Less Pizza More Money

After realizing that even my favorite mirror was no longer willing to lie to me like I want it to, I came to the conclusion that having pizza for my every meal probably isn't the best choice. So, much to the disgust of the pizza and chocolate-lover inside of me, I decided that a healthy diet would prevent me from shattering my stupid honest mirror. Since my idea of a diet is having two slices of pizza instead of four, I thought it would be best to do some research on commercial diets in hopes of finding a better plan. I quickly realized that I was in way over my fat head. In 2008 Forbes.com reported that you could spend as much as $385 on a commercial diet program during the first week. Three hundred eighty five dollars? I don't even spend that much in two weeks when I shop for everyone in my house. At least my stupid mirror was somewhat improving. I now saw a different truth when I looked at it: a whole lot of dollar signs.
Weight Watchers was the most expensive dieting program on Forbes' list. It's first week sample cost was $388, and that's not including the $29.95 membership fee and the $16.95 average monthly fee. So you pay about $435 to eat prepackaged foods like pepermint pudding and sliced almonds. Roast beef salad is also one of their items, but I'm not willing to dish out that much money to see if it even tastes decent.
The cheapest diet program was NutriSystem, with its first week sample cost at $98 plus shipping. Alot cheaper than Weight Watchers, but still at least $100 for just one person to eat for a week.

Now I realize that McDonald's dollar menu isn't the enemy after all. It's the $385 commercial diet programs that cause everyone to run to McDonalds for a $3 meal. At least that's the excuse I'm going to use (feel free to sample it).

So, I've ignored the commercial diets and have resorted to good ole fashioned common sense. I've tweaked my two slice pizza diet to instead consist mainly of nonfat yogurt, fruits and salad. The yogurt was on sale at my local grocery store: three for $1, and so was the salad: the ten for $10 special. I bought enough food to last a week and spent no where near $385. I'm still ticked at my honest mirror, but I see our relationship growing as I supposedly shrink.

Photo by Punch Pizza

Calling on Reason

A couple of weeks ago a friend of mine asked me if her 5-year-old son was too young to have a cell phone. My response was YES and DUH! But lately I've been feeling as if I'm in the minority--in more ways than one. Everywhere I look I see another 5, 6 and 7-14-year-old on a cell phone. Am I the only one who thinks there is something wrong with this picture? Yes, of course the one to your right.

A 2006 study by Yankee Group, a market researching firm, has predicted that by 2010, nearly 54 percent of tweens (that's 8-12-year-olds) will have cell phones. But why? Who will all these tweens need to talk to so urgently that they can't wait until they get home to speak? If someone gives me an answer to this question that isn't "their bff (best friend forever)" or "their grandma," then I will be convinced that it is a good idea for children to have cell phones.

Most parents believe they should get their child a cell phone for safety reasons. For instance, if their child gets lost, kidnapped, or if there is a school shooting or some other dire situation where their child would need to get a hold of them, then a cell phone would come in handy. But cell phones can be a false sense of security for both the parent and the child if they believe that a cell phone works to prevent the likelihood of a child getting lost. Kids might tend to wander more freely away from their parents if they know they have a cell phone on them, and parents might not keep as keen an eye on their child when they know that their 7-year-old is only a phone call away. Cell phones will make the child and the parent feel safer, but the child won't actually be safer in any given situation. In the event that a child is kidnapped, I highly doubt that the kidnapper will wait a sec while the child calls his mom to let her know where he or she is. And of course parents should have some way of knowing if their child's school has an emergency, but with so many kids calling their parents and 911, there is bound to be some interference with emergency calls, and some distorted information given to both the parents and the dispatchers.

Another thing about "safety". When you tell a tween that you want him/her to have a cell phone for "safety reasons" they think "Yes! Now I'll be safe from being the only kid at school without a cell phone." And when you tell them to only use it in case of an emergency they think, "So if a teacher of student gets on my nerves, I'll call you," or "If I find out something that my bff doesn't know, then I'll call her and spend hours telling her all about it." With this and the added unsafe threats of cell phone bullies, sexual predators, and not to mention possible cancer, the safety factors of cell phones are not completely clear to me.

I say, if kids aren't old enough to drive, then they shouldn't be any place where there isn't a trusted adult around with a phone. If parents depend too much on the iphone or any other cell phone, then they're going end up realizing "ilost my 5-year-old, and my 5-year-old lost his iphone," or "igave my child an iphone, and he gave me an isorry for the huge bill." Until they're old enough to drive and/or pay for it themselves, reason will win on this end of the line.

Photo by Bex Ross

Ants Don't Bite, Bees Don't Sting

When I was five years old I watched my older sister come running in the house crying and screaming because her leg was covered with ants after she had stepped in an ant mound. Ever since then I have been very cautious of avoiding ants in hopes of not getting bitten. I've always advised my young nieces and nephews to stay away from any kind of ant--and most other insects as well. Recently my sister informed me that her mother-in-law has been telling my nieces that there is no need to fear ants because they don't bite. I heard the red buzzer going of in my head. Ants do bite. Most scientists say that not all ants bite, or even have the ability to bite. There are over 12,000 species of ants worldwide, according to Harvard's Boston Harbor Island. I don't know about them, but when I feel a pinch on my arm and realize that an ant has just bitten me, I don't check to see which specific ant species it was that just took a chunk out of my arm. I just squash it.
It seems like everyone is a scientist nowadays. It's not just with ants, but with many other things. People love to disprove commonly held beliefs. It satisfies their need to show off their "smarts", make others seem stupid, and make themselves seem more important, all at the same time.
When there is a bee buzzing around my head, and I'm screaming like Janet Leigh in the movie "Psycho", nothing ticks me off more than when my sister-- the same one who stepped in the ant mound-- tells me that if I remain perfectly still, then the bee won't sting me. But I know from experience that this just isn't true.

The San Diego Zoo's web site states that "if a bee lands on you, stand still and let it fly away on its own." It will fly away on its own--after it stings you. The zoo's web site also advises people not to run if they see a swarm of bees, but to slowly walk away. But what if you're already completely swarmed by them? Are scientists and wannabe scientists so committed to the belief that being perfectly still will help you avoid being stung by a bee, that if swarmed by them they would practice what they preach?If so, I'll salute them as they are lying perfectly still in their hospital bed.

And what about the common cold? Ever since I could remember, I've always been told to wear a coat, or not to go out in the rain, because I would catch a cold. Now there are dozens of web sites reiterrating that there is no way you can catch a cold from cold or damp weather. Even my Psychology teacher told our class about a British experiment done in 1946, where researchers studied three test groups to see which would be more susceptible to the common cold. One group stood in the cold in their wet bathing suits, the second group did the same thing, but was also given doses of a cold virus, and the third was given the virus, but stayed warm and dry. None of the participants from group one caught a cold, and more participants from group three caught a cold than from group two.

The only thing this experiment proved to me was that British people were weird back then. Who were the participants who agreed to be subject to such experimentation? Maybe they should have all been given high doses of psychiatric medication.

I know my stubborness ticks my sister off, but this isn't her blog. So no matter what anyone tells me, I won't stop believing that all ants bite, bees are always seeking to sting anyone nearby, cold weather causes colds and Brian Mcknight was singing to me in his song "Back at One"--wait wrong post.

Photo from Flickr by Pandiyan V

For information on how to treat ant bites visit http://www.fireant.net/Bites/

For information on how to treat bee stings visit http://www.medicinenet.com/script/main/art.asp?articlekey=62369

For information on how to treat the common cold visit http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/000678.htm

Broke

So, I found out Saturday that Bob Dylan is coming to Dayton in July. The Bob Dylan. The Bob Dylan who is so universally known that I don't even have to give you a link to his web page. He's going to be at Fifth Third Field on July 10, but ticket sales for this event started May 2 at 10 a.m. -- just a few hours before I found out about this life changing event. I LOVE Dylan--sorry for the caps, even more than I do chocolate covered pretzels. Ironically, this is why something in my stomach sank like an anchor the moment I found out about him coming to town, and it wasn't the bag of pretzels I had just eaten.

The tickets, I found out, were $67.50, which wasn't bad at all compared to other musicians' concert ticket prices, and considering the fact that this is Bob Dylan. However, I've recently come across some events in my life that has sucked my bank account dry. Not completely dry--I still have a few hundred dollars left, but the kind of dry you feel in the back of your throat when you're thirsty, but not thirsty enough to get up and get something to drink. So I looked at my online checkings account, and saw that if I dump the electric and water bill on my sisters, and if by some chance our landlord would forget that he rents to us--as most landlords so often do, then I would still have enough money left over to buy a ticket. Then, I remembered that it was my turn to buy groceries. Maybe we could go a week living off of oatmeal and saltines, I thought. Who am I kidding? If I didn't get the tickets right away I'd be stuck with lawn seats, then I wouldn't be close enough to Dylan to ask him to marry me.

Before I decided to give into drawing from my savings account, I started to do some research about the average price of concert tickets so that I could warn others about what to expect when the love of their life comes to their hometown and they realized that they're too broke to go see him/her.

StubHub, a leading ticket marketplace, released their 2008 concert ticket annual report, and it shows that the average price for a concert ticket was $159, which was up from $156 in 2007. The highest average tour ticket price of 2008 belonged to Madonna (at $306 per show), according to StubHub.com. I'm so glad I was becoming a fan of Fisher Price in the '80s instead of her. The lowest average price belonged to Panic at the Disco (at $66 per ticket). Too bad I'm not into punk/emo groups consisting of guys who wear more makeup than I do. Inspired by the thought of broke Madonna fans crying, I felt much better and decided that there had to be something I could do to get those Dylan ticket.
I left the computer to go beg and plead with my sister to cover a small portion of my rent in order for me to be able to buy the ticket. When I found her, she reminded me--in a very annoying tone of voice, that it was my turn to buy groceries. Then she told me that she had seen her phone bill, and that she would need me to cover a portion of her rent. I wasn't ticked. I was devastated. I now had to face the reality that by the time I get my Dylan tickets, my seats will be closer to my front porch than they are to Dylan.


StubHub 2008 Concert Ticket Annual Report
http://www.stubhub.com/sites/corpsite/?gsec=news&gact=press&article_id=9158

Photo from Flickr.com by Peter Honeyman

For more information about The Bob Dylan Show visit the Dayton Daily News' website

http://www.daytondailynews.com/blogs/content/shared-gen/blogs/dayton/artsandentertainment/entries/2009/04/24/bob_dylan_willie_nelson_john_m.html

Updated with additional and correctional information on May 5, 2009