This blog post is rooted in a discussion my husband and I had yesterday regarding a news item I ran across about a 'green' race car that runs on vegetable oil and waste chocolate. I get vegetable oil, but where on earth does waste chocolate come from? Godiva, Ghirardelli, Hershey, Fannie May, and other chocolate candy companies? An admitted chocoholic, I don’t understand waste chocolate; waist chocolate makes far more sense to me.

After talking about what a shame it is to use chocolate as fuel, we began talking about 'green' automotive initiatives in general. My husband's comments, courtesy of Bill Nye, the Science Guy, had me googling faster than an SSC Ultimate Aero.

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It was a dark and stormy night … make that a hazy, humid day in which my brain is so exhausted from creative overload that it's refusing to come up with a really good blog topic. I've come down with blogger's block, an affliction that is by no means as serious as the potential H1N1 pandemic, unless your livelihood depends on your ability to continually create blog posts and other material.

I wonder if my foray into Twitter is partially to blame. Have my 140-character tweets exhausted my creative writing bank? Probably not. I imagine my blockage is temporary and will subside in a few hours.

However, in scanning news sites looking for possible topics, I ran across a couple of items I found interesting. Maybe you will also.

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It started in Mexico in late March and spread rapidly; within a month, cases were reported in 11 countries. It’s swine flu—H1N1, specifically—and in its wake are anxiety, nervousness, overreactions, and jammed emergency rooms.

The outbreak itself was an epidemic, and it’s now described as a pandemic. What’s the difference? I figured that the one was a fast-traveling illness, an epidemic, and the other was an epidemic accompanied by panic (a sudden fear) or perhaps pandemonium (a place of wild disorder, noise, or confusion). Wrong on both counts. Pan is simply a prefix meaning across. The illness is spreading across a large area, hence pandemic.

Then again, I don’t think I was too far off. It’s fair to say that epidemics can and do lead to panic. But they shouldn’t.

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It's one of those days—a day with a calendar reminder that we are to celebrate or commemorate something or someone. A day in which we are supposed to incorporate some sort of activity to honor the day's designated honoree. Today is a double whammy— Administrative Professionals Day and Earth Day. Regarding the latter, while I feel the Earth certainly deserves its day in the spotlight, I'd much rather see us perform Earth Day activities each and every day that we inhabit this precious planet. Apparently Newsweek writer Daniel Stone and others agree.

Yesterday, I asked a colleague how he was doing. He said, "There's a show on the History channel tonight about what the earth is going to look like after all the humans perish. That made me feel good. You know, being alive and all."

It seems to me that we spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about problems, real and perceived (which makes them real to us), in our lives and not nearly enough time acknowledging and being grateful for the blessings. And blessings exist, even when it appears as though the world we've known is changing in ways that make us uncomfortable and fearful.

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Several e-newsletters arrive in my inbox each week; I imagine the same is true for you. I don't always have time to read all of them as thoroughly as I'd like, but I do open them and scan to see if they contain something I need to make the time to read.

The latest Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) e-newsletter featured two items that drew my attention and made me think about just how much a company that doesn't follow safe work practices is jeopardizing not only its workers' wellbeing, but also its viability—particularly in this economic environment in which every dollar counts.

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At last week's FABTECH International® & AWS Welding Show with METALFORM in Las Vegas, I walked the show floor, which I'm proud to say I survived. Anyone who attended the show knows what I mean. The show was huge and the aisles were long. The first day, it also was crowded with record attendance—a positive sign at this time when we're focused on so many economic indicators.

Along the way, I stopped by booths and spoke with company representatives eager to talk about new products and enhancements to tried-and-true products. As I took notes, I began to write key words in the margins that jumped out at me as motivators for new developments. Coincidentally, all five begin with the letter "S."

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One of my co-workers always ends her e-mails with a profound one-liner. Her current gem is: Events are less important than our response to them.

My immediate reaction to these words of wisdom was also a one-liner: Truer words were never spoken.

Life is a continual learning process. A lesson that we can't learn too early is that while we can't control everything that happens to us—in our personal lives or at work—we can control how we react. I think it's high time people begin to accept responsibility for their reactions and temper them as necessary—especially now that desk rage is on the rise.

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The weather's warm, and my dormant Bermuda grass that appeared brown and dead all winter now is green and growing. Here in the Southeast, we've been mowing for weeks. We have a John Deere riding mower (for which we paid way too much) that requires annual service (which is also costly) and gas (also costly). It's too large for some narrow sections of our lawn, which means we also need a push mower.

Because we've been through three gas-powered push mowers in the last six years—all have given up the ghost—I persuaded my husband to buy a reel mower this year. It took some arm twisting, sharing some childhood memories, and the price of gas to convince him that the reel mower was worth a try.

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Manufacturing continues to plug along, not expanding, but not exactly in a slump either. The Institute for Supply Management’s index, the PMI, released this week, grew slightly, from 48.6 in April to 49.6 in May—still not in growth mode, but it’s more than most had predicted.

The view from the airplane window shows an economy as a series of dichotomies: on the one hand this, on the other hand that. There’s weakness in the auto and residential construction sectors, but on the other hand there’s growth in export-related manufacturing, including machine-building, and there’s continued growth in the commercial building sector for hospitals and hotels.

That’s the view at 30,000 feet. However, many have quite different views at ground level. Just ask the city dwellers on Manhattan Island.

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Various media have reported that a Whirlpool Corp. factory in Evansville, Ind., has suspended 39 workers who signed insurance paperwork claiming they don't use tobacco and then were seen smoking or chewing tobacco on company property. Tobacco users at Whirlpool pay an extra $500 in insurance premiums annually.

A company spokesperson said that the workers were seen by others smoking in designated areas outside the plant and could be fired for lying, pending fact-finding meetings with each worker. The Evansville courierpress.com reported that Whirlpool denied the use of surveillance cameras.

Reportedly, most of those suspended were production employees, but more suspensions could come, possibly including some administrative staff.

Why lie? And if you're going to lie, why run the risk of getting caught red-handed?

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