1. Pink Trash Bins – Have you seen them? Those new pink trash bins that are popping up in a neighborhood near you? I recently spotted a handful in my neighborhood and after receiving some more details from a neighbor I placed my order! Our new bright pink trash bin will be arriving on October 21st.

Dick’s/Lakeville Sanitation has partnered with the American Cancer Society and the Angel Society to help “curb cancer.”  You can purchase a pink bin and $5 will be donated to the American Cancer Society locally in the Twin Cities.  You can also participate in the monthly matching program.  For $1 per month, Dick’s will match your donation and contribute a total of $2 per month to the Angel Society.

For more information on how to sign up, click the pink bin below!

2. A New Adventure – Today is the one week anniversary of a very exciting new adventure for me.  Last Tuesday I took over as the new manager of the Coldwell Banker Burnet – Minnetonka office.  I am very excited about my new position and have been thoroughly enjoying getting to know my agents and staff.

My new office is located at 19400 Highway 7 in Excelsior.  If you are driving by, stop by to see me!

1. Pedometer Wars – Who would have thought that one of the “2″ this week would be fitness related!  I mean, I am not in terrible shape by any means but I am also not a poster child for health and fitness either.  Just ask my wife how many bags of tortilla chips show up in our grocery order each week.

Well, here it is, the debut of my Two On Tuesday fitness segment.  Okay, not really but I did come up with something that has turned into a little bit of a rivalry complete with a lot of fun.

A year or so ago my company had a fitness campaign going where they offered pedometers to the first 2000 employees who requested them. I thought what the heck, sent the email off, and shortly after a pedometer arrived in the interoffice courier.  I didn’t know what to expect from my little experiment and only knew that approximately 10,000 steps daily is what you should shoot for.

I soon found out how addicting a pedometer can be!  If you haven’t tried one yet, you need too! I learned that mowing my yard is equal to approximately 2500 steps, a day at Disney World can earn you 27,000 steps, and email and computer catch-up makes you think your battery must be dying because “this thing isn’t picking up all of my steps.”

So here is where the fun comes in.  I temporarily lost my pedometer a month or so ago so I quickly ordered a new one after an aggressive search yielded a negative result. The new one showed up a day after my son found the missing one.  With two identical pedometers in my hand a light bulb went on.  I knew my sister-in-law who lives with us also recently received one (from us) for her birthday.  I thought a daily challenge (now known as Pedometer Wars) between my wife, sister-in-law, and me was in order.

I thought wrong. I didn’t think through the fact my sister-in-law was soon starting a fitness internship and my wife is a member at the YMCA. Let’s just say that the days that I am in the office are not conducive to me winning this war.

The timing of this post couldn’t be any better as my sister-in-law lost her pedometer this past weekend. I am still losing to my wife but I am smoking my sister-in-law!

You can follow our antics by searching #pedometerwars on Twitter.

Pedometer Tip of the day: Check the reviews and don’t buy the cheapest pedometer.  My first two broke and I found out after the fact they were quite inaccurate.  My third one has been the charm.  I absolutely love it and you can pick it up for around $20-$25.

So what model do I own? The Omron HJ113.  You can pick one up online at Amazon.com.

I bought mine on sale from HeartRateMonitorsUSA.com.  I also just did a search today and found a brand new one on eBay for $16.60.

2. Chelsie Lopez Production & Marketing -

You may at first glance think that Chelsie and her business may appeal more to the Realtor crowd reading this but in fact, Chelsie might have a solution for just about all of you.  From “How well do you know your fiance’” bachelor and bachelorette video games to retirement videos to property tour videos, Chelsie has a very well rounded business going.

Here is a snippet I found on Chelsie’s website,

“In the fast-paced world of social media there seems to be a need for affordable, personalized, creative and easy-to-share marketing…

Chelsie Lopez Production and Marketing partners with business people to communicate their “story” in new ways, in an easy-to-share format that will ultimately help to grow business. “Communicate. Share. Grow.” is the concept.”

I worked with Chelsie on her very first property video tour and I have to say it turned out to be fantastic.  Okay, maybe I am a little biased but check it out for yourself:

Check out more of her work on her blog.  You can also follow @chelsielopez on Twitter.

1. Couples Therapy – Oh, how I love football season!  You may be asking yourself what that has to do with couples therapy. Well, I have great news, this post has absolutely nothing to do with couples therapy.  It does however have everything to do with spousal trash talk!

Let me share with you how it all began.  My Comcast triple play expired raising my cable, phone, and internet rates significantly.  I conducted some pertinent research and long story a little shorter, I dropped my cable like a slumping field goal kicker and signed up for DirectTV.  Bonus: FREE NFL SUNDAY TICKET for one year!!!

I was now tasked with trying to figure out how I was going to convince my wife that we needed to spend more time watching all of this free football that had fallen in our laps! My fantasy football league just the year before disbanded and I was looking for a new league to participate in.  I decided that I would take the football by the ties and create my own destiny.  Before you could say, honey please pass the syrup, I had come up with the idea for a couples fantasy football league.

6 couples, 12 teams, husbands and wives in glorious football harmony!  That was the vision anyway.  The draft was held and thanks to some fantastic appetizers and a few beverages the start of what I hope is many years to come of marital bliss for six great couples was quite successful.

I came up with the idea to call our league “Spousal Abuse” but I wasn’t sure if that would fly so my wife  came up with Couples Therapy as the official league name.  No worries, not all was lost with the name Spousal Abuse.  I adopted the name as my team name.  I know, someone is probably now offended but it is all in good fun and humor.  The only spousal abuse happening in this league is the extreme trash talking that is happening on the wall of our Yahoo Fantasy Sports page.

My wife has been a great sport from the beginning and agreed to go along with my nonsensical idea but she was a little skeptical that it would be successful. I think that question was answered this past Thursday night when she jumped off the couch to cheer for her beloved Drew Brees (who by the way, she drafted only because Ellen DeGeneres likes him) as he connected with his receiver for a long touchdown pass.  It was proof enough for me that we might just be on to something here.  Man I think I could get used to couples therapy!

2. Radon – So how does one go from football to radon? Well, simply put, I watch my Vikings from the comfort of my basement which is the closest and for the most part, the main entry point of radon in homes. In fact, back in 2006 we tested for radon in our home and found that we had more than four times the maximum safe level that should be in a home.  A level of 4 pCi/L or lower is considered safe for a home.  We had test results of 20 and 22 pCi/L.

So why the concern? Well, the EPA estimates that there are 21,000 deaths each year in the United States due to lung cancer caused by exposure to elevated levels of radon.  Radon is the 2nd leading cause of lung cancer for smokers and is the leading cause of lung cancer in non-smokers. For more information check out the Minnesota Department of Health’s radon information page.

So how do you test and what do you do if you have high levels of radon?  Testing is easy and inexpensive.  You can hire a professional to come in and test for you but I have always used the simple short term test kits to test my home’s levels.  I simply go online and buy them from Air Chek, inc. for about $15 on their website radon.com.  If you find them elsewhere at a lower price, please leave a comment and let me know where you found them.

If you do find you have elevated levels, the solutions can vary based on many factors. Your best bet at that point is to contact a professional.  I had a very good experience with Robert Carlson from Healthy Homes.  They were able to tap into my current drain tile system and successfully mitigated my radon issue.  I now have radon levels in my home that can be less than what is in the outside air.

If you have questions on radon and how radon can factor into a real estate transaction, do not hesitate to contact me for more information.  Here’s to a safe and healthy home!