What is an Otterball
Otterball is a web design company that Jason designs for and a good friend of ours, Paul started. I’m somewhat invested, as you can tell! 
I’m am so excited about how well they are doing and we’re thrilled about the progress that the company is making. They recently released Dave Barnes new website and are working on projects with Music City Unsigned, Yale Music Scene, and ScreenSurge. Right now you can find us at www.otterball.com, Yelp, Facebook, and we’re working on a Myspace. Feel free to peruse around the sites and give us your thoughts. Pass the cool stuff you find along. We all need a little plug every now and then right? ENJOY!
Do you read me?
If you read my blog, don’t forget to add me to your blogroll. If you don’t see your name on mine, please let me know. Thanks Ginger for doing this!
Valentine’s Day
Ahh Valentine’s Day… or shall we call it V-Day? ‘V’ standing for Valentine’s of course… not vampire, or vicious, or vixen… just Valentine’s. So where was I? Oh yes… ahhh V-Day! It’s a day of love… giving love, sharing love, receiving love, talkin’ ’bout it, wishin’ you had it, celebrating it, buying stuff because of it… Well Jason and I of course did the last thing and OH THE LOVE! You know you’re in love when you get just a little bit giddy when you get this right here for V-Day and when you GIVE this right here for V-Day! Happy V-Day to all you love birds! Have a tubular fishy day!
Namdaemun Gate – Seoul, Korea
This is what it looked like in December when Jason was there… 
This is what it looks like now… 
Going Green in the Bathroom
Taking a shorter shower.
Every two minutes you save on your shower can conserve more than 10 gallons of water and that can add up. If everyone in the country saved just one gallon from their daily shower (or 12 seconds), over the course of a year it would equal twice the amount of freshwater withdrawn from the Great Lakes every day. The Great Lakes are the world’s largest source of freshwater. So what does this all mean? Shorten your shower by 12 seconds to conserve water… that’s 12 seconds people! 12 seconds!
Brushing your teeth. Turn off the tap while you brush your teeth. You’ll conserve up to 5 gallons of water per day. Throughout the entire US, the daily savings could add up to 1.5 billion gallons – more water than is consumed per day across all of NYC. Another option, and one that Jennifer Anniston has adopted is brushing your teeth while in the shower.
Toilet flushing. Try to flush just one less time per day, and you’ll save about 4.5 gallons of water which is as much water as the average person in Africa uses for a whole day of drinking, cooking, bathing, and cleaning. WOW!
Help New Orleans
We cannot forget…
In an effort to help re-build the parts of New Orleans devastated by Hurricane Katrina, Ellen has joined forces with Brad Pitt’s ”Make It Right” Foundation. Ellen has created a special Team Sponsored Home and made an initial donation. She wants you to join her. Go to makeitrightnola.org to become part of Ellen’s team. You can contribute cash, or adopt a part of the house — ceiling fan, refrigerator, kitchen tile, etc. Ellen thanks you and the people of New Orleans thank you.
Help Ellen raise money to support the New Orleans rebuild project “Make It Right” by buying this t-shirt for $24.99.(It also comes in black and white. http://www.ellenshop.com
Super Bowl Clean Up
Don’t forget to recycle all your glass beer bottles and cardboard pizza boxes!
Green Thoughts
Don’t forget to comment on my posts and leave your thoughts, ideas, experiences, etc!
Going Green – Paper
Alrighty, here we go! Are you ready?This is not taken directly from the book but it’s just my first challenge to you. Jason and I already do this and it has made such a huge impact on my daily life at home and at work…Recycling PaperIt’s the easiest thing you can do to save the planet.There are several ways you can go about doing this and I will share with you what has worked best for us.1. This one is good for those that live in an apartment and this is how we started. When you go to the grocery store start asking for paper bags for your groceries (especially if they have handles). When you get home, find a nice place for them. We put ours under the sink in the kitchen. One at a time, start throwing all your paper goods away in these grocery bags. Once one is full, recyle it. Most likely your apartment complex will have a recycle bin. If not, take it back to the grocery store, they will. You might want to put one of these bags in each room. If you’re all about aesthetics though, you might want to invest in a square waste basket to hide the brown bag in Oh, and next time you go to the grocery store, take all your plastic grocery bags with you and recyle those too!2. This is what we do now…. First things first, go out to Ikea and buy this - 
If you don’t have an Ikea, I’m sure Walmart will have something similar. It’s a bin with a flip lid and it’s just perfect for recycling! It’s larger so it holds a lot more than the paper bag. Not to mention that it’s better looking. Am I right ladies?! All you have to do when you’re ready to go to the recycling bin is dump it out. We also have one for all our plastic & glass bottles but that’s another day. So, start there. Take all the paper you throw away and put it in a separate container. You will be AMAZED at just how much of your trash IS paper.
Going Green
A couple weeks ago I bought a book called “The Green Book.” I would have never even thought about buying this book in Houston or Nashville mainly because recycling is such a big deal around here and secondly because I now work in a bookstore.So, I figured because of there’s not a lot of publicity on “going green” in H-town or Nashvegas, I’m assuming most of you don’t think about it often. If you do, then many kudos to you! You are my greenies!Starting ASAP, I am going to be posting excerpts from the book that I have either taken on myself or think it would apply to you. I will be challenging each and everyone one of you to act on them. Then, after a week of practicing that new thing, tell me about your experiences, thoughts, etc, and then pass it along to a friend, share the wealth, and see what kind of impact you can make on the world. This is going to be my imapct!Be looking forward to some quick and easy steps you can make to change your life and the world. If you can change one thing in your lifestyle to help the planet then that’s better than not changing anything at all!Reduce, Reuse, Recycle!
