My heart is hurting this week for two friends and a family member who are going through sad and difficult experiences. CH, KG, and HB - I love you and wish I could be with each of you to give you hugs and love. This is truly a sad week.

Ode to my Pac-Man lunchbox

Actually I am not very creative and grammar was never my forte (read: engineer) so I won't subject you to any poetry. But isn't my lunchbox great? My advisor poked fun at it today but I think it is pretty cool.

Eric really likes it when I have a loose utensil rattling around in it and he can hear me coming 2 blocks away.

More water

It is raining today so I might as well write a little more about water... A friend sent an email out this morning with a news release on bottled water. You can read it here if you are interested. A point that stood out to me was that bottled water is regulated by the FDA - a federal agency - so bottled water collected and sold in the same state does not have to meet the FDA requirements.

A little poking around at our local EPA and water treatment plant made me realize that our home faucet filter, which uses a carbon filter, does little. It does remove the clorine smell and taste but our water treatment plant uses an active carbon filter towards the end of the treatment process and this does all and more than the dinky faucet filter in terms of contaminants. Our city sends out a water newsletter every once in a while and I looked over the last one but there was no mention of pharmaceuticals. I'm going to try the EPA water quality hotline tomorrow: 1-800-426-4791.