Bad parenting tip of the day

Not officially being a parent quite yet, I hesitate to criticize others for their parenting techniques. Even still, I think I'm not going very far out on a limb when I say that it probably isn't a very good idea to jack on the brakes and completely stop your car in the middle of the street to yell at your kids.

Which is pretty much what I saw happen today as I got home from work and pulled into my driveway. I walking up my steps to get the mail, when I hear brakes and screaming coming from the street. I turn around expecting to see some kind of minor accident, or near miss, and all I see is a red car stopped dead in the middle of the road, with a young mother turned around to yell at two small children in the back seat. Now, I don't live on the busiest street in the city, but I'm sure that one of those big tree removal trucks that comes barrelling down the street on a regular basis don't have to be on the autobahn to cause a lot of damage to a small red Honda.

I will give screaming mom credit for having the kids in carseats, but on the other hand, that makes her stopping dead on the road to have a conniption fight even more ludicrous. I've heard that little buggers can be troublesome at times, but since they both appeared to be strapped into their car seats, I'm sure there was a lot less risk that they would start an accident than there was that crazy mom would get rearended by screeching to a halt.

Reluctantly doing my part to help the environment, kind of

Did you know that every year, the discarded styrofoam coffee cups from a single Dunkin' Donuts are responsible for the melting of 3,500 cubic feet of the polar ice cap? You didn't? Good, because I just made that up. Still, damn, those styrofoam cups can't be all that good for the environment.

And since I have a certain reputation with certain people I'm married to as being an environmental terrorist, I have actively, if somewhat grumpily, begun to think of ways that I can help the environment and the polar bears and the future generations and everyone and everything else that doesn't want to spend the rest of eternity living in a green house. So, at work, I have decided to stop using disposable styrofoam cups when I get my really bad fifty cent cups of coffee. Of course, I haven't broken down and bought my own cup, so right now, I'm using a coffee mug from the local bank that I'm hoping the previous owner washed well.

The only potential snag in my plan is that I'm not always that on top of rinsing out coffee cups at work after I use them. Which means that eventually, even the ceramic coffee mugs become disposable for me. Which means that I'm probably not helping the environment. And, if anyone at the office is missing a Donald Duck coffee mug, uhh, sorry. You wouldn't have wanted to see what it ended up looking like, anyhow. But I will try to be better, with the rinsing, and the saving of the polar bears and all. I'll let you know how it goes.

A brief note from the management

There has been a decided lack of amusing anecdotes in Endangered Coffeeland over the past month. I have failed to break any household appliances, I haven't driven the Corrolla into any solid objects, and I have not had any blood drawn, thereby ensuring that I get woozy and pass out.
While all of this is good news in the course of my eveeryday life, it kind of sucks when it comes to posting amusing anecdotes on the interwebs. About the worst thing I've done lately is get in trouble with Mrs. Endangered Coffee for my recycling rebelliousness. Yes, I would like to save the planet, but sometimes, damnit, I just want to throw the plastic Swiss Miss pudding containers in the trash when I'm done eating them. Oh yeah, and I had a letter to the editor printed in my hometown newspaper where I may or may not have insulted the town manager. I haven't seen the actual copy of the paper yet, so I'm not sure if the full brunt of my stinging wit was kept intact.
There is also other big news brewing in the Endangered Coffee household that will undoubtedly lead to many embarrassing moments/stories, but I will hold off on mentioning anymore about that until some time next month.