My Paper Challenge: Solutions

I'm about to restart my paper challenge. Going to hold on to another month's worth of recyclable white paper, newspaper, magazines and stuff so I can see how I am doing in reducing my consumption and impact.

Before March gets here, I am going to give you all some solutions I have used to help cut things down. They are simple, super low cost and, in the best American way, do most of the work for you. This way, you can continue being lazy. Like me.

Last year I subscribed to a service called GreenDimes. They have since changed their name to MailStopper, but that name actually best describes what they do. For $20 a year, they help you maintain a database of all the junk mail you get and help eliminate it for you. Sending e-mails, letters and phone calls to remove you from lists. It's a hugely beneficial service, and I have been pleasantly pleased with how little mail I get now. And $20 is nothing and the return is fantastic. Just passing along some statistics, here are some numbers they have posted:

343,011 members thus far
1,368,524 trees planted (they automatically plant 5 trees in a forest preserve in the midwest and northwest just for joining)
2,836,230 catalogs have stopped arriving in mailboxes
19,463,690 pounds of junk mail have been stopped

It takes about 90 days for the catalogs and mail to noticeably begin to decline. I'm a big supporter and if you want an easy way to cut out the garbage that is just a waste and you're throwing away already, it makes a difference.

Another service along the same lines is available at 41pounds.org. I am not familiar with this one, but a couple friends have mentioned it. Either way, make a difference and go for it. If someone has any questions about how this stuff works, let me know. But it's really quite simple, and making things easy helps get everyone to take that first (or 11th) step toward do-gooderness.

I'm from KY, But Still ...

I'm an active contributer and helper to the We campaign, one of the many initiatives to help fight global warming. One of the new partners in this fight is Reality.org (which has a bitchin' logo ... damn I wish I had thought of that).

One of its new commercials is directed by the Coen Bros., you know, those guys who pump out awesome movies and win Oscars. Anyway, the ad goes after the coal industry (which is huge in eastern Kentucky). Puts a another notice out there that they should stop talking about 'clean coal' because there ain't no such thing.

Back in DC ... And Having to Hold It

If there was ever a time to appreciate my telecommute day, it is this week. Because I get to go to the bathroom.

Hold on, let me explain.

Each week during this month, a different floor in my office building is having the bathrooms remodeled. So this week we have to go downstairs and use the third floor restroom. When other floors had to use ours, it was fine, but for some reason the kindness is not being extended to us. They only gave us one key for each gender. Maybe this is not too bad for the ladies, because they go to the bathroom in groups already, so this is not new for them.

But for the fellas, this is weird. I'm not going to the bathroom with one of the other guys I work with. Not happening. Further trouble is that the key to the bathroom is being held at all times by our receptionist. What the hell? Are we back in high school? Now we have to get permission to hit the latrine? At least it's not attached to a yard stick or cider block.

I'm holding it, though. This is ridiculous. Monday I went by like 6 times to get the key, and someone else had it checked out. I look like some kind of bathroom freak because I have to keep walking around the whole office to get back to her and wait for the high sign that I can head downstairs.

She offered to make things easy for me and send an when the key was back. Really? An e-mail? Gee, thanks. Can't wait for that one, Der Key Meister.

So I've given up. I'm holding it. Plus, from what one of the other guys told me, the bathroom downstairs is ... well ... let's say it rhymes with bit cole.

Not Forgetting About DC (cont.)

Alright, we're getting there. Of course, I was not aware that this could most likely end up being a Supreme Court matter. And we know how full of equal justice sense they are.

Maui: A Fond Farewell

Looks like this will be my last post from Maui. I still have several hours left here before I head to the airport and the reverse trip from hell back to DC, where apparently it will be 40 degrees, snowy, rainy and windy as we land. Brilliant.

I will miss this island. I constantly refer to it as "my little slice of heaven." Sounds corny, but sometimes the truth sounds sillier than it is. No other place and no other vacation consistently brings me this much peace and happiness. The people, the food, the golf, the crashing waves, the quiet moments, the views, I could go on. But some of the moments and best parts I am keeping for myself. Moments and little things that I can always look back on, whether I am sitting at my desk back at 12th and G, sitting on the train stuck in the tunnel or caught in traffic on the Beltway, horns blaring around me.

I'll bring these times back and know that I will be back here soon. To drain another putt, watch more fish through my goggles or just sit and listen to the waves crash into the shores. I'll miss you, Maui. But I'll see you again soon.

Maui: Whale Watchin

Hell yes. I saw a couple whales breach today. And I got the sequence of one of them (pictured above) to prove it. Awesome.

And let me tell you, it was breathtaking to see in person. Today was my first-ever time on a boat. Well, a boat that was not called a ferry that took me from Jersey to Manhattan. I’ve been on those many times before. But this was different. Here we took a boat and went out into the Pacific specifically to look for whales.

On my previous two trips to Maui I always talked myself out of doing whale watching tours. Too expensive. Too long. Too likely to never see anything at all.

This time, however, I put away my self-pity and actually found a place called the Pacific Whale Foundation, which is a marine-supporting nonprofit. Right up my alley. I am all about the nonprofit doing good in the world. Plus, it’s better than giving it to a bunch of idiots just trying to make a buck who have no interest in actually delivering a fun and worthwhile experience.

Everyone went along, and lucky for us the boat was less than half full, so we were all able to move about without knocking a little tyke overboard (although there were a couple easy applicants for that honor).

Let me tell you, it was a whale extravaganza today. I have tons of photos to prove it. None of them are all that fantastic, and its mainly because the boat was listing like a roller coaster in the choppy seas, and also because since they are whales, they can’t just stop and talk to you.

By several peoples’ counts, we saw around 60-65 whales today, including four calves. It was stunning. These peaceful creatures just hung alongside the boat, or were in large pods of four or five. One pod we saw toward the end of the trip numbered close to 11, and it was amazing watching them all come up for air in unison.

My words read like child’s play in comparison to what my eyes and memories recall. Even the dolphin that chased alongside the boat as we headed to harbor was just icing on the cake. It was a truly stunning afternoon of watching these things just yards away from your face. 45 feet long, 30 tons in weight and just beautiful to look at. Very little could have made this a more meaningful adventure.

Maui: Ah, to be Young

Wednesday I got to play my second round of golf here on Maui. The first round on Monday, at Kapalua's Bay Course, was not as successful as I had hoped. Granted, it was my first time even swinging a club in 4 months, so some rust was to be expected. And while I was a beast on the greens and hit some very good tee shots, it was my fairway game that went south and stayed there the entire morning. The opening 9 was brutal, and the back 9 holes were much better, and I had the chance to close with three straight pars but missed some testy sidehill putts that just were too tough to read. Ended the round with a 97, which by that point I was pleased to have not exceeded 100.

My Wednesday round was at Kapalua's premier course, the Plantation Course, where the PGA Mercedes Benz Championship is played every January. Yeah, that's right, I was playing on a real-life PGA Tour course. The story of this round, beyond the majestic views of the ocean and the challenging holes that make a golfer use every club in the bag, was my playing partners. Steve and Bobby, from Connecticut. Steve is a financial planner (tough times there), while Bobby is toiling away improving his golf game.

Oh, and Bobby is Steve's 11-year-old son.

And he's a bad-ass golfer. I'm not saying he's Tiger. I'm just saying the kid was damn good. 200-yard drives. Flop shots, bunker shots, reading the greens. This kid was crazy good. And not a single ounce of humility in him. Part of it is because he's good ("Yeah, I tried to shape it around that bend in the fairway"). Part is because ... well ... he's 11. His dad did an admirable job of pushing him to succeed and pulling in the reigns when his pre-pubescent emotions got the better of him. By the time Bobby was sinking his putt to double-bogey the 585-yard 18th hole (for non-golfers, that is a LONG hole ... I got par, by the way!), he showed enough moxie to take off his visor and shake my hand.

"Thanks for helping me today, I learned a lot from you," he said. Learned what? How one person can three-putt from 11 feet? How not to hit an approach uphill over a bunker into 45 mph winds? Thankfully, he smiled and told me that I showed him how to hit longer drives and maintain balance through the swing. Sickens me to think how mature he is at 11. I was kicking soccer balls and being a typical 11-year-old idiot. Bobby is testing his skills for a Tour card. Ugh, to be young again.

Of course, my 92 did beat his score. So I have beating an 11-year-old in golf going for me. So that's nice.

Maui: View of the Beach

Yes, go ahead and hate me. I don't care. But I wanted to be fun and test out posting a video to this blog for the first time. I shot video with three different digital cameras, but for some reason I couldn't get the video to recognize. So I decided to go danger ghetto style and hold my laptop up so the iSight camera built into the screen could record. Total buddy way to do it, but it looks like it worked.

It's not the most exciting video ever shown, but it's more to prove to me that it works. Plus, it gives everyone a chance to see one of my views here in Maui of Black Rock beach and the area nearby. My hotel is the one at the far end of the view.

Maui: A Taste of Kentucky on the Island

Wish I had something massively important to say here, but I don't I just thought it cool that in the span of a two days, we found evidence of my home state here in Maui. The first came when the car we rented turned out to be made in Louisville. Want proof, they put a sticker in the car window (at right) telling you it was made there. That was pretty cool. Then later on we got a pleasant surprise when we saw the truck of one of the construction workers doing work on the hotel property. They truck (or at the very least, its mud flaps, once belonged to Manning Equipment. I have no idea who they are, but they must be good people since they are from the 'Ville.

Like I said, nothing exciting, but pretty cool to see some bluegrass representation on Maui. Better than finding a broken-down car or dead dog with KY tags on it.

Maui: 10,000 Feet of Pain

Searing pain. All through my body. That's what I feel hours after coming down from the Haleakala Crater, a volcano on Maui 10,000 feet above sea level.

The air was thin, the hiking was slow and I feel mocked by a couple from Alaska, but in the end I am very pleased at our efforts and glad I made the trek.

And a trek it was. Once you hit the summit (10,023 feet to be exact), you can take in all the expanse of the crater below (shown in the picture above). It's truly breathtaking, because while this is a national park and big highlight mentioned in many tourists books, no one actually comes up here. You kinda get have a run of the place, and you can see for miles and miles, and in either direction you see over the clouds because you drove above them to get up here. It's no Everest, but for a few hours you do indeed feel on top of the world.

The wife, her cousin Madeleine and I then began the hike down. Our original plan was to hike to the Kapalaoa Cabin, 5.8 miles down into the crater (it's about middle-bottom on the map image). Instead, we took a detour and hiked over to the Pu'u o Maui crater (above and between the 1 and 2 on the distance key of the map), one of the several craters left from the volcano's last eruption. It's about 2.6 miles from where we started, and the crater is a little less than a mile around. So the total trip was just over 5 miles total. You can see the wife and Madeleine on the other side of the Pu'u o Maui crater in the photo (and that's at 200 on my 80-200 long lens, so you can tell they are out there).
They say you have an existential/life changing/whatever kind of experience when you are out there, and while I didn't feel closer to god or one with the planet, I can say I felt something. I felt it enough to sit down alone, take out the iPod and crank a three-song setlist and sing loud and clear to echo it into the crater (thankfully, the enormously strong winds carried my voice the opposite direction from everyone else, so no critiques were forthcoming).

This is when the hike got ... ummm ... let's say interesting.

First, as opposed to the easygoing that led us down to the crater, everything back up to the top was ... as you can deduce ... uphill. Seems easy? Call me a chicken? Screw you, you do it, then. It was damn hard work. For all three of us no less. We all heaved and huffed and puffed to get back up to the top. And let us not forget that the reason you can see all these looks from there is because I was carrying 40 pounds of camera gear on my back. Easy to do when strutting around Paris, but much more difficult when up above the clouds and going uphill on trails made of sand.

Equally hurting the ego was the Alaskan couple who were powerwalking up the whole damn hill like it was nothing. As they passed (and no doubt, scoffed with their Palin-lovin voices), we found out they hike in Alaska all the time. But that wasn't the worst part. The worst was struggling to trudge up the hill while all these jolly-ass folks were going down. One couple had a newborn strapped to them in a harness, and that baby couldn't have been 10 months old. I'm sure that baby was eaten when the couple couldn't make it back up with the extra weight and they had to go cannibal. You won't convince me otherwise. They didn't look like they were from Alaska; more like Kansas to me. A few other groups of families with young children flew down the trails past us, and we three proud companions laughed heartily at their ignorance. During one of my seemingly hundreds of breaks to catch my breath and drink some water, I wanted to leave a little mark of the Campbler behind, so I made a little rock totem a few feet off the trail (photo of it at right).

After we reached the top, we raced back down to Paia, a hippie town that has, in my not-so-humble opinion, the best pizza on the planet. Every ounce of the food served is 100% organic and grown right there on the island, from the salad greens to the nitrate-free sausage and pepperoni. It was the best meal we will have on this trip, if nothing else because of the painful, yet wildly invigorating, journey we took to get there.

PS - Oh, and on the drive down the volcano after we left, Madeleine found a footnote buried in the visitors guide that making rock totems is forbidden. Ooops. My bad.

Not Forgetting About DC

I may be on the other side of the planet (or so it feels considering the temperature and lifestyle differences between DC and Hawaii), but I am not forgetting about where I live. DC has been my home for almost a decade now, and it's been my wife's home for about 12 years. So it should be said that we care deeply about DC and its future.

Part of that means getting behind statehood for the District. It's a bigger deal than people think, and listening to Republicans bitch about it just because DC happens to be populated by a majority of minorities and liberal voters doesn't diminish the legit argument that our voices should be counted just as theirs are.

The NY Times has been pushing this as a major issue lately, and their editorial in Tuesday's edition summed it all up nicely.

Maui: Taking on the Crater

Tomorrow (Tuesday) morning, we are waking up nice and early and attacking (OK, hiking) the crater at Haleakala Volcano. It's been inactive for decades, so I don't have to worry about going Joe Banks on anyone. Looking forward to it. We hiked about 2 miles of it last year on the honeymoon, but now we're aiming for one of the historical markers about 5 miles in. Sure, 5 miles doesn't sound like much, but the crater is more than a mile above sea level, so it's not going to be an easy trek. Especially hauling all my camera gear to document the excursion. Happy trails!

What I've Read: American Lightning

Long flights and vacations are great for reading books, or listening to them, depending on how you travel. After finishing the Jacobs book, I dove right in and conquered another in no time.

These historical narrative nonfiction books are just cool. I really like reading them. They are a growing form of nonfiction where instead of just laying bare the facts and lulling you to sleep, the books are written a little bit more like a 300-page magazine article. This allows someone like me to grasp all the content without feeling like a total moron. I put great books like Cocaine, Salt, How Soccer Explains the World, Devil in the White City and Thunderstruck in this genre.

American Lightning is quite interesting because it tells of the intersection of three lives around a singular event. A famous detective, the man who would create Hollywood and a newspaper baron who may be pushing the limits of the definition of "editorializing." All three of these men converge around the bombing of the LA Times building at the turn of the century. The book is not a long read, and faster readers than myself could blow through it in no time. And when you have a book in which it's interesting subject matter, you'll learn something and it's written in an engaging voice, you can't go wrong.

Maui: The Economics

When we first landed and got over to the beach, it was late and dark. The next day was a Friday, so I wrote it off that we got here before the weekend truly began.

It's now Sunday afternoon and one thing is for sure: The recession is definitely noticeable here. As one might say, it is on like Donkey Kong.

Wake up at 5:30 in the morning and you notice that there is no one walking around. It's not because it's 5:30; unless you are visiting from California, everyone here is from the middle or eastern part of the US or Europe, and nobody is sleeping in late. You get nods when passing other tourists on the sidewalk, a knowing, "yep, I passed out at 8 p.m. from exhaustion too, pal, and here we are together at dawn" kind of brotherhood.

Then you go to the grocery store, and all the people there are locals. Hardly any tourists buying supplies of sunscreen and kitschy towels and souvenirs. Go to the hotel pool around 11 a.m. and there are still lounge chairs to be had. Sure, they may be under the blazing sun, but last year on my honeymoon you would have filleted a small child for one of those suckers. Head over to the beach for some afternoon snorkeling and you almost have a free run of the place, when before you would be fending off flippers to the head and fat people from Michigan who keep touching the damn coral when everyone tells them not to because it will kill it.

Talking to two different hotel managers, I found that Maui's hotels are between 30-60% under fulfilled, depending on where you are staying. It shows. Restaurants you can get reservations without hassle. I made golf tee times at two of the top courses on the island without any trouble, and I could have named a time to strike the first ball and gotten it.

Yes, it's no surprise or new information to hear that the economy is in recession. But I will be the first to admit that even I thought that Hawaii could withstand some of it, especially on a holiday weekend. Clearly I was wrong, seeing the impact from one side of the nation to the other is telling.

What I've Read: The Year of Living Biblically

Reading a book about a guy who decides to live a — literally — biblical life for one year doesn't exactly sound like the kind of reading material one would think I would get into. But when this book is written by AJ Jacobs, you can count me in.

You see, Jacobs got me hooked on his writing when I loved his first book, The Know-it-All. In that book, he decided to read the entire encyclopedia front beginning to end. It was his quest to become the smartest person alive, and reading the entire encyclopedia was, in his opinion, the route to take. It was a hilarious book, and I even learned a few things he wrote about. Like, for instance, my wife is worth at least 20 spears in African cultures. 20 spears. She's convinced she could fetch at least 30, but I told her to calm herself. I mean, it really depends on high-end those spears are. I think he sells reading the encyclopedia better than this guy did back when we were kids.

In this follow-up to the encyclopedia book, Jacobs decides to live according to the Bible for one year. He takes it seriously, no doubt, but it gets hilarious when he starts getting in the parts of the Bible where he has to wear certain clothes, sacrifice chickens and avoid his wife during her menstrual cycle. I don't want to spoil how he ended up in his quest, whether he felt compelled to live a more religious life or if he felt the rules of the book were just not for him. He definitely lays out some interesting material to consider, but I was certainly not moved to start wearing white robes, blowing up abortion clinics or handling snakes.

I was born and raised as Roman Catholic. Went to catholic elementary school and even attended an all-male catholic high school (check out this hilarious ESPN show from 1991). I don't regret them, but I have since lost all my faith in organized religion. Believe what you want, just don't try and make me one of your followers. I am going down my own path. But the book is worth reading, so check it out.

Maui: Day 1

So we certainly accomplished a few things on our first day here. Took care of good food (ate at Mama's FIsh House, a swanky nice place along the northern coast). Scored a solid opening-trip breakfast at our favorite breakfast spot in Lahaina. Got in some solid pool time at the hotel pool (which turned out to be this massive pool with 5 or six pools connected by waterways so you can swim to each one without having to get out). But to top it all off, I even got another ritual out of the way ... my ability to get sunburned in the fastest, dumbest way possible. My pasty white skin just cannot handle the sun, so much that it's comical. Even layers of SPF 50 were not enough to stop me from being a total idiot, missing a few areas, and getting burned on them. As a small consolation, I now possess some spiffy (um, not really) racing stripes on my arms. It's studly, and sure to catch the eye of a hot girl in a bikini as she begins laughing at me.

My apologies for not getting pics up here thus far. My initial goal was to blanket the blog with galleries, but in the first day I took a bunch of photos and for some reason cannot download them off my backup digital camera. It's being cantankerous with my new laptop, so I will keep trying. I owe pictures involving a pig (you'll find out soon enough) and other topics. Off to sleep now so I can hopefully start off Saturday on a burn-free note.

24 Hours Later ... Peace

Thursday/Friday was a long day. You may not care, because the end result was me waking up this morning to the sound of waves crashing into the beaches here in Kaanapali, Maui, but suck it, it's my blog and I write what I want.

It all started by waking up at 5 in the morning in DC to finish packing and catch the ride to Dulles. We flew from Dulles to L.A., which was a fine flight except the jagoffs at United Airlines thought it a great idea to not serve any food on the flight that you didn't have to pay for ($9 for a turkey wrap the size of a White Castle burger), so I skipped food on the plane because I wasn't throwing away money on crap. Then, they showed a horrible movie on the plane (Greg Kinnear was the star, so I think that speaks for itself). So I read and read and read. 6 hours later we were in L.A.

The wife and I devoured some food once we arrived at LAX and then made our way to our connection. Luckily, United further proved its jagoffness by overbooking the LA-Maui flight by 13 seats. So we made the strategic move of bumping ourselves to the next flight. In exchange for a 2.5-hour delay and guaranteed seats, we both got free round-trip tickets as a bonus, and upgraded seats on the next flight. All-in-all, a winning proposal for me.

The LA-Maui flight was equally crap. Again, no food that didn't cost an arm and a leg (and the EXACT same options from our morning flight ... what the hell?). Again, no decent movie (that 'family' flick starring Dakota Fanning and some honeybee raisers). So I skipped that also and just read and read and read. Almost finished my book (review coming later), but my eyes were burning so I napped a little. We, 5 hours and 30 minutes later, finally landed, found our luggage and made our way to the hotel.

Again, we had eaten nothing, so we raced to beat the clock with room service, which closed in 45 minutes. By the time we ate and shut off the lights to pass out from exhaustion, it was 11:21 p.m., 5:20 a.m. back in DC. We had been up 24 hours straight. But then again, when we woke up, you see the scene above that we awoke to. So I guess not all is that bad.

My Paper Challenge: Results

Yeah, so I am a couple months' late turning in this report. If you missed out, you can read up what this project was all about here. But put simply, I saved an entire month's worth of paper that could be recycled so that I could see how much of an impact I was making in my efforts to go green.

I did this back in December, and I'll admit that I did it then because it was a busy month for gaming companies to send me stuff and Christmas cards and all that jazz.

It took me awhile to actually find the time to weigh it, since I didn't have a scale at home and had to lug it all to work and weigh it on a postage scale we have. The weight results: 8.36 pounds.

I went through nearly 8.5 pounds of paper in one month. For you math idiots (like me) out there, that comes out to just over 100 pounds in a year, assuming I sustained that each month. But now comes the point when I have to dig through it all and find out where I can cut down on some of the usage. Are there bills I still get that I can go paperless on? Am I still getting credit card solicitations that should have been cut out by taking my name off the mailing lists? Who are the bad seeds that are cluttering my life that I don't need.

Not sure how low I can get it, but I am interested in the journey, and any amount of paper cut out can't hurt. I'll post some solutions I have used and heard of soon to help you all out as well. Also, I think I'm gonna make this a year-long challenge. I'm going to start in March and do a monthly tally, because I do realize that one month does not make this an entirely scientific study. And you know me, I'm all about science.

Writer Fight

I've only read a few Stephen King novels. It made me frightened of clowns (still true), and some of the others are equally scary, though I kinda gave him up once I left high school. Just wasn't feeling the magic. Kelly still digs on his work, and reads a bunch of his stuff. While I don't read his novels much anymore, I still read articles about what he's working on.

And what he's currently working on is tearing the "Twilight" series writer a new a-hole. I love it. I have no desire to read the teenage vampire/sexual angst novels that have adolescent girls and their mothers in a frenzy. I could care less. And having the master of thriller books bash on the author is hilarious. You just don't get writer fights, and now that I see it, I think there should be more of them. Think of how cool reading would be if you had authors bagging on each others' work? Sure, it'd make no sense, but it would be great to hear Author A say, "Screw Author B, they used 4 split infinitives and I just don't respect any writer with that kind of game." I'd be much more interested in the literary world if this stuff happened. I'm just sayin'.

My Flirtation With Fascism

As a graphic designer, I have to usually submit several options in my design for the big whigs to choose from. I'll throw in my bets bets, but also some ones I really hate, because often putting in lackluster work helps push people in the direction you want. Sorry if I'm giving away some super secret, but that's the way it goes. Anyway, my organization is holding an Innovation Summit in October, and late that night we are holding a 30th Anniversary Gala because CFED was founded in 1979.

I submitted my logo ideas, keeping in mind that it needed (for thematic reasons) to stay close to this logo that I had done last year (Exhibit A).

After about 10 iterations, what ended up coming to pass was something that our president really loved, and was also thoroughly accepted by the core planning team for the events. You can see that one at right, it's Exhibit B.

I thought all was well, until someone "anonymously" told one of the higher-ups that they thought my logo design closely resembled this:

Wait for it ...
















So there you have it. But OF COURSE I don't have Nazi tendencies that I was not even aware of. I mean, in my view, the two don't come as close as this "nameless" person claims. Beyond the fact that the colors are different (much too obvious), the tendrils don't even flow the same direction nor does mine represent global anti-semitism and outright evil. Am I channeling floating bubbles of fascism? Promoting the final solution through building children's savings accounts and asset building? OF COURSE NOT.

I eventually got everyone to calm down and settle on a tweaked version of the logo (Exhibit C). Of course, two days of coworkers asking me about my "swastika logo" in the kitchen, hallways and lobby makes me feel like I am headed for a black hood and cellmate at Gitmo. If you don't hear from me in awhile, make sure I'm not being renditioned to Syria.

Extras From The Office

As seems to be a recurring theme, I like to pass along the deleted clips from the previous episodes of The Office. They usually have 3 or 4 per episode, but I am only including the ones I particularly enjoyed.

Super (Animal) Bowl

Holy crap, beyond the fact that after three boring-ass quarters, the Super Bowl actually got good. I thought the whole night was going to be spent hating on Sheri because she dared cheer on the Steelers when most of the people in the room were Bengals fans (foolish girl). Other than that, the one thing the group could not stop fixating on was how bad the commercials were this year. Even when watching them in 3D (as pictured with Dboy and Ashley), they still stunk.

And bad they were, because they all followed the same format ... Make some dumb joke, throw in an animal.

You think I am kidding? At one point in the fourth quarter, we all laughed at the number of animals in a particular commercial that I got out paper and we all started naming the various species. Yes, you can expect some dogs, cats and monkeys (Kelly's favorites) for sure, but crap on a stick, check out this list!:

Koala Bear
Rhino
Warthog
Turtle
Dragonfly
Ladybug
Gecko
Monkey
Dog
Cat
Bees
Horses
Giraffe
Dolphin
Goldfish
Rabbit
Grasshopper
Pigeon
Ostrich
Water Buffalo
Moose
Crow
Lizard
Cow
Chicken
Snake
Cheetah (we decided to count the Cheetos mascot because the list was just too funny without it)
Tiger (Tony the Tiger, for same reason above)

So there you have it, a Noah's Ark of commercial animals. And not one solid commercial came out of it. Sad.