want to squeak by with a pass, no doing better then average for me!), only to be told that they have to come back tomorrow. Thanks Cheerios!
Friday, August 31, 2007
Sunday, August 12, 2007
The Philadelphia Story: A Day of Apartment Hunting
On Wednesday, my future roommate Kim and I set out to begin the research for our planned November exodus to the City of Brotherly Love. I finish my nursing program on October 31st so our goal is to move to Philly sometime around then. While we have been planning this for many months, no real actual progress has been made on the plans so on Wednesday, the second hottest day of the summer or some such thing, the research kicked off in high gear.
We spent most of Tuesday night researching apartments on Craigslist. But not directly on Craigslist. No no. We had done just enough research to discover the fabulous hybrid of HousingMaps. With HousingMaps, you get a blend of Craigslist and GoogleMaps with fabulous searching features. Simply pick your city and price range and off you go, or click on show filters for some more great tools like number of rooms. After investigating, we had a list of 20 or so apartments that interested us. Next came phase two, or the part where we plotted them on GoogleMaps using the MyMaps feature and e-mailed listings that only had e-mail addresses for information on how we could see the apartments. After about four hours of research we went to bed, only to wake up the next morning and call all the people on the list to make appointments. To make a long story short, we ended up with 6 appointment to see 7 apartments.
We saw everything from tiny, dirty apartments to spacious townhouses with basements and yards. We looked everywhere from center city to scary ghetto South Philly. The results were kind of strange. The price range? $1450-1695. It didn't seem to matter where the apartment was or what sort of features it was offering. That's just the standard price for a two bedroom. In fact, the pricest apartment was the one in scary ghetto South Philly. One apartment we looked at had a bedroom so small you could barely close the door with a twin bed in it. For only $50 dollars more you got an apartment 5 blocks away with better location, skylights, a parking spot in the private attached garage, and a roof deck. No, I don't get it either. For a $100 more you could get a spacious 4th floor walk-up with more closets then I have ever seen in an apartment in Society Hill in a historic 18th century brownstone with what looked like the original floors. Oh just thinking about the amount of charm hurts me a little bit inside. Needless to say, I was distraught that we could not immediately make a deposit on it. In fact I moaned about this very fact for something like 45 minutes. Everytime I would whine, Kim would start to list all of its wonderful features dreamily. It was not a good cycle.
So after sweating it out on the streets, we realized that our prospects look good, if not a little more expensive then I was hoping for. But I guess it's worth it to live in right in the heart of such a great city. Now that we have some info, we're suspending the hunt until such a time when we can actually take the next apartment we fall in love with. Which is probably wise because I don't think I could stand to loose another 18th century fourth floor walkup with central air, no matter how bad the parking is.
We spent most of Tuesday night researching apartments on Craigslist. But not directly on Craigslist. No no. We had done just enough research to discover the fabulous hybrid of HousingMaps. With HousingMaps, you get a blend of Craigslist and GoogleMaps with fabulous searching features. Simply pick your city and price range and off you go, or click on show filters for some more great tools like number of rooms. After investigating, we had a list of 20 or so apartments that interested us. Next came phase two, or the part where we plotted them on GoogleMaps using the MyMaps feature and e-mailed listings that only had e-mail addresses for information on how we could see the apartments. After about four hours of research we went to bed, only to wake up the next morning and call all the people on the list to make appointments. To make a long story short, we ended up with 6 appointment to see 7 apartments.
We saw everything from tiny, dirty apartments to spacious townhouses with basements and yards. We looked everywhere from center city to scary ghetto South Philly. The results were kind of strange. The price range? $1450-1695. It didn't seem to matter where the apartment was or what sort of features it was offering. That's just the standard price for a two bedroom. In fact, the pricest apartment was the one in scary ghetto South Philly. One apartment we looked at had a bedroom so small you could barely close the door with a twin bed in it. For only $50 dollars more you got an apartment 5 blocks away with better location, skylights, a parking spot in the private attached garage, and a roof deck. No, I don't get it either. For a $100 more you could get a spacious 4th floor walk-up with more closets then I have ever seen in an apartment in Society Hill in a historic 18th century brownstone with what looked like the original floors. Oh just thinking about the amount of charm hurts me a little bit inside. Needless to say, I was distraught that we could not immediately make a deposit on it. In fact I moaned about this very fact for something like 45 minutes. Everytime I would whine, Kim would start to list all of its wonderful features dreamily. It was not a good cycle.
So after sweating it out on the streets, we realized that our prospects look good, if not a little more expensive then I was hoping for. But I guess it's worth it to live in right in the heart of such a great city. Now that we have some info, we're suspending the hunt until such a time when we can actually take the next apartment we fall in love with. Which is probably wise because I don't think I could stand to loose another 18th century fourth floor walkup with central air, no matter how bad the parking is.
Saturday, August 11, 2007
Hybrids vs. Hummers? Should I Even Be Asking This?
Well it seems that I have once again taken a blogging hiatus. My apologies. Nursing school sometimes gets the better of me. But I have one full month of freedom! So before I head off to a wonderful, relaxing vacation in Mexico, I thought I'd leave you with something to read. After my parents returned from a rather ill-fated trip to Colorado (an elk ran into my dad's truck, no joke), my dad dropped an interesting piece of information in my lap. I was on some environmental tirade when my father grinned and said, "oh yeah? did you know that hybrids are worse for the environment then hummers?" I immediately balked at this statement, shook my head, and denied it all. But I agreed to look it up, and so now you get to hear about the results.
As usual, the details are sketchy. The issue comes in in how hybrid cars are made. One article summed it up something like this. The batteries that power the cars are made from nickel. The nickel is mined in Canada (Eh?). According to one article I read, the area around the mine is so dead that NASA tests moon rovers there. Which I'm not sure entirely makes sense, but we'll go with it. Once mined the nickel is shipped to Europe, then China, then Japan, and then finally back to the US as a Prius battery. So far, this is not biding well for the Prius. One study found that the Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over its lifetime of 100,000 miles. The Hummer costs only $1.95 per mile and is expected to last for 300,000 miles. Yes, I hear the crickets chirping too. Can we just take a moment to be dumb-founded?
Well fortunately the story doesn't end there. As I said, the details of the article are sketchy, biased, and some claim just plain wrong. Check out the reply post here for a discussion of some of the issues. Some argue that the environmental impact of producing the car is offset by the savings in gas usage. Others claim that if you use this logic, it makes much more sense to buy a cheap, fuel-efficient car and make some modifications to make it even more fuel efficient. And what about biodiesel? One also must consider the fact that Toyota has a recycling program in place for their batteries. Tree-hugger has another great sample of the discussion surrounding this issue.
I think the bottom line here is that maybe hybrid cars aren't everything we've dreamed they could be. The reality of the matter is that hybrids aren't making as big an impact as we'd like to think they are. Should we all go out and buy Hummers? No. Could hybrids be distracting us from the bigger issue at hand? Maybe. Are they preventing us from popularizing and using better alternatives? Probably. Do I still want one? ...Yes. Especially in that light sagey/seafoam green.
As usual, the details are sketchy. The issue comes in in how hybrid cars are made. One article summed it up something like this. The batteries that power the cars are made from nickel. The nickel is mined in Canada (Eh?). According to one article I read, the area around the mine is so dead that NASA tests moon rovers there. Which I'm not sure entirely makes sense, but we'll go with it. Once mined the nickel is shipped to Europe, then China, then Japan, and then finally back to the US as a Prius battery. So far, this is not biding well for the Prius. One study found that the Prius costs an average of $3.25 per mile driven over its lifetime of 100,000 miles. The Hummer costs only $1.95 per mile and is expected to last for 300,000 miles. Yes, I hear the crickets chirping too. Can we just take a moment to be dumb-founded?
Well fortunately the story doesn't end there. As I said, the details of the article are sketchy, biased, and some claim just plain wrong. Check out the reply post here for a discussion of some of the issues. Some argue that the environmental impact of producing the car is offset by the savings in gas usage. Others claim that if you use this logic, it makes much more sense to buy a cheap, fuel-efficient car and make some modifications to make it even more fuel efficient. And what about biodiesel? One also must consider the fact that Toyota has a recycling program in place for their batteries. Tree-hugger has another great sample of the discussion surrounding this issue.
I think the bottom line here is that maybe hybrid cars aren't everything we've dreamed they could be. The reality of the matter is that hybrids aren't making as big an impact as we'd like to think they are. Should we all go out and buy Hummers? No. Could hybrids be distracting us from the bigger issue at hand? Maybe. Are they preventing us from popularizing and using better alternatives? Probably. Do I still want one? ...Yes. Especially in that light sagey/seafoam green.
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