Save a forest without chaining yourself to a tree

by Damian | Dec 18, 2015 | Pop Culture | 0 comments

Every year, someone would drop a two-ton Yellow Pages book on our front porch… and they’d drop one on the porch of every other house on our street. And on every street in the neighborhood, the city, and the world for all I know. Seriously? Who uses the Yellow Pages print edition anymore? Marty McFly? Are they looking up “Betamax Repair Shop” in it?

Are they trying to hire a private investigator?

Our gargantuan edition went directly from our front porch to the recycle bin, just like it has for the past  decade. But the prime directive of the green living trifecta is “reduce” (then reuse, with recycle as the last, least efficient option). So I found out that we can opt out of Yellow Pages print delivery. You can too. Let your fingers do the walking on your computer keyboard, and sign up here: https://www.yellowpagesoptout.com/.

Tell your neighbors about the opt-out option too – based on the heft of the YP tome, we can save a tree or two per house, easily.

How I became a growler guy

by Damian | Dec 18, 2015 | Pop Culture | 0 comments

I like beer. Sometimes it loves me back. These days we only get together on the weekends, which is good because if we see each other too often I get a headache.

Until this Thanksgiving, my post-college retail beer purchases had been relegated to cans or bottles. But now I’m on board the growler bandwagon. I know I’m late to the party – and all the hipsters have been there a while – but I didn’t think growlers made sense for me. Because I drink beers so infrequently, and when I do I only have a few, I thought a growler would just mean that I’d buy a half-gallon of beer and most of it would go bad and I’ve have to toss it. Somewhat akin to buying a 5-gallon vat of mayonnaise at a club store. And I hate wasting money. I’m worse than this guy:

But if you do the math, a 64-oz. growler is a mere 4 pints, and you can get it filled a lot cheaper than buying 4 pints at a bar or taproom. A lot of the startup craft breweries aren’t even canning or bottling their product yet, so the growler is the only way to take some home with you. My first growler fill was a limited edition Opera Cream Stout from Blank Slate Brewing. It’s delightful, but only available for a few weeks each year. Short of taking up residency in the Blank Slate taproom, my growler was the best way to prolong the enjoyment.

A growler is perfect for trying out new beers, too… enough to determine whether or not you like it, without getting stuck with leftover cans or bottles in your fridge. It’s a nice way to bring beer to parties as well.

All this beer talk has left me parched. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go get a refill…

Calling all word nerds

by Damian | Dec 18, 2015 | Pop Culture | 4 comments

If, like me, you’re a word nerd (or perhaps you prefer the more appealing appellation of “linguistics lover”), this article from the Washington Post is a must-read. It’s about how — and why — the WaPo is changing their official abbreviation for microphone from “mike” to “mic” and how they’re ditching the hyphen in e-mail. Fascinating stuff about how our living, breathing language evolves over time.