Tony Brewer

I’ve been reading conflicting reports on why drinking bottled water is a bad idea. Some reports say that if the bottled water gets too cold the plastic will leach toxic chemicals into the water, some say it will happen if it gets too hot. I don’t know what the truth is there, do you?

For me it really doesn’t matter very much, I bring my own tap water with me to drink. I just can’t justify spending a couple of dollars on water when I get it for free at home!  And by bringing my own water, I don’t have to feel guilty about filling up landfills with plastic bottles, or trying to find a place to take them to recycle them.

We are going to be having our annual weekend long company retreat next month.  The company rents out about a dozen cabins in the woods on a lake and we spend the weekend together “bonding.”  What is nice about the retreats is that it is a forced mini-vacation and we all have to stop the hustle and bustle of trying to make a buck and just relax for a while and get to know each other in an environment that is not as stressful as the workday can be. The weekend will be full of fishing and hiking and horseback riding and canoeing, and just relaxing around community meals. I hope it will be a really good time. Every retreat I’ve ever gone to has resulting in the employees getting along better at work, so I think it is a good investment in time and money.  At the end of the retreat, the employees will be getting their annual bonuses, and that’s always a mood picker-upper!

This year I’ve been the person assigned to order some customized apparel to hand out to the employees to wear during and after the retreat.  I’m going to order some custom design t-shirts from the designashirt.com website.

I found their website today as I was looking for a company to order shirts from, and was impressed with their selection of high quality apparel and the sheer number of options for customizing the apparel. In addition to T-shirts they also sell polo shirts, denim shirts, and button down shirts. I was thinking about ordering button down shirts but then I got to thinking that we wear enough of them during the work week! They also sell some really nice quality hooded Hanes sweatshirts, and I’m thinking that maybe I’ll talk to the boss about springing for a little bit of extra money to pay for sweatshirts too!

I’ve been reading about the Chinese tainted milk scandal, and am concerned that we are being lied to when we are being told that the tainted milk products have NOT found there way into the USA.  We have been lied to so many times about so many things, I really don’t know who to trust anymore!

I was reading on the Time.com website that a lot of Candy products, such as Cadbury chocolates, M&Ms and Snickers bars were being recalled in other countries, but the companies claim that the products here in the US are safe.

Whether they are safe or not, this is an enormous scandal and it seems to be growing every day!

Right around this time every year, Teri and I start to talk about our plans for Christmas shopping.  We have a lot of friends and family that we exchange gifts with, and we have to plan carefully to avoid spending too much money.  So we carefully search for the best prices and deals on the hottest items on the Christmas list.  Black Friday is traditionally the best day of the year to get the best prices, stores are trying to lure in the customers that have the day after Thanksgiving off of work into their stores and separate the consumers from their hard earned dollars as quickly and efficiently as possible!  This year Black Friday is November 28, less than two months away!

I’m planning to use the sales flyers for black friday 2008 to save a lot of money on my Christmas shopping this year.  There is a great website at blackfriday.biz where the website has made available the zip and pdf files of the Black Friday advertisements before they show up in the local newspapers.  This gives you the advantage of being able to plan your shopping before anyone else!  They also offer email alerts to let the consumer know that new ads have been posted.

I was reading on Time.com the story about Pirates seizing a cargo ship loaded with Russian tanks and ammunition as it was headed to Kenya.  The story says that the pirates are demanding a $20 million ransom, and that one of the ship’s crew has died.

The story goes on to talk about how piracy is thriving in that part of the world, and to be quite frank I’m really quite surprised that the pirates manage to get away with it all the time!  With all of the sophisticated equipment “we” have, the satellite technology and all, just imagining that pirates could get away with a deed like that seems infeasible!  And yet, there it is; it happens.