When I woke up today my body spoke to me. It said, “Don’t run, walk.” And surprisingly, I listened.

I walked all the way to the end of Cushman, picking and eating blackberries as I went, then through SeaShore Villa, then down to the Salish shore and home on a hidden wooded path that even Google Earth won’t help you locate.

This happened to be recycling Monday, including, drumroll please. . . glass! I love Glass Day because I get to snoop around and play cultural anthropologist. Yes, Indy-Cush friends, I am taking very close note of your glass contents.

I concede this may be a violation of your privacy, but it’s for a higher purpose, making sense of people’s drinking habits. My research questions are how much alcohol are people drinking and what kind?

My findings. People are drinking a lot despite what seems like an increasing drumbeat of studies which suggest any amount of alcohol isn’t good for you. Wine bottles, like normal, were quite numerous this morn with some households clearly preferring beer.

Maybe people are smart not to pay too much heed to the constantly shifting scientific research. Just wait for the pendulum to swing back, right? And maybe an occasional glass of wine or bottle of beer is a nice break from trying to always do the right thing health-wise. I mean, we’re going to die either way, right? Unfortunately though, some households go beyond moderation.

Let’s take a closer look at a few examples.

This is a fairly representative sample of moderate drinking over a four week span. It looks like four wine bottles and maybe a dozen beer bottles. Bud Light is a sad choice given the plethora of excellent local craft brews from which to choose, but maybe they’re Lefties supporting the maligned beverage.

Here’s our month worth of glass.

Boring! Some pasta, pickles, peaches, salad dressing and only two wine bottles compliments of the college roommate reunion. Come on California Lutheran University Class of 1982, do better! Drink more. . . like in Thousand Oaks back in the day.

One limitation of my research is that I hosted a cycling party after a particularly long ride, but we drank beer out of cans, so the above snapshot doesn’t represent all of our intake. Oh no, I guess that means some of my neighbors may drink more than meets the eye too.