Month: December 2006

Safeway hates the environment

I recently purchased a carton of Safeway brand organic milk from the Safeway near my house. After drinking the milk, I rinsed the carton, and then asked my wife whether it could be recycled with the bottles and cans, or if we had to take it with the cardboard. She didn’t know. So I checked the carton.

To my utter shock and dismay, I found no indication that the carton was recyclable at all! This is organic milk, friendly to cows, friendly to the environment, but the carton has to go in the trash? I hoped that I was just missing the mark on the carton that explained how to recycle it.

I went to Safeway online and filled out their contact form.

I purchased a carton of your Safeway brand organic milk, and the carton does not seem to be recycleable. Is this true? While I applaud Safeway’s efforts to provide a greater selection of certified organic foods, I would hope that you would also provide more environmentally friendly packaging.

I’m not allowed to print their response because it might contain Safeway proprietary information. I’m not sure if their little disclaimer would stand up in court, but I don’t really want to get an email from their lawyer. But I can summarize.

Thank you for your email. Sorry it took so long to respond. Thanks for telling us that you can’t recycle the organic milk carton. Your comments are important to us. We’re glad you’re buying our organic products, even though the “O” symbol we use reminds people of Oprah. We’re going to have more organic products in the future, and we hope Oprah isn’t just waiting for us to get further along before she sues us. We’ll file your comments away somewhere, and probably no one will ever read them, even though we told you that they would. Thanks for contributing to the bottom line – some executive just got a million dollar bonus for heading up the organic initiative.

Safeway may or may not have said all those things. I’m not sure. Maybe they should have let me reprint it verbatim to make sure I haven’t misquoted them.

Its nice to be a grown-up

There are a lot of hidden and unexpected benefits to growing up.  Many of the benefits are obvious:  You can drive, you have a real income, you don’t get funny looks from convenience store clerks . . . the list goes on.  But then there are the things you never thought about.

Right up there on that list is that you have the maturity to know that there’s nothing wrong with going to bed really early when you’re tired.  I generally go to bed between 11 and 11:30, since I get up at 6:15.  Last night, the wife and I met some friends out for dinner and got home around 9pm.  We were both pretty tired – It’s been kind of a long, stressful week.  So we went to bed at 9:30.

What a difference.  I feel much better this morning.  Sometimes, you need to get a few extra hours of sleep, and sometimes it isn’t feasible to do that by sleeping in.

I won’t be in bed early tonight because I have to take the cat to the babysitter’s.  Her old owners are watching her while I’m at my in-laws’ for Christmas.  And of course I can’t just drive down there when I get out of work, because traffic is hideous.  So I’ll have to wait until 7:30 or so.  It’s an hour each way to their house, and I can’t imagine I won’t stay for a bit (They’re some of my best friends as well as cat-sitters).

So, I have a few recommendations for all of you:

  1. Go to bed really early every once in a while.
  2. Have friends who barely even notice an extra cat for a week.
  3. Don’t drive on 395 in DC at 5pm.

OMG, Transformers are soooo dark

Next Transformers Trailer Online at Dethroner

It’s dark, but a Transformers movie should (or at least could) be; the franchise is no stranger to dark moments.

I can’t decide whether I really like reading Dethroner or not, but this made me laugh.  I mean, yes, I almost cried when Optimus Prime died.  But, to be fair, I was 8.  Does that justify “the franchise is no stranger to dark moments”?  Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that.

I can’t decide, either, whether I want to see this movie.  I did not see the Dukes of Hazzard movie after loving the series as a kid.  After seeing the cast, I’m pretty sure I made the right call.  But I maybe do want to see Transformers.

Depressing politics

I was writing a lot here about politics before the elections, and since then I’ve written almost nothing.  Partly this is your fault for not holding me to my promise to write a letter to Jim Webb as soon as Novel Writing Month was over.  You all are such slackers.

But partly I just find myself depressed by the state of politics.  I was about to write something about a Wash Post article that celebrates Bush’s first admission that we’re not winning the war in Iraq, but as I was reading it, I lost heart.  I mean, what do I say at this point?  We’ve made a huge mess over there, and we show no signs that we’re close to having it cleaned up.  Bush is going to send more troops, but the article thinks that will take years.  That’s comforting.  Are we really spread so thin that we can’t scrape together a few hundred thousand troops?  What if something else happens that requires our attention?

I realize I don’t really know what I’m talking about here, and that’s part of my frustration.

On a lighter note, I can already see someone on SNL making a joke out of Bush’s “We’re not losing, we’re not winning.”  If I were funnier than I am, I would think of a new word that means something in the middle.  And then I would say it in my best imitation of someone imitating Bush.  Then people would laugh.

Its about time

Techdirt: China To Mandate Standardized Phone Chargers

Apparently South Korea did this last year and I didn’t notice (Sorry, South Korea), but now China is standardizing its phone chargers.  It is absolutely ridiculous now, when each cell phone requires a different charger.  True, people like Radio Shack sell chargers with interchangeable connectors for different phones, but I can’t imagine why these things aren’t standardized.  Even within one manufacturer, they aren’t standard.  So every time I get a new phone, I need a new charger.  And probably two, so I have one in the car and one in the house.  But, no more.  Now all I have to do is buy Chinese phones and make sure I have USB available everywhere.  I wonder how hard it would be to install USB ports in my car?

All you needed was a cat and mouse

Cartoon Pioneer Joe Barbera Mourned – washingtonpost.com

But I felt that in any country you wouldn’t need dialogue to understand the plot. All you needed was a cat and mouse, and everybody knew what was going to happen.

I saw yesterday that he had died, but I didn’t post anything about it because I didn’t know what to say.  I didn’t really know anything about him, but his cartoons were such a big part of everyone’s childhood for so many years.  I wonder about the kids I’ll have eventually – will they appreciate the things I loved when I was little?  I think it would be cool to watch “Tom and Jerry” with my kids.  You know, in between playing outside and doing their homework and going to museums and family game night and all sorts of constructive behavior.

By the way, the article mentions that “Tom and Jerry” won seven Academy Awards.  That’s pretty impressive.

A ton of stuff

No, literally a ton of stuff.  I spent much of yesterday helping my siblings and my mom clean out my dad’s attic.  Now, the attic still looks terrible.  Much improved, but still terrible.  I just got a call from my brother telling me that, after they dropped two bunk beds, a couch, and various other assorted things at the Salvation Army, they still managed to throw away 2320 pounds of trash.  That’s over a ton.  Or, 1052 kg.  That’s a lot of stuff.

My cat is crazy

Anyone who’s met Biscuit would probably tell you she’s crazy, but most of them don’t even know one of her strange little eccentricities.  On the advice of a friend, known by many as a “cat whisperer”, I take Bis’ food away in the morning, and refill her dish in the evening.  This, somehow, makes her less likely to be a noisy pain in the butt at three AM.  Now, Biscuit is always very vocal and excited when dinner time rolls around.  Makes sense.  Most living things enjoy eating.  But Biscuit is similarly excited in the morning when I take away her food and refill her water bowl.  I don’t understand it.