Weekend is here = good reggae!

It’s Friday and I’ve got the weekend on the brain. After a long work week, it will be nice to spend the time listening to some good reggae. With that in mind, found a couple of posts by fellow bloggers worth sharing:

Mg –>wrote in his blog about Bob Marley’s –>”Slave Driver” from the Catch a Fire album, saying it “speaks profound truths about past and present oppression, of far-reaching societal machinations that hold people down and the power it takes to combat and resist those forces.”

Well said! This has long been my favorite Marley song of all-time (and you fans know how hard it is pick just one)! The first time I heard it, I said to myself, this man is worth listening to because he has something to say. I recommend the version found on –>Catch a Fire Deluxe Edition album. Stripped of all post-production embellishments added by the record label, you get the raw, unadulterated recording as laid down by the Wailers in Jamaica. I also highly recommend the version of “Concrete Jungle” found on this album.

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Here’s a classic Steel Pulse clip from YouTube performing “Babylon Makes the Rules”, found in this blog –>MixMasterE.

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Lately I’ve been very concerned about how green my employer is or isn’t. Luckily, I am closely involved in promoting green policies within my company and actually moving us in that direction. Our company has some very exciting things looming that is going to make sure that we are not only at industry standard for good green practices, but way above. I’ve been doing some research into what some other companies have doing in this arena, and obviously there has been a lot of media interest in this as well lately. Apple, has received some –>recent coverage (–>more here) for –>their green approach. Marc Gunther, a writer for Fortune Magazine, has published a book called Faith and Fortune, a look at how some of America’s biggest corporations are actually changing for the better. He profiles some well known companies such as UPS, Southwest Airlines, HP, and Starbucks, and shows how they are not only engaging in socially responsible practices towards the environment, but towards employees and customers as well.

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From the Ideal Bite newsletter, a green minded auto insurance company: Better World Club Insurance. Get a policy with them, and they’ll offset the first ton your auto’s carbon emissions for free! Oh yeah, and for us cyclists, they offer free roadside bicycle assistance. Sweet!

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Besides good reggae music, I hope to get some good trail riding in this weekend. Any MTB’ers out there in blog world? I love the feeling of being out in nature with my bike free from my car, my job, and well, just about everything else. That freedom is hard to come by these days, so I’ll take a couple hours of it any day. Hopefully I’ll get some good pics here and there to post on the blog.

Enjoy the weekend!

Tips, Coupons, Books and of course, green…

It’s fun to surf the Web and other blogs looking for green tips and information – I’m finding more and more great stuff everyday. I love the momentum that this gaining. Here are some things I’d like to share with everyone:

Silk Soymilk is running a –> Green Caps Promotion for which they donate to clean energy production for every entry. Also, you’re entered to win earth-friendly appliances. Check out the site for great clean energy information, including a –> Carbon Calculator you can use to calculate your carbon footprint and how you stack up against the national average. A quick run through for me showed my family’s footprint was below the national average – YAY! For more information and tips on how to reduce your footprint, visit –> Safe Climate, a project of the –> World Resources Institute.

And here is quick “Did you know?” from the Silk Green Caps site: If every American home changed out just five high-use light fixtures with energy-efficient ones, together we’d prevent greenhouse gases equivalent to the emissions from more than 8 million cars.

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Here’s a couple of green tips that we’ve taken up over the past week:

• Reuse small water bottles for all types of drinks around the house. We wash out our bottles after each use and use for everything from more water to juice for the kids and as travel mugs for the car. Keeps our cups in the cupboard and our dishwasher off since cups seems to be what we go through most with two active kids.
• In the office, I’ve been looking for ways to be more green. One area that I’ve particularly focused on is paper waste. As I audited my daily routine, I noticed that I tended to print out a lot information from emails, websites, etc. that I needed to distribute to colleagues. I’ve started utilizing the simple screen shot capabilities of Windows (Mac has it too) to send out the info via email rather than print. It’s easy; Alt+Print Screen will copy your screen to the clipboard and you can paste into any email message. If you’re using Outlook, you can use Word’s editing tools to crop the image as needed or even make notes on it. Most of the time, the receiver of the printed piece will throw it out anyways, only to print it again later. So this method allows them to forward the message and save paper as well. Try it and save some trees!

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I love shopping at my local health and organic food markets. There is always something to learn there on top of shopping for great tasting food! Some are even starting to really provide a lot of that information on their websites. One of my favorite local stores is Henry’s Farmers Market. Here’s a list from their site that is worth reading –> Five Easy Ways to Change the World.

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For you readers out there, here’s a link to a –> coupon for the new James Patterson book, The 6th Target, that you can use at Border’s or Waldenbooks for 40% off the list price. Good 5/8 – 5/14 and I believe you must join Borders Rewards Club which is free.

For Tolkien fans (I’ve been a fan for 25 years!), the new book –>The Children of Hurin is a must! It’s always to see new Tolkien material and this one does not disappoint, I highly recommend it!

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