Dorie’s Different Reality

I’m known far and wide for “Chicken Licken” tendencies- if there’s DOOM to be reported, I’ll do it! So in the news today comes a warning about granite counter tops. It seems a lady was preparing to sell her house and had a home inspection, which detected abnormally high levels of radon. The source turned out to be the lovely granite counter tops, which also contained uranium! Over time, the uranium released radon gas into the house. She had the counter tops removed right away!

When we settled on this house, we found out the builder’s name for the project is “Poignant Acres” Interesting. But as long as we’ve been here, I’ve referred to our place as “Radon Ridge” here- check out this map: http://www.epa.gov/radon/zonemap/maryland.htm
But don’t feel bad for us, a LOT of the USA (Canada too I’d expect!) is in the Red Zone. It has to do with what’s in the ground. Texas, Florida and a lot of Alaska look fairly safe from the invisible peril. Consider this- even if you’re a city water person: water is pumped out of the ground, so there can be radon in the water. It may all be some great Eternal Plan to eradicate us in favor of irradiated cockroaches!

The Diet of Solidarity: The Duke & Duchess of Techno, Pyrate & I are all on a diet! We all need to lose weight, so we’re going to do it together (sort of) The plan is to just stay on our program (ours is Weight Watchers with South Beach-y tendencies!) until we get to where we should be. So why is this different from any other diet? Well, here at Radon Ridge, usually I’m on the diet, and himself is not. But he’s been putting on weight too. Also, next year I have to renew my driver’s license and there is no way in hell I’d want to put down the weight I’m at now! So if you’ve been thinking about losing some weight and want some group support, join in! We can be ahead of the curve because what I see coming is health insurers adding surcharges or refusing to cover people with a body mass index above a certain level. And hooray for New York’s new law about displaying calorie counts on restaurant food! Sometimes when you think you’re doing the right thing, the secret ingredients get ya!

One of my internet friends had a good tip. When you eat at a restaurant, as soon as the food arrives, ask for a box and put half of it in the box. To which I’ll add- always order a salad before the main dish.

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 24th, 2008 at 2:58 pm and is filed under Culture. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.