reduce, REUSE?, recycle

A few weeks ago, I ran into a gentleman who asked if he could see my to-go coffee cup before I tossed it in the trash. "Of course," I replied.

He pulled the sleeve from the cup, put it in his pocket and then threw the rest of the cup in the trash. "A little pet peeve of mine," he said. "It's against a health ordinance for them (the local coffee place) to put these back into use, so I sneak them back into the tray for them... just a little thing I do."

I didn't think it odd at the time, and I still don't. Here was one man doing what he could do, be it ever so slight, to make the world a better place.

"No problem," I replied.

Fast forward a few weeks and I stepped into the local Latte Land (east side) here on the Country Club Plaza with my frequent drinker card (pictured above) to meet someone for a quick business meeting. I stepped up the counter, made my order and presented the sleeve to the barista, who promptly punch my sleeve... buy 10 get one free, you know.

"Would you like to put this back into your backpack or use it for your order?" she asked.

"What?" I was perplexed at the question so she repeated it. "Use it, please," came my reply.

Part of the purpose of the frequent sleeve is reuse. In fact, it says right on the sleeve, "Be green, save a tree and drink for free!" So, why did this employee even ask whether I wanted to stuff it back into my bag (the premise being that I'd have to use a new one to protect my fingers from the heat of the tea)?

Herein lies the difference between the person in the first story and the person in the second: generation. The first man was an older person, the type of guy that keeps his nuts and bolts in their individual glass jars and labeled in the garage for that rainy day when they might be needed. The second person was a very young American with a throw-away society mentality... instant gratification, assumed entitlement, when you throw something away it just disappears with no impact on the world.

Ummm, no. It doesn't work that way. The choices we make impact the world. So, stuff that reusable sleeve in your pocket or your bag and yank it out the next time you enter a coffee house. Don't worry about whether it's for that particular establishment or not, you're saving them money by not using one of theirs.

10/52: "The Finder" by Colin Harrison

Book #10 = "The Finder" by Colin Harrison, 3.5/5 Stars
Not much in the way of mindfood, but his style of writing is fluid and entertaining... great at giving the visual feel of the people and places in the text. I like that he writes with a more complex vocabulary than most mainstream writers, such as Grisham (who bores me to tears), and I even giggled a few times when he worked the definition of a not-oft-used word into the normal run of character conversation.

BTW, the 10th week of the year ends tomorrow, so I'M ON TRACK!

GOAL: 52 books in 52 weeks!

Book #9 = "Veronika Decides To Die" by Paulo Coelho, 1/5 Stars
Book #8 = "By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept" by Paulo Coelho, 3/5 Stars
Book #7 = "Stiff" by Mary Roach, 2/5 Stars
Book #6 = "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, 1/5 Stars
Book #5 = "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, 3/5 Stars
Book #4 = "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho, 2/5 Stars
Book #3 = "The Good Guy" by Dean Koontz, 3/5 Stars
Book #2 = "My Ishmael" by Dan Quinn, 2/5 Stars
Book #1 = "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars

READ!

A Gorilla Quote To Live By

There are people who believe that books are a sacred entity... it probably stems from the "good book" itself, aka The Bible. Me, on the other hand, I write in my books and dog-ear the pages that inspired me or that have quotes that I want to write in a document that I keep and call "random writings." These writings are some that I've written and some written by others... they are all kinds of strange things.

Anyhow, I was going back through "My Ishmael" today and I'd dog-eared one page with this quote:

“All of you must be teachers, whether you’re lawyers, doctors, stockbrokers, filmmakers, industrialists, world leaders, students, fry cooks, or street cleaners. Nothing less than a world of changed minds is going to save you—and changing minds is something every single one of you can do, no matter who you are or how you’re situated. If you can’t reach a hundred, then reach ten. And if you can’t reach ten, then reach one—because that one may reach a million.”

Yes, you said it Daniel Quinn. I'm in.

UPDATE 3/10: I thought about this post a lot since I wrote it. I asked, "Is this how I live my life? Do I try to change minds?" My answer was a resounding, "YES!" The mind that I most often try to change is my own. I've recently read several books that talk about how people do things because that's they way they're done... it's like cultural groupthink... but I resist the "way things are supposed to be" because I don't see that they are doing anything to make the world a better place. People don't smile at each other as they pass on the sidewalk. People get married because they think that's what they're supposed to do--and when they don't, then something "must be wrong with them." People drop their cigarette butts on the street in plain view, without even trying to hide the blatant littering. We need to change the way we think and take some ownership of our actions. When people come to me with their problems, I try to help them step outside of things and look at the big picture. Is this really the right thing for you to do? It doesn't matter if you've invested years of time into something... dedication doesn't make it worthwhile... what matters is that it is right and it is good. Yet, so many people are unwilling to throw in the towel because they spend too much time looking backward, giving value to wasted time, instead of looking forward to make the most of the time they have left.

I'm done rambling, but this is a good direction for a future column, eh.

KC Public Library, please note that I'm not the one that writes and dog-ears the pages in your books!

Vertical Dash: Suck Air Stair Killer

If you follow me on Twitter (@zamees) then you know that I've been humpin' stairs all over the Plaza to train for the Vertical Dash to seek the cure for Diabetes. I found a parking garage where I can hit the 6th floor button in the elevator and dash up 5 flights to try and catch it before the doors close... then, of course, ride it down and do it all over again.

I didn't have anywhere to actually train 34 flights at a time, which is the distance of the dash. So, I hoped that running those five flights and doing them 7-10 times in a row would provide the over-training needed to find a pace for the 34 flights of the event.

I'd never done this before, so I first thought that 34 flights in 8 minutes might be about right. The more that I trained, though, the more I started to think that 10-12 minutes might be a better goal.

The day of the event was filled with my friends talking about their goals and hearing stories from all the people that were that had done it before. The guy in front of me wanted to get it done in about 8 minutes. The guy behind me did it 8.5 last year (and his wife was the female champ). We were lined up in order of number and I had a 9:15 start, 15 minutes after last year's best would start their races.

I was off!

There was so much adrenalin that I took the stairs two at a time for the first 5 flights, then switched to quickly hitting each stair and knocking out the flights like crazy. I passed 5-6 people that were in front of me (we started in 10 seconds intervals) and then realized that I had a long, long ways to go. So, I settled into a walking pace and cruised up to the 20th floor before I started to feel it. At that point, I caught the guy that started in front of me and he was behind 3 girls. That far into the race, passing was tough and they were hittin' it a little bit slower than I wanted to do it. So, I pumped up the pace and passed them on the 24th floor and kept the pace up until I was two flights ahead.

By the 28th floor, I was spent. I rested until they were one flight closer. On the 32nd floor, I had to take another breather and 2 of those that I'd passed got back past me. Drat. I fell back into line behind them and finished out the last 6 floors, but I couldn't keep up.

I crossed the line, just happy to finish. Legs rubbery, sweating like crazy, breathing heavily, 4 of my 5 friends waiting to cheer me in, the 6th started 50 seconds behind me (and never caught me, whew). I wanted no part of stairs anywhere at all anytime soon.

When the sixth in my group made it up, she was the same way... don't ask me no questions and leave me alone while I suck air. :-) As we regained our strength we started to talk more about the experience (while coughing a bit and trying to regain equilibrium... hiking up 34 flights and then jumping in the elevator to come down plays havoc on your ears). The friend behind me asked how much time was between us and I said, "About the same as we started."

Lo and behold, we finished with exactly the same time... not in the 10-12 minute range, but 7:38! It put me in the slower third of the men, but the best of my friends, so I was happy! And, the guy that I passed that passed me back in the end? I got him by 1 second... likely when I ran the last 4 steps to the line.

WOOT!

8&9/52: A Double-header With Coelho

Book #9 = "Veronika Decides To Die" by Paulo Coelho, 1/5 Stars
Coelho milktoast. I saw the "experiment" coming about 1/4 of the way into the book. Bleh. Yawn. This book was all over the place... I grew weary of the divergent plots that seemed to jump into and back out of the middle half of the book.

Book #8 = "By The River Piedra I Sat Down & Wept" by Paulo Coelho, 3/5 Stars
There were a couple of sections in the book that really captivated me, in typical Coelho fashion. In those sections, I couldn't put the book down and my eyes flew across the pages. For instance...

"I clutched at his hair, too, and squeezed him with all my strength, biting his lips and feeling his tongue move in my mouth. This was the kiss I had waited for so long—a kiss born by the rivers of our childhood, when we didn’t know what love meant. A kiss that had been suspended in the air as we grew, that had traveled the world in the souvenir medal, and that had remained hidden behind piles of books. A kiss that had been lost so many times and now was found. In the moment of that kiss were years of searching, disillusionment, and impossible dreams."

However, aside from those few scenes, the book was only mildly entertaining. My armchair writer would have altered the ending and had the "power of miracles" transferred to the woman after the man had given them up for her. Why? So that she could understand his plight and then they could be peers.

GOAL: 52 books in 52 weeks!
Book #7 = "Stiff" by Mary Roach, 2/5 Stars
Book #6 = "Love in the Time of Cholera" by Gabriel Garcia-Marquez, 1/5 Stars
Book #5 = "The Road" by Cormac McCarthy, 3/5 Stars
Book #4 = "Eleven Minutes" by Paulo Coelho, 2/5 Stars
Book #3 = "The Good Guy" by Dean Koontz, 3/5 Stars
Book #2 = "My Ishmael" by Dan Quinn, 2/5 Stars
Book #1 = "The Zahir" by Paulo Coelho, 3.5/5 Stars

READ!