The countdown is on

I am approximately 2 weeks away from eliminating caffeine from my diet. All of the cokes in the pantry are gone and have since been replaced with new 24-packs of coke. I suppose I could entertain the idea of slowly weaning myself off over the next few weeks to try and minimize the trauma my body will take from caffeine withdrawals. But what would be the fun in that? Nope, instead, I’m trying to savor every last drop.

Ideas for promoting positive change

I have been completely enamored with google reader the past couple of days. I found the ‘bundles’ feature recently and now have more blog reading to do than I could ever keep up with. I have run across some really interesting things in the meantime however.

Changing the world in 15 minutes or less
‘For the price of a coke’ was a concept that I had that small changes could lead to big impacts. My small change is saving a few bucks a day. Perhaps, your finite resource is not cash, but rather, time. Good news: mashable.com presents ideas for changing the world in 15 minutes or less.

Blogging Social Good
Blogging social good, also from mashable.com, provides several ideas for promoting social change on your blog. Since this blog is all about promoting social good, I figured it is very relevant to this site. I am going to have to do some research on which ones could and should be implemented here.

my stomach: acidity

So, my husband has been trying out a new gym and the athletic trainer/owner of the place has been lecturing him on the appropriate pH level of the human body and how certain foods and drinks (read:coke) are very acidic and lower that optimal level.  At the same time, the guy is trying to promote his high-pH water.

So this morning, Brad is filling a water jug full of water from the filter in our refrigerator and I ask him to hand me two cokes, one for my morning commute and one for lunch.   He  proceeds to give me a hard time about it and after telling me I was hopeless (which I took a little bit of offense to, seeing as he knows about my little side project here and such remarks makes me believe he doubts my efforts) he said, “your stomach contents are so acidic you could sterilize medical equipment.”  which i thought was just hilarious.

not for long.

07-08-09(15:35:38)

an introduction

i should begin by stating two seemingly unrelated facts. i’m a huge dave matthews fan; i am addicted to caffeine. And that’s how all this got started.

a few weeks ago, i was driving home from a long day at work, mindlessly listening to my sizeable collection of dave matthews band songs.  the music was just background noise as i sat in traffic, but then, something caught my ear.

Late at night with TV’s hungry child
his belly swells
Well, for the price of a coke or a smoke
I could keep alive those hungry eyes

i must have heard this song 300 times before;  i could sing every word, yet for some reason on this day, it suddenly clicked with me. it took on new meaning.

Now, as i said before, i am a self-proclaimed caffeine addict.  i typically start the day with a can of coke, followed by a coffee when i arrive to work.  all meals are accompanied by a coke and i typically end the day as it started – with a coke.

But then, right there in downtown traffic, I realized, if i could go without just one of those cokes each day, like the song says, I could significantly change the life of a child.

as i listened to the song over and over again, my inspiration grew. why stop with just one child when if i quit drinking caffeine all together  i could significantly impact the life of 5 or 6 children?

And just like that, I made up my mind. I decided that a nice cold coke or a strong cup of coffee was too trivial compared to the impact i could make on someone else’s life.

But, of course there was one minor hiccup. we had, not 3 days earlier, found a great sale on canned cokes and had 240 of them stashed away in our pantry.  And, i knew i would never be able to top that kind of temptation. Even at the rate I drink coke, those cans were going to be around for a while.

So, this is what i decided:

we were going to see a dave show in september and all of the cokes in the pantry should be gone by then, so what better way to kick this off than with the music that inspired it?  Plus, the september deadline gave me time to get the site ready for launch. I’m going to blog about my cause and hopefully it will set off a chain reaction of inspiration in others.

so there’s my introduction…