On October 31, Claire, Mimi and I went on a field trip to the Cotton of the Carolinas Harvest ‘09 event.
Photos
Movie (Claire is pictured at 1:25 and 1:55)
Pendulum article
November 13, 2009
Cotton of the Carolinas Harvest ‘09
Trail workday on MST
On October 24 I did a trail workday as part of the mountains-to-sea trail. The News & Observer covered the day with a short article, for which I was interviewed. I really enjoyed working on the trail. I think Tony and I are going to do a trail workday together soon.
Here is a photo set of the day from my flickr site.
October 21, 2009
Shame on Alamance Crossing
Yesterday during No Impact Day Three I tried twice to ride my bike to Alamance Crossing. Once to the bookstore and once out to eat.
The only bike rack at Alamance Crossing used to be near the kids play area and the pretzel shop. Well, it’s gone and there are NO BIKE RACKS that I can find anywhere in this mall. Boo!
Serves me right, we should probably patronize somewhere else to eat (I’m partial to Simply Thai and my own kitchen right now) but long story short, we ended up here and that’s that.
The first time I left my bike unlocked outside B&N (forgot my key) and the second time I locked my bike to a fence. This is not cool. I am going to call the management company tomorrow and figure out what is up with this.
Where the bike rack used to be:
When you couple this with ZERO functional water fountains and ZERO bike racks at JD Park, I am wondering just what the heck is going on in the heads of the “Powers That Be” in West Burlington. (PS, there are no functioning water fountains at Beth Schmidt park either, last I checked, and the water at Cedarock is questionable at best, I can think of twice when it’s been contaminated with e.coli and the fountains have been closed. I bring my own water now when I run. What a hassle.)
No Impact Experiment: Day Four
Today is food day in the No Impact Experiment. We’re trying to “reduce our foodprint”. This means eating locally, in season, and trying to eat things that are not packaged in trash.
Tony made dinner: locally raised ground lamb, with cinnamon, onion, zucchini, and tomato over organic (but non-local) rice. It was good, and even Claire ate it.
The lamb was quite expensive and I would have been fine with (another) meatless dinner but I think Tony was really starting to wither away, ha ha.
He was able to find the local meat at Earth Harvest in the shopping center near Gold’s Gym on Church St near the bowling alley.
(For breakfast I had cottage cheese with frozen berries and Tony had Cheerios. For lunch we had organic peanut butter and all-fruit jelly on whole wheat buns. He also had a cheese stick and some homemade oatmeal cookies. Isn’t this a fascinating blog? Aren’t you glad you came here to read this drivel?)
Claire’s lunch tomorrow will be apple sauce, banana, nuts, granola bar, and cheese stick. She buys milk at school, and has an afterschool snack at her program.
Up tomorrow: energy day. I am REALLY terrible at saving energy. I love to leave my laptop on all the time, I love leaving outside lights on, etc etc. Hence, I asked Tony to be in charge of tomorrow. Let’s see how I will suffer.
October 20, 2009
No Impact Experiment: Day Three
Today is transportation day. This is going to be our first huge FAIL day I think. We’re supposed to minimize our driving, use human power, etc. The irony is we’re normally really good at this (we carpool, I bike, I even run to work or to errands sometimes), but I think it’s not going to be an easy day. Here’s why:
I drove Claire to school this morning. Don’t get me started on how hard it would be to get her to school by alternate (non-carbon) means. I’ve investigated every option and it’s not pretty. There are ZERO routes to her school that do not involve at least 10 blocks on busy streets with no bike lanes, no sidewalks, and heavy construction. It’s a very depressing fact of life here. I’m really familiar with all the routes and various streets, cut-throughs, etc. Not going to happen.
Tony has to drive to NCSU to meet a friend. This means 120 miles round trip of SUV carbon.
My bike is at work and it has a flat tire. This means somehow getting to work (car? run?) and fixing the tire, then biking home.
On top of that, in order to get better at fixing my bike I was going to go to REI’s bike maintenance class tonight. It’s in Greensboro. Sigh.
UPDATE: did not go to bike maint class. Instead, pumped tires at work, rode bike to do errands, then home, then bike to eat out (ack) meet Tony for dinner after his trip back. He drove us home. Tried to find least objectionable thing on the menu. Reminds me why I hate to eat out. Tomorrow? Food day and Tony is cooking!
October 19, 2009
No Impact Experiment, Day Two
The goal of the No Impact Experiment was to reduce trash. We kept two bags of our trash collected from Sunday and Monday, including from home and from everywhere else we went during the day. Tony kept one bag and Claire and I kept another bag.
Tony kept his recyclables in his trash (he was going to separate them out later) and Claire and I put our recyclables in the bin as we went. We all kept our compostables out of the trash bags and in the compost bin.
Ways we cut down on trash:
1. We went to Starbucks and had them make our coffees in ceramic mugs (downside: the barista mixed them first in paper cups and then poured it into the ceramic! Argh.)
2. We recycled all our paper, not just things that were convenient to recycle. (I am really bad about throwing away mail instead of recycling it.)
3. We composted everything we could, including tissues. (We usually do this, I’m just pointing it out here.)
4. I got stuck with 6 of Tony’s holey socks in my trash bag because I am the one who drew the line at their holyness and insisted that they be thrown out. Since they have spandex in them, they can’t be composted. Since they’re holey, they can’t be sent to Goodwill. Since they’re dirty, they also can’t be darned. And there are only so many sock puppets one needs in one’s life…
Here is our trash (Claire’s and mine) for 2 days. We’ll post about Tony’s later.
(click for bigger version)
One bag from Wacky Mac pasta
One dixie cup
2 straws
6 holey socks
one pink feather
one lid to ketchup bottle
2 clorox wipes
One teabag cover
2 gum wrappers, one tootsie roll wrapper
one purple deflated balloon
one snack baggie
one bandaid
random bits of paper and string, dental floss, etc.
No, we did not eat out (except for that Starbucks coffee). We did eat a lot of leftovers. We did eat a lot of fresh food, and we compost and recycle everything we can.
October 18, 2009
No Impact Experiment, Day One
Day one of the No Impact Experiment is to reduce consumption. Here’s what we’ll be doing today towards this end:
1. Buy nothing. Our goal for today is to spend $0.
2. Tony listed more books on amazon. We’re trying to divest of some of our material goods. We’ll also be donating the books that don’t sell (or are too low of a price to sell) to somewhere that takes books.
3. In preparation for tomorrow, we need to each bag our own trash so we can see how much trash we produce. This should not be too bad since we are composting, recycling, and since we didn’t buy anything today. Ha. It will be mostly food packaging, I imagine.
UPDATE: I took 6 holey socks out of Tony’s laundry so I guess those have to go in my trash. Can not compost because they have some spandex in them. Can not give away because they are holey. Can not darn because they are also disgusting and I really just want to throw them out. What else can you do with ripped up socks? Ugh.
October 4, 2009
Some activities…
Wow, I haven’t updated this in a while. Totally unintentional, I promise. Life intervenes. Here are some of the happenings, no particular order:
1. Claire is doing gymnastics. Here is a video of her climbing the rope at Kidsport.
2. We’ve been baking our own bread, and I might be entering a contest soon. More details to come.
3. Alamance Outdoors is going strong. We’ve got several adventures planned for the next few weeks as well.
4. We got a cat, called Suzie.
5. Claire got her first “real” salon haircut (my haircut is no longer so flat, it’s more wiggly like normal)
6. Here are some pictures of the new house.
7. I ran in Mebane on the Move
8. See comments
June 27, 2009
June wrap-up
This was a busy travel month, but here are some links to some photo sets:
We took a trip to Town & Country park here in Burlington, a park with a lot of potential but which is woefully neglected.
We also went to horse camp!
May 28, 2009
What we’re reading lately
Here are some of the books we’ve been working on lately.
–Mysterious Benedict Society (we’ve been reading this together)
–Star Wars, the Complete Visual Dictionary
–The Penderwicks on Gardam Street (the second book)
–The Amber Brown series
–Ruby Lu Brave and True
–Wesley the Owl (with mom! on the Kindle!)
