Thursday, December 16, 2010

Saying no is a part of being a parent! / Its not tobaccos fault you smoke

So I was reading through my usual morning news this morning and found this article. This woman is suing McDonalds because of their marketing ploy towards children. Putting aside the fact that's an idiotic lawsuit lets talk about this specific quote.
"We have to say no to our kids so many times and McDonald's makes that so much harder to do. I object to the fact that McDonald's is getting into my kids' heads without my permission and actually changing what my kids want to eat."
Are you serious right now? What you are saying flat out is that you don't want to/can't say no to your kids about McDonalds? What kind of shitty parent are you? This is one of the things that has really gone wrong in the world. Your a parent lady, its your job to say no when it needs to be said. It's not McDonald's problem that you don't want to say no to your friggin kid!

Ok that being said lets go to the other great news story (sarcasm) of the day. In Massachusetts the superior court just awarded $71,000,000 tot he family of a life long smoker because tobacco marketed towards her as a child. Dude what are you two? The woman was 54 years old when she died and still smoked up to that day. Take some responsibility for yourself dude. How is it a company's fault for her continuing to smoke? If this was any drug other than smoking this would not happen, people die of liver issues from alcohol every year and people don't sue Budweiser.

This is a really big issue for my generation. I can only hope that we have more sense than our parents and take some personal responsibility for things. It's not always other peoples fault, in fact i bet most of the time its your own personal fault. Ugh!

Tuesday, December 14, 2010

Maine


So with my first Maine trip for as long as I can remember I wanted to touch on why I love my cabin so much. It isn't really what you would call modern, in fact this year marks the first year that we have ever had running water (we used to use a handpump) Nor is it even that "nice" a cabin, its an old logging cabin that really was only used for logging for one season. It's none of that that draws me to Andover Maine as often as possible....its this

Its the total seclusion from people. Its sitting out in the woods and listening to the sounds. It's the lack of TV and phone (although cell phones are still usable, I try to ignore them) It's having no one give you shit! It's the ability to feel a little closer to the natural world that we have so readily tossed aside. Makes you feel alive! Yay Maine!!

Wednesday, December 8, 2010

The holiday rush into the Maine chill


Sorry for the huge delay in updating. I, like my friend The Sailing Foodie, have been very busy with work the last couple of weeks. It has been an interesting/aggravating/rewarding couple of weeks, but lets talk about something more interesting....Christmas.

This is the unique time of year where the last two or three weeks of December are spent rushing around the world trying to finish Christmas shopping, hit up holiday/birthday parties, and planning all the parties that will happen in the whirl that is Christmas eve and Christmas day. Although Christmas is a time which I love it certainly is hectic. Because of that I wanted to focus this blog on two separate parts of the holiday season: Buying/decorating a Christmas tree and MW and my annual trip to Maine

First off is the tree. There is nothing better to me about the Christmas season than the day we get our tree and decorate it. Decorating was never a huge thing in my house and, since MW has 5 siblings, it has always been huge in hers. In the last couple of holidays we have spent one entire day getting all the decorations and hanging around enjoying each others company. This year was the perfect example of that. After buying our tree on Saturday we hit up the Flynn household for my little sister-in-laws birthday on Sunday (that's the first time I have gotten to say sister in law!) It was a very fun time with laughter as well as some excellent Disney karaoke on the WII. This was actually kind of a momentous birthday because it is the first one since MW and I got married. It wasn't to awkward and the day was ended with a great big hug by my other sister-in-law LF, which made my day.

After the party we returned home to decorate our tree, drink hot cider/cocktails, and watch the Grinch. It was low key and just plain fun to spend an evening watching the Grinch with my lovely wife.

The second part of the holidays I love is our annual new years eve trip to Maine. Unfortunately this didn't happen last year due to remodeling of our Cabin, but this year we are even more excited to go up. The cabin is new and improved and after dinner with my aunt MW and I will be experts in all our new gadgets (including a sweet new wood stove) To me there is nothing better than sitting at the cabin with some friends, having drinks, listening to music and just hanging. Sure we miss the ball drop and all that (no tv), but we can have a kick ass party and really enjoy each others company. Plus it is one of my favorite things to be able to go outside whenever and just sit and look at the stars, you don't see the stars like that down here.

So this wasn't the greatest of posts, but I wanted to get somethigng out to hopefully jump start the creative juices. Once I have time I have a couple of insightful/rageful/fun things to post so you will back to your regularly schedeuled "Damn your impudence sir!" glory. I leave you with an excellent picture of the Cabin in Maine a la new years 2008/2009