I Just Hurt My Arm Patting Myself On the Back

Yeah, that's right.  I just booked a 4th honeymoon for my wife and I to the beautifully secluded island of Holbox off the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico.  Pursuant to my previously published New Year's "anti-resolutions" for '09, I chose to purchase carbon offsets for my air travel from Dallas to Houston to Merida and back.  It's my little way of reducing blatant energy wasters from my life (well not eliminating, but at least making up for them in my treehugging capitalist kind of way).

In case any of you heathens don't believe me, here's the confirmation from TerraPass, the company that arranges for the carbon offsets through the Expedia.com web site:

Getting Fat Off The Land

This post it a bit of a follow up to my New Year's Anti-Resolution. First let me begin by saying that I am a follower of the Dude philosophy. I can sit on my ass, take elevators up one floor, and eat fast food with the best of them.  I know these things are bad for me, but I continue to do them. With all this green on the brain, I've had a bit of a personal revelation. It has really sunk in that not only are these lazy habits bad for me, but they are bad for the environment. 

Our society has recoded the word "lazy" into the more palatable word "convenient."  It is not that I am lazy that makes me drive five minutes to a store two blocks away rather than walk, it is that it is more convenient.  We rationalize such behavior by arguing that we are just too busy to do things the slower way.  Meanwhile we waste our precious and limited time by watching an average of 4 hours of television per day. All the while we are getting more Jabba the Hut like, creating more waste, and depleting the earth's natural resources. Burning dirty fossil fuels to power our elevators, escalators, and moving sidewalks.  This realization and addition to my personal shame has truly motivated me to stop being so convenient. I just hope it sticks.

In closing, economists should coin a new industry term; the Lazy Industry. This would include elevators going into 5 story buildings, moving sidewalks, escalators, fast food restaurants, and cities that build endless stretches of highway while being completely devoid of bike routes. What else should be included in the Lazy Industry?

Note: Most of the pictures above came from public Flickr accounts, but I was too lazy to write down the creators' names. Please email us if you want them removed.

New Year's Anti-Resolutions

Matthew May's blog, Elegant Solutions, is one of my favorites.  He came from the Toyota world, so he offers an insider's view of Toyota's elegant mind.  Yesterday he presented a different approach to creating New Year's resolutions:  "2009:  Don't Just Do Something."

Instead of saying what you will do or what you will add to your life, you say what you will not do or what you will delete from your life.  On that note, here are my New Year's "anti-resolutions":

1. I will eliminate blatant energy wasters from my daily life.  Living in Dallas, it will be hard to reduce my fuel usage, but I'm going to carpool more and drive the Honda Civic (35-40 mpg) more than the Toyota FJ Cruiser (18 mpg).  Also, instead of flying to Europe for vacation, we're gonna stay close (North America at least).  All incandescent light bulbs are already gone or will be gone soon.  Baby steps, but they will reduce my carbon footprint.
2. I will eliminate excessive TV & movie watching.  This past year I got fiber optic cable TV for the first time, and I was hooked.  The picture quality was so amazing and choices were so abundant that I watched a lot of everything.  It was fun while it lasted, but it's unsustainable as it's a huge time-waster.  With the start of my graduate studies and blogging, there's just no time for wasteful activities anymore.
3. I will eliminate disgusting food from my diet.  I love to eat.  My ever-expanding waistline is evidence of that.  I'll never be one for eating like a bird and I shudder at the thought of being a vegetarian.  But, I certainly would not miss all the disgusting food that I eat.  I don't need McDonald's breakfast, frozen food, fried food, anything covered in cheese and/or butter, or any processed "stuff" from the Super Wal-Mart.  I would actually like to live past 30.

Well, that's it.  I was tempted to add other items to the list, but in the elegant spirit of Mr. May's blog, I will keep to the top three.  Do you think they're achievable?  If you had to choose three things to eliminate from your life in '09, what would they be?

Happy New Year!