Why why why?

I've mentioned before how ridiculous it is to keep a psychotic animal in your home.

Here's more PROOF

Remembering "Left Behind"

Through a strange series of events, I've ended up reading through the "Left Behind" series lately. I don't normally read Christian fiction, but I found a used copy of Book 1 from a little free library, and have been reading through the series ever since.

For those of you who don't know, Left Behind is a book series that was written by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins back in the early 90's. I can remember when they first came out, as well as seeing my friends' parents having the books on their shelves, but I guess they just never really interested me.

I'd long forgotten them until a friend at church mentioned them in passing.

"Wow, I should read those. I'd probably learn a lot about Revelations and Daniel from them."

The book randomly pops up the next day on a bookshelf that has barely changed in months, and now I'm on book 5.

Here are my thoughts so far:

Book 1 was good. I didn't think it was mind-blowingly good, but it was good enough to keep my interest in the series. If you're a Christian interested in learning more about the Rapture, I highly recommend it. Even if you're not a Christian, I highly recommend reading through this one to get a better grasp of what Christians believe about end times.

The Tribulation Force was pretty cruddy, in my opinion. The conversation made me angry quite a number of times due to 1) Chloe's being an obnoxious, emotional monster, and 2) what I thought was some misguided spiritual sounding stuff (e.g. if you trip over a dead body, I don't think you have to feel guilty about desecrating it). I almost quit reading the series because of this one.

But then I made it to book 3; Nicolae. Now that one was fantastic. You can really see how the authors grew as writers in making the series by this point. The ending and epilogue to this one left me sitting on my couch with my mouth wide open, thankful that I could continue the series any time I made it to my nearest library.

Book 4 had me wondering with the title. Was this going to be corny? It wasn't. It was really, truly good. The only thing that didn't make sense to me here was how at the very end, roughly 2 pages cover what I've always thought was one of the most interesting judgments in Revelation. Regardless, I finished this one, and drove to the library that night to check out the next two in the series

I've just started Apollyon, book 5, and this one starts off fast. The conversation and characters have only grown in depth, and I'm fully looking forward to continuing on through the series.

As I had hoped, I've learned a ton regarding end-times prophecy through these books in what has been a very entertaining and easy-to-read format. Many times, reading through old commentaries isn't exactly the most captivating of ways to understand something. LaHaye and Jenkins educate in a manner that leaves you with a better understanding as well as a hunger for more.

Once again, I highly recommend starting into the series. Christian or not, I think you'll enjoy flipping through these pages, and I encourage you to give them a try. Yes, the series is long (12-17 books, depending on how you count), but I do believe that it is well worth your time.

I'll have future thoughts and updates as I continue on through the series.

This Year's Flu

I'm not really sure just what it is exactly that draws me towards epidemiology. I always hated math in school, but for some reason really enjoyed statistics and probablity. I really like the detective game it involves as well. How does one little factor affect the overall health levels of a population?

As a result, I've been following the flu this year pretty closely. In the past, I'd used what I thought was an absolutely fantastic tool called Google Flu Trends. I loved it. I thought it was great. You could literally watch the spread of the flu throughout the States every year, and give your best guesses as to where it was gonna really hit next.

Sadly though, Google Flu Trends died. It was guesswork, really. Google was just tracking the number of times people searched words relating to the flu, and used that to give an estimate in real time of current infection rate.

They ended up being off by by 140% in 2013, and quitely shut down.

I was probably more let down by it than I should have been.

But that's what led me to the CDC Flu Map, which is even better. It's not based on search engine results, but on actual numbers instead. I highly recommend checking it out, and keeping mental tabs on it for next flu season.

According to FluView, another fantastic CDC resource, we seem to be seeing slightly less cases of flu right now (that could change with all the snow on the East Coast at the moment), but both of these resources can help you to stay on top of what's happening flu-wise in your area.

Thoughts on Stuff in the News

I'll admit it: I'm a news junkie. I follow it pretty much all day. And lately there's been a lot that I've found very interesting, or had something to say about (you can tell by the length of this post) Be prepared for some politics, so skip it if you don't like all that.

Cow escapes slaugherhouse to live on island

THIS one made me laugh. Nobody had a clue where this thing went for a solid month. They just knew it was gone. All I can think about is a cow-in-hiding peeking through the bushes.

Virginia woman killed by her own pitbulls

I hate pitbulls. There, I said it. I think they're about as trustworthy as a pet cobra. So when I saw THIS in the news the other day, I was saddened for the loss, but furious at the dogs. Those things are mentally unstable. The big thing nowadays is to say "[whiny voice] It's all in the way you train them." That's a bunch of crap. Isabelle Dinoire, the first patient of a successful face transplant, had to have that surgery because her pitbull mix ate her face off in her sleep. She later died from complications. Those things are wacko. Get a dog, not a beast.

Venezuala is burning

The people there are eating whatever they can find, and we still have people here who think socialism is cool?

Continued anti-Christian rhetoric

The degree with which people hate Christianity has been astounding me lately. What I find even scarier is that my friends who listen to left-wing media are clueless about this when I ask them about it. Check out what The View had to say about Mike Pence's Christianity. A mental illness? Remember that the left wants to brand Christians as mentally ill when you read my last topic at the bottom of the page.

Or what about what's been said since Billy Graham died recently? People have been applauding it, saying he was WICKED, and the fake news HATES him too. There is a war against Christians brewing, and it is gaining traction.

Maine man fights off bear

When I saw this, I thought it was the greatest thing ever. This dude was willing to go MMA on a black bear that was attacking his puppy WITHOUT A SINGLE WEAPON. That's a straight up man right there.

Korean War Vet fights off 5 men with knives

Keep this story in mind as you continue reading on.  An 88 year old man saw a woman being attacked by 5 dudes with knives. He took out 2, getting stabbed in the process, but sent the entire pack running off potentially saving that girl from being raped and from death. This is what true men do.

The Florida school shooting

This has been huge in the news lately, and rightfully so. The big question being, how do we prevent this from happening again? The most common answer being pushed in the main stream media right now is increased gun control. The assumption being that increased government control = less problems.

For starters, a lot of people are saying that the mentally ill should not be able to access firearms. Does that hold up in this case? The FBI (part of the government) was notified that this kid was wacko well in advance. What did they do? Nothing. So, does this increased control really help? When will we admit that some people are just wicked? Not everything bad happens from a mentally ill person. Most are just the actions of evil men. Society seems to reject that notion at the moment though. At least Mike Rowe agrees with me on this one though.

What about hardening up soft targets? Putting officers at every school? Even that didn't work here. We have reports of the officer who was stationed at the school being too afraid to enter the building. Kids are inside being slaughtered, and the coward won't go in and take the bad guy out. What are you gonna do if the people you hire to protect you aren't willing to?

(I find this somewhat reminiscent of the amount of time it took the cops to enter the Pulse nightclub in Orlando as well.)

The school seemed to know that the kid was unwell, I mean they sent out emails saying not to allow the kid to bring a backpack to school, but even that didn't pan out. Bad guys don't follow the rules, and this is a prime example of it.

What would have stopped this though? Teachers carrying is the first thing that comes to mind. How do you stop a bad guy with a gun? By hiding under a desk? By calling the police? By throwing shoes? Good luck. The best way has always been and still remains to be the good guy with a gun.

The PE teacher, who is an absolute hero, gave his life for those kids. Teachers clearly care about their students. If given the chance to protect and fight for not only themselves but their students as well when the worst nightmare happens, I guarantee you they would gladly take up arms and fight without giving it a second thought. Bad guys tend to react differently when bullets are flying back at them.

Are guns evil? I love what THIS piece has to say on the matter.

Waking Without Coffee is Cruel

Thought I'd give ya'll a taste of how my morning was today. Hint: extra crunchy.

There's nothing quite like accidentally kissing a bug's heinie.

Random Happenings

Stuff's been happening.

Man, where do I even begin? I guess where I left off.

My work hours have increased quite a bit. I had to shut down the pediatric weight loss clinic due to lack of interest. We bought a house. I've been giving weight loss/nutrition presentations all over. Writing has filled most of my free time, just not on here.

Long ago, my people used to live in these mountains. Eventually, the government took their land and kicked them out. Yellohed and I spent an incredible weekend just exploring the beauty of this area. I can't help but wonder if they ever got over being forced from such an incredible place, or if the pain just festered in their chest and the sense of longing grew greater.

I got to spend some time with my family at the beach. The best part is the long walks and deep conversations alone with random members of the family that I would never get the opportunity to do so with otherwise.

I'm always amazed at the abandoned structures that you can find while meandering about the woods. I always stop to check them out. I'm not really sure why. I think it's half hoping to find some long lost treasure, and half hoping that I'll solve a murder case out there.

Nope nope nope. Not goin' in there. 

I got a bunch of chickens! The little puffballs peeped the entire ride back in my car, and spent most of their early life in this little setup until they were big enough to hop out and poop all over my tools. Now they just poop all over my lawn.

We got another puppy too. We finally had the space and the time to justify being able to do so. Meet Atticus. He now knows how to herd chickens, chases cats off our land, and has the strange ability to find geocaches before me.

I've been getting further and further into woodworking. A friend who's been showing me a lot got me this book some time ago, and it is hands down the best book on woodworking that I have ever read. You've gotta check this one out.

I spent a little time on an island. It was incredible. We stayed right at the tip where the currents would take a man out to sea to forever disappear, but routinely gave back Go-Pros, sunglasses, goggles, and other random items throughout our time there.

I've spent a little time wandering around the health food stores. I'm routinely blown away by what I find in there.

The brain eating zombie fungus? Uh, nope. I know about The Last of Us.  

A great way to lose weight, I hear. 

Atticus has become a squeaker surgeon. This is essentially all of his toys by the end of Day 1.

We've been buying blueberries with a self-esteem issue.

And I traveled to an area that was nothing but sand. Yellohed spent most of the time indoors, but I roamed the sands, checked out the wildlife, and went sledding down ginormous dunes with an old plastic piece of junk I found.

What the Government SHOULD do if it Wants to Combat Obesity

I've written before HERE and HERE here about how crappy the government does when it gets involved with anything weight loss related.

Their knee-jerk reaction is to create new policy, and usually this involves increased taxes, some form of punishing fine, and often a reduction in personal freedom as well.

We saw this with the Philadelphia Beverage Tax. We saw this with tobacco. 

And I've written my ideas about what we can actually do without infringing on peoples' freedoms that might actually work. Building sidewalks. Mandatory public school P.E. Not allowing crap food to be bought with food stamps.

Seriously? The candy aisle? 

But I've been reading a lot of farming books lately, most notably Joel Salatin and Michael Pollan, and they've raised another issue that I think would help tremendously.

If you want to fight the obesity epidemic, eliminate all corn and soybean subsidies.

Now that's radical.

It'll never happen.

But it would work.

Corn forms the basis for high fructose corn syrup (HFCS). By eliminating all government subsidies for corn production, the price of high fructose corn syrup goes up. If the cost of HFCS skyrockets, food producers have to either: A) look at other options for what they're sweetening their food with, or B) raise their current food prices.

Wait a minute. Raising food prices? Isn't that a bad thing?

Well yeah, it would be. For processed foods though (and I use the term "food" loosely here). There's mounting evidence that it is actually processed foods that are leading to the "Western" diseases (CAD, diabetes, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, etc) that we are seeing epidemics of today.

Now, we don't know all of what is in processed foods that is making America sicker, but we do know that HFCS is one of them. A fascinating study on 18-40 year old adults showed that when they consumed HFCS beverages for just two weeks, their blood serum cholesterol levels shot through the roof. Two weeks!

Think of all the good that could be done by lowering the amount of HFCS that the public consumes on any given day! In the long run, we're talking about decreased heart attacks, decreased strokes, less obesity, less diabetes, less arthritis, and so on. That's a huge deal!

Look at what would happen with soybean production. Soy is the major component used in American vegetable oils, which aren't the most healthful cooking option out there either. Less soy = a healthier public.

All of this is done without infringing on any rights or freedoms out there whatsoever.

Further pros? 

The elimination of some government subsidies to begin with.

Why do your tax dollars go towards propping up an unsustainable industry? If the corn or soybean industry can't support itself, isn't that a sign that something needs to change? Let the market correct itself. Don't attempt to support a water bed with a few pointy sticks. The end result is only a big mess.

Government subsidies of any industry only leads to the theft and redistribution of peoples' hard earned money towards something they may not even agree with. Why is my money going towards making people fatter? Why is my money causing people to die sooner? Does this bother anybody else?

Next, I'd argue that the elimination of these subsidies would further be better for the soil. Before you go off thinking I'm advocating soil health over full stomachs, hear me out. There's increasing evidence that poor soil equals less nutrition in plant foods. We're now learning that what it is that you eat eats actually matters as well. Take beef. Cows in commercial lots are fed corn (which they eventually get sick and die from), cow manure, hormones/antibiotics out the wazoo, and other dead cows. The end result? Meat that was built off of all that and the potential health consequences that it brings.

The same applies with produce. Plants eat too, if you will, and they get their food from soil. Poor soil = poor produce. You'd have to eat four apples today to equal the amount of iron that was in one apple from the 1930's. That's nuts. And iron isn't the only nutrient that our foods have lost much of either.

We know that despite America's growing waistline, a good portion of all people are actually malnourished. This malnourishment in turn could be the cause of a number of other health problems, such as rickets that the US population is now facing.

And what about the increase in food allergies?

What about pesticide residues on crops?

Large swaths of monocultures means large amounts of pesticides needed to keep the crop healthy. Monocultures can't survive without pesticide use. If a fungus or blight runs through your 500 acre crop of corn, it can spread like wildfire, and you're out of a job. Pesticide residue = problems for both your health and the environment's.

What about environmental damage or even water pollution due to poor farming practices?

Once again, less pesticides, less pollution due to runoff. That means healthier fish, healthier water, and healthier soil.

All of these have negative effects on human health, and I'd argue that we're just beginning to scratch the surface of what all of these are.

Eliminating subsidies would force farmers to find more sustainable, more profitable, and better for our health farming practices that would only serve to benefit everyone but the major food processors in the long run.

The cons

Food prices. That's the first thing that popped up in your head, and it's been bouncing around in there ever since. And yeah, without a doubt food prices would increase. But again, that's only for processed foods.

This in turn causes people to look for other options. What are the options to processed foods? Natural foods! Ding ding ding! You're a winner!

When you get people eating natural foods amazing things happen to their health. Less cancer, less heart disease, less illness, less inflammation, and so on.

Job loss. I'd argue that this isn't really the case.

But wouldn't poor farmers lose their jobs?

To start off, farmers that get involved with corn or soybeans are royally screwed from the beginning. That's the reason the entire middle of the U.S. is corn. You operate at such a loss that the only way to possibly survive is to plant hundreds of more acres of corn. In essence, it's subsistence farming. The best way for a farm to survive is diversification. Just like any well-rounded retirement fund, when you diversify what you produce as a farmer, you stand a better chance of profiting.

Why? There's less impact from disease. You may lose your corn crop, but if you have 12 other things you're also raising/growing then you can take the punch much better than you'd be able to if corn was the only thing that you grew.

To Wrap it All Up

Look at all these potential benefits we would get from just that one change. All done without ever infringing on anybody's freedoms. In fact, we'd be further creating an environment for freedom to reign because we'd quit stealing people's money to support something unnecessary! That seems to be what trips up public health officials the most. Freedom.

Just one little change, and it could potentially save a WHOLE lotta lives.

Wanna read more? 

Folks, This Ain't Normal
In Defense of Food
The Omnivore's Dilemma
Fast Food Nation

Cook Your Food, Ya'll

Saw this in the news yesterday.

Tapeworm Came "Wiggling Out" of Man's Body

Maybe this is the public health part of me, but the first thing I thought was, "I wonder where it came wriggling out of?"

Why the Philadelphia Beverage Tax is Stupid

I've written before on here about how it seems like public health students somehow can't reason beyond sky-high taxes when it comes to fixing a problem.

Lung cancer? Tax cigarettes.

Heart disease? Tax TV companies.

Obesity? Tax Coca-cola?

Sadly, those small-minded public health students get jobs as small-minded politicians and public policy makers as evidenced by what happened in Philadelphia back on January 1.

It was then that Philly passed the Philadelphia Beverage Tax where all sodas as well as any "non-alcoholic beverage, syrup, or other concentrate used to prepare a beverage that lists as an ingredient any form of caloric sugar-based sweetener" are to be taxed at $0.015/oz. (1)

That sounds like a good way to decrease people's sugar intake, right? I mean if websites like kickthecan.info tell us the facts about how sugary beverages leads to health problems, shouldn't we target the source? Sugary beverages, right? 

The consequences of such a short-sighted policy were never considered though. I've found this to be quite commonplace in the public health field. Nobody thinks about the businessman.

Supermarkets in Philly are now reporting a 30-50% decrease in beverage sales. (2)

But isn't that a good thing? We won! People aren't drinking as much soda!

Yeah, but that also affects the supermarket. Decreased sales = less employees. Any businessman can tell you that you can't take a drastic hit and keep your staffing the same and expect to survive.

And as a result, supermarkets, beverage distributors, and other marketplaces which sell sugary drinks are facing massive layoffs.

Jeff Brown's ShopRite is cutting 300 positions
Canada Dry Delaware Valley is cutting staffing by 20%. (3)
And a number of other beverage sellers are reporting similar staffing issues and impending layoffs.

Congratulations! You're skinny now! 'Cuz you have no food to eat!

This is policy abuse, government meddling, and shallow thinking at its worst.

Aside from the loss of jobs, think of the loss of taxes that that's going to mean for Philly. No more income taxes for those people. The things they normally would have bought with their paychecks that would generate sales tax aren't going to happen. The normal sales tax that would have been generated by soda sales is now gone as well as people don't want to buy soda in Philly at all anymore.

And how did the policy makers respond when they found out how terrible their plan was in reality? They fell back on calling it "fake news", saying that the numbers that grocers were relaying were fabricated. (1)

Ya'll. This is ridiculous.

What about this makes sense? If you really want to make an impact on people's health do something constructive.

Build more sidewalks. Build bike lanes. Build parks. Put mandatory P.E. back in schools. Put mandatory health classes back in schools. Create awesome tax incentives so that grocers open up in 'food deserts' in the inner city.

THAT is how you fight obesity. NOT by restricting peoples' freedoms.

You've Had a Good Life

75 year old man: "You know, the saddest day in our life was...oh crap. I can't think of it now."

The Tycoons

I've been doing a fair amount of reading on the original American tycoons. Vanderbilt, Rockefeller, Carnegie...I suppose those are the main ones I've read. I'd like to read about J. P. Morgan next.

I find it interesting the way that those men handled their money though. There are definitive patterns that can be found in each of these men's lives.

Here is what I've noticed:

1) They absolutely hated being in debt - And as a result, they were never in it.

2) They kept large cash reserves - to help them not only in emergency situations, but to allow them to invest heavily at a discounted rate when markets crashed.

3) They invested - All three of these men were incredibly frugal. They didn't spend their money lightheartedly. What they did do though was invest. They looked for ways to make their money grow.

4) They owned businesses - Usually multiple, or at least had stakes in multiple.

5) They worked their heinees off - All three of these men lacked any form of laziness whatsoever.

Top 10 Favorite Books

I do a lot of reading, typically burning through 2-4 books a month. Here's a list of some of my top favorites though.

1. Lord of the Rings, by JRR Tolkien
2. Les Miserables, by Victor Hugo
3. The Silmarillion, by JRR Tolkien
4. Dracula, by Bram Stoker
5. Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley
6. Journal of the Plague Year, by Daniel Defoe
7. Desperate Passage, by Ethan Rarick
8. The Hunchback of Notre Dame, by Victor Hugo
9. The American Plague, by Molly Crosby
10. The Children of Hurin, by JRR Tolkien

Should Government Regulate Food Ingredients?

There have been a series of events in the news the past few years where government has reached one of its tentacles into the world of food. It's done this in the form of regulation.

The FDA banned trans fats. The mayor of NYC attempted to ban super-sized colas as well as drastically decrease the sodium in soups, rolls, cheese, and potato chips. Finland heavily regulated the addition of salt to processed foods within the past few decades.

The list could go on and on. And the question I have to ask is, is this right?

No, I don't want mercury, cancer-causing compounds, or other dangerous ingredients in my food, but regulating portion size, salt, sugar, and fat seems a little extreme to me.

Yes, high amounts of dietary sodium have been linked to hypertension. Large amounts of dietary trans fats have been linked to heart disease. But does government have the right to limit or tax the crap out of unhealthy foods?

I talked about this a good bit in THIS POST about a year or so ago, but I just finished reading Salt, Sugar, Fat by Michael Moss, and it's got me to thinking about it again.

One can draw some very interesting parallels between the fight against processed foods and the fight against the tobacco industry.

Take the 1998 case against tobacco giant Philip Morris. In that year, 40+ states within the US decided that tobacco was to blame for the crumbling health care systems within each state. The states simply couldn't pay for the sheer number of people who were becoming critically ill due to smoking-related illness.

The lawsuit claimed that Philip Morris caused the healthcare crisis. Therefore, they should pay for it.

Morris was fined $365 billion dollars.

Now that is scary.

I'm not a fan of tobacco by any means, but if government can fine a company for making a legal product that everybody wants well after the fact, who's to say that they can't do that to ice cream stands, movie theaters, breweries, vineyards, car companies, cell phone manufacturers, and on and on. Anything that is deemed potentially unhealthy is at risk.

Obesity is reaching pandemic proportions. It's taking the world by storm. And yes, I definitely agree that a shift from made-from-scratch eat-at-home meals to processed crap is a big reason. But is it the food companies fault that people are becoming fat?

A company simply responds to consumer demand. 

If customers want to purchase super fudge chocolate ice cream, the company is going to make it. And if they can make money off of it, then cool. I've got no problem with that.Yeah, I understand that food companies engineer their product to make it as delicious as possible. But don't other companies in other industries do everything they can to make their product as cool as possible as well?

But people, particularly government officials, are starting to blame food companies for causing obesity in the first place. Now I can understand the frustration here. If government is going to pay for your healthcare, then of course they're going to have a larger say in what you can and cannot do. If something is deemed "unhealthy", then they're not gonna want people to do it. They save money that way.

That's one of the problems with relying upon government for healthcare, insurance, etc. You really get screwed over. Especially if you don't have the funds to have other options out there. People don't seem to understand how big of a freedom they're willing to give up for the sake of healthier food.

People buy what they want.

Why should the company that provides a legal product be reprimanded for legally providing people what they want in a free market?

Yeah, I understand it's odd to hear this viewpoint from a personal trainer/exercise physiologist, but I also happen to be a big fan of the Constitution.

Can you ever truly expect potato chips to be healthy? If you eat them, there's really no misunderstanding going on there.You know potato chips don't build six pack abs. So why regulate the snot out of them?

Let's say government decides that people are getting too fat, and therefore food companies need to put caps on the proportion of their food that is fat (really not too far-fetched of an idea). The food companies now have their arms twisted behind their back. They may make a healthier product now, but if it tastes nasty, no one's going to buy it.

Now you've got a product that nobody likes on the market, and your sales drop as a result. When sales drop, stock drops. If you own a mutual fund, there's a good chance that you own a piece of a food company. Do you really want your retirement account to drop in value? Probably not.

If you make a healthy product that no one eats, you've done nothing. 

Take school lunches. A lot of districts have regulated that school lunches be "healthy". The end result? A repulsive menu of meals that has caused many kids to quit eating school lunches all together. Good job, guys. That one backfired didn't it?

Seriously. Ask some of the kids and parents in your neighborhood about the recent change in school lunches. I've talked with quite a few, and have yet to meet any who think the regulation was a good idea.

I don't like to complain without providing alternatives though. So what are my ideas?

1. Food companies should make a healthier alternative of a product people already indulge in. - A lot of them have done this already to still be competitive in a market that's becoming more and more health conscious. If you can decrease the amount of sodium in ice cream without changing the taste, you've made a huge decrease on the population level in the amount of sodium consumed.
2. Put mandatory P.E. classes in schools - I believe this will have a much larger effect on health than making eggplant parmesan for school kids. Typically the more physical activity you get, the better. A lot of people that end up on welfare develop a myriad of health issues due to inactivity and obesity. If you grow up in an unsafe area though, what are you to do? Where are you to play? Mandatory P.E. forces kids to be active, and will cause many of them to develop and discover an interest in various forms of exercise that they would never have found otherwise. 
3. Quit allowing food stamps to buy unhealthy foods - If you're on food stamps, why should you be allowed to purchase Snickers, ice cream, popsicles, and potato chips? If you want to regulate something, regulate this. Food stamps should be like prison. It should motivate you to get the heck out of the current situation, and to make sure that it doesn't happen again.
4. Government-operated grocery stores in low-income areas where no grocery store is within a certain radius. - Areas without access to healthy foods are known as food deserts, and are notorious for their residents living off of highly processed junk. What if we opened grocery stores like this that had to buy food products at the same price as major grocery chains. If this idea wouldn't work, what if we offered major tax-incentive to major grocery chains to build in these poorer areas?

I understand that this is a tricky issue with a few slippery slopes, but ultimately, people buy what they like. People like cellphones, but they cause car wrecks when misused. People like makeup, but it can cause car wrecks when misused. Shoot, people like cars, but they cause car wrecks when misused.

My point is, people are responsible for their own actions. Why do we keep trying to shift the blame?

Picture Updates of the Past 2 Months

Work has been incredibly busy the past 2 months. Really just life in general. Weddings. Crazy decisions. Weight loss presentations. Freelance writing. The realization that small amounts of time spent at work in the evenings quickly add to my monthly income. You know, stuff like that. 

However, I've also been able to do a lot of other cool stuff in the meantime. For starters, I finally picked up a few field guides on mushrooms (something I've ALWAYS wanted to do). I don't know why I put it off so long. I have a blast doing it. Below is what I believe to be a jelly leaf. It's edible and smells like smoked meat.

I finally got the chance to hike up a mountain I've been wanting to cross off my list. Coldest hike I've ever done. Couldn't feel my fingers the majority of the way. Snow all the way to the summit. Incredibly strong winds that could knock you over. I managed to get this picture of the peak right after dropping my trekking pole off the cliff. 

I made a workbench for outside.

I found this incredible abandoned mill while out geocaching. 

 There's baby chicks at Tractor Supply. Yellowhed said I could get one, but we didn't have space. I wanted to train it how to talk and sit on my shoulder. Sigh....someday.

Found this pretty cool waterfall in the middle of NOWHERE. I kept on hoping that my car didn't break down, because there was no way that I was getting towed out of there. 

Incredible views of a nearby farming community. 

A local 9-11 memorial left me in awe. I still remember. Many have forgotten.

Made a trip to the nation's capital, where there's apparently an underground market for fish.

The Washington Monument was breathtaking.

The Smithsonian Castle. Now THAT'S a carpenter.

While sitting atop Washington Monument's hill, I couldn't help but snap this picture. I honestly wonder about my nation's future sometime. This world is crazy, and people seem to have forgotten where we came from, as well as how valuable freedom truly is.

On a lighter note, the local jelly store had quite the assortment.

"Pass the lolli-pop jelly, please!"
*throws jelly on ground*

The local candy store is always good for a laugh.

"You know what's a good idea? Gummy chicken feet. People will love them!"

"Knock Knock. Who's there? America. SEAL ya later."

They had crickets and grubs inside suckers too. 

"Thank you for clarifying. I almost bought the small gumballs by mistake."

 I got the chance to check out this overlook of the city. Absolutely stunning.

These little flowers (grape hyacinths?) just made me happy.

Atop another incredible local mountain.

Another mountain with one of the best campsites/places to hammock in the middle of nowhere that I've found yet. I literally sat atop the crest of the mountain with views on either side of me, without a soul around. A local hidden gem.

A hidden swimming hole that is also in the middle of nowhere. I'm looking forward to visiting again when the water won't kill me.

Local farmland.

 I've been spending a fair amount of time in the library as well lately, and when I ran across these two books, I couldn't help but laugh. One of those things that you're glad somebody studies, but you kind of take for granted.

Annnd, I came across the world's most disgusting drink while perusing my local grocery store. No thank you. I'll pass.