Welcome to Smuggle Me

I’m about to admit something that I’ve never admitted before. Well, at least not on this blog and not outside of me talking to myself in the shower. Are you sitting down? I’m serious. This is a big thing for me.

Ok, here goes…

I’m getting old!

Ok, I said it. I got it out there. Now all of you out there stop laughing because I’m only 28 years old. Yes, that is relatively young, but my body is telling me otherwise. Tonight I participated in a summer league ultimate frisbee game. I think that 90% of the people that I’m playing with are younger than me. The other 10% is staying up with me. What happened? I’m just falling apart.

Don’t get me wrong. I still work harder than anyone out there. I still look for the layout defense, dive for the hand block and sacrifice my body for the team. However, I use to go out dancing after playing ultimate. Now I come home with all these aches and pains. Yes, I’m hurting.

My sister always loved using Ben Gay, but I always thought it smelled like an old lady and I hated applying the gel. Luckily I got some samples of a product called Freeze It in the mail which it said had no lingering odor. I decided to give it a whirl since the aches and pains were just killing me. Despite my wife’s laughing I pulled out the Freeze It and applied liberally. It was amazing how quickly this product worked. Bye Bye pain. I sat back and enjoyed a movie with my wife and she didn’t push me away telling me that it smelled. About 30 minutes later I decided to get up for some popcorn. As I got up I could still feel that nice icey burning sensation. Yes, I did just say ice and burn in the same sentence. You know what I’m talking about if you’ve used something like this.

Anyway, a little search online for Freeze It and I found that Freeze It has a roll on version. See picture:

That’s what I’m talking about. I’m one of those people that hates applying smelly lotion, sun tan lotion, or anything I have to rub in with my hands. I like hands free application. I’ve never seen Ben Gay give me that.

Considering I’m playing ultimate frisbee twice a week and basketball once a week to lose some weight. I might want to buy some stock in Freeze It.

Today I installed a Logitech webcam on my computer here at home. My wife is in New York and so she doesn’t know about it. We’ve had a webcam a ton of times before, but this one I mounted on the top of our monitor and so it’s like it’s watching us. I don’t really care about that since I’ve had a webcam on my computer at work for the past two years since I use it to login to my computer. I love Facial Recognition software.

Anyway, I think it’s going to stay. My brother finally bought himself a webcam and so I think that we’ll have a number of opportunities to use it. It’s about time that he stepped up to the plate and spent the $20 to get a webcam. Isn’t technology great? Free video conferencing around the world. Can’t beat that.

I don’t know if any of you have been reading the news about the BP refinery in Whiting. Here’s a look at one story that the Chicago Tribune wrote about the situation. Just to be fair, here’s a look at the BP Whiting Refinery fact sheet (Be prepared: this is a PDF). Essentially BP’s take on the situation.

One thing I like about articles like the one written by the Chicago Tribune is that it raises people’s awareness of potential situations. When a big company knows that they are being watched, then they are more diligent about making sure they are doing everything right. Sometimes they might just spend more time covering their tracks, but I’m an optimist and my hope is that most are really trying to do things that are right.

I think that BP makes some important points in their fact sheet that make me feel like there is really no news story when it comes to the Whiting refinery. The first point is that they are well within the legal limits. With the second point being that there is no harm to people or the environment. I think a study on these two points from an objective source would be really interesting. However, the legal one I feel pretty comfortable with since they’d be getting all sorts of fines if they are over the limits. However, for me the most important part is that this refinery is offering a bunch of jobs to people in that area. If people found that it was so bad, then they wouldn’t work those jobs. This is America. If you don’t like what you’re doing, then you can get up and do something else. People have choices and they’ve obviously made them.

Maybe someone has more evidence to the contrary, but I think the Tribune article about the BP Whiting Refinery is just Much Ado About Nothing.