Father's Day Update

it occurred to me that I forgot to post my pretty nifty Father's Day gift to my Dad. I wanted to gently move my gift-giving habits into greener pastures, so I chose what I thought was pretty cool:

A solar powered fan safari hat!

Okay, it sounds kinds silly but I think he may have liked it. At least he knows that I put alot of thought into it. I can just picture him now, riding his lawnmower, cool breeze blowing in his face...

mmm, smell my hands!

 

This morning, while waiting for my CARPOOL (yeah, I said it) I decided that it was time to harvest some garlic. It was so abundant and gorgeous smelling that I just had to take a quick picture. I didn't even nearly pull all of it up so I'm taking the day off tomorrow to root around for the rest of the bulbs and clean up the garlic bed. My hands smelled of lovely garlic for hours! Yippee!

Speaking of gardening...

A couple of days ago I was staring helplessly into my over-packed, dark and gloomy garage and decided that a yard sale was imminent. So I've got one scheduled and have began the sorting and tossing process. I came across the ugly bookshelf-type thing and headed for the garbage when I had a brainstorm (I have those occasionally). I had been thinking about planting some above ground veggies and needed to come up with something to use for the bedding frame materials. Voila! The bookshelf, turned on it's side, will be an ideal framework for some baby tomato plants and other veggies that I can think of. Wow, those brainstorms kinda smart...

Even Hippies can be Green...

RJ went to the Bonnaroo Music Festival last week (Woodstock for the new kids) and took this picture that I thought you might enjoy. She reported that there were lots of recycling opportunites and everyone seemed to be attempting to be as green as possible.

It's nice to see that even the drunk, stoned and stinky can take the time to think about the enviroment!

hey, look what I found out!

I just read this on the Habitat for Humanity Stillwater website:

We've gone GREEN...Old appliances? Remodeling? Air Conditioner go ka-put?
Bring your metals to the FREE Recyling Center.Behind the ReStore at 505 E. 18th Avenue, Stillwater, OK
OPEN: Tuesday & Thursday 9AM-4PM, Friday & Saturday 9AM - 4PM

Copper
Brass
Aluminum
Stainless Steel
Electric Wire
Washers, dryers, refrigerators, motors, automobile batteries
Virtually ALL metals are accepted FREE OF CHARGE. We even take care of disposing of the freeon in refrigerators and air conditioners safely.

and now for something completely different...

Okay, I realize that this post flies in the face of being green but I have a confession to make:

I LOVE magazines!

The whole idea of all that information cram-packed into one little, transportable unit thrills me no end. And the photographs! And the snippets of must-have knowledge. It makes me weak in the knees. My late Grandmother was also a magazine-aholic and one of my favorite memories was when we discovered this shared compulsion when I was just a teenager. Granny got all the good magazines too, the ones with tabloids and gossip and fashion all rolled into one. She would save up all of her magazines and present them to me in a Walmart bag (ugh, those darn plastic bags again) and I would spend hours devouring them.

These days I'm much more responsible in my magazine addiction. I have cut drastically the number that I receive and I always pass them on to others, donate them to Elite Repeat or the Library. The magazines that I do get I try to buy from the neighborhood kids trying to earn points or whatever for school (no, this is not an invitation to stalk my front door) but the greatest find I have discovered is a website called "Best Deal Magazines". I don't know how they do it but I have gotten some incredible bargains on subscriptions. Currently, I'm receiving Body & Soul for $4.88/year, O - Oprah's magazine for FREE, Fit Magazine for FREE, Diet and Nutrition for FREE and Cottage Living for $10/year. I can live with this and sleep easy at night.

CLick on the post title to check out their website and see if your magazines are listed. If you subscribe by June 16 and use FATHER18 in the promo box you'll get an additional 18% off.

And please don't tell me that they are subsidized by Walmart...

I can get 40 mpg out of my Toyota Echo, what about you?

I remember when I was 16 years old, driving around with my friend Tammy. She drove a 1968 Super Beetle that was missing the floor on the passenger side. We thought that we were the coolest people, cruising around West Tulsa (Peoria Avenue anyone?) and the big show - cruising Claremore, Oklahoma. Neither one of us had much money so we were always scrounging change to buy gas. I can remember putting a dollar or two of gas in the car (1980's prices) and driving around all night. Tammy would coast whenever possible and that Beetle didn't even have an air conditioner, just an AM radio. I have since wondered what kind of mileage it got and if it had anything to do with the car, the coating or the rose-colored memories of cruising.

I just read an interesting article in Mother Jones magazine about "hypermilers". It's a group of people that try to wring every last mile out of their gas tanks with astonishing results. Most of these guys drive hybrids, but a pretty good number of them drive regular old Hondas and Toyotas and can get upwards of 80 mpg. Click on the blog title to catch the link to the article.

In the mean time, here is a list of what the hypermilers suggest that we can do to increase our mileage:

• The first step toward saving gas and increasing mpg: Always know your gas mileage after each visit to the gas pump. That way you can keep track of your successful (and not so successful) gas-saving attempts.


• The second step: do you drive aggressively but not know it? Accelerating, speeding and stopping short all use unnecessary fuel. Keeping your speed in the 50 mph range is also good for a few extra miles per gallon.


• The third step: How long are you sitting still at red lights? Hypermilers say that if you are going to be idling for longer than 10 seconds, turn off the car. Modern fuel-injection engines don't use much gas restarting. Idling - 0 mpg.


• The fourth step: Keeping yourself moving in traffic congestion. Don't tail-gate. Leave plenty of coasting room between you and the car ahead of you so you don't have to brake as often. Time yourself to arrive at green lights rather than red ones.


• The fifth step: Slowly accelerate after stops. We all know this is true.


• The sixth step: Your cruise control saves gas (but not by using it they way you might think). Accelerating (my cruise control has the label "resume") with the cruise control is between 1/2 and 1 mile per hour per click on the "accel" button. This is much slower and smoother than you would accelerate on your own.

Maybe some of these tips will help us all lessen our dependency on gas. One thing that needs to also be mentioned is reducing the amount you use your car at all. How many of the little trips that you take per week could have been combined with another trip or eliminated completely? I really think this is the direction that we all should at least take a look at.

Lory out.....

Summer GardenFest

If you are looking for something cheap and fun to do this weekend, you might consider going over to the OSU Botanical Gardens for the Summer GardenFest. They are having activities from 10:00 - 2:00 on Saturday. Click on the post title for the webpage for the complete schedule. I plan on taking my incredible new camera and testing my artistic abilities. I might even try an edible insect treat while I'm there!

Green Your Dad For Father's Day

Just a quick reminder that father's Day is fast approaching - June 15th in fact. I wanted to get my Dear Old Dad something a little different this year, something a little green. While cruising around the trusty (ha!) internet I tripped over this cool list from National Geographic of some great green gift ideas (say that 3 times fast). Just click on the title of this post for the link.

By the way, I didn't get my Dad anything from this list. I will share it after Father's day as I don't want anyone to spoil the surprise!

Please enjoy the Senior Picture of my Dad! Muskogee Central High School Class of 1957

Pretty picture and random info-toid

I didn't have any inspiring or informative words to share today but I did have this picture that I took of a waterlily to share. Maybe you can find some inspiration there!

Wait, I did have one thing to mention. Yesterday, I was playing "Tivo Catch Up" and came across a show that said that if you didn't have a low flow toilet (random, huh?) you could lower your overall water-flushing usage by putting a sand filled and capped water bottle into the tank of the toilet to it would reduce the amount of water needed by the size of the water bottle! Clever, dontcha think?

So now I don't feel totally useless today...

A Tale of Two Televisions

Sorry for the extended time between posts but I've been dealing with a crisis of epic proportions! My tv went out finally went completely out. I had been suspicious of it's overall health for a while - poor picture quality, mysterious buzzing, green spots - so I braced myself for what was sure to come.


When the end finally came, it was almost a relief. I could now test my personal theory that tv has become too important in my life. Now, I'm no anti-tv advocate but I do think I waste too much time with it when other things could be accomplished. So my first solution was to just move the bedroom tv (19 inch) into the living room and make do with that. It quickly became apparent that my middle-aged eyes couldn't clearly see the Tivo information so another solution needed to be reached.


Solution #2 - I picked up a 27 inch tv at a yard sale for $20. A pretty good deal, huh? Not so much. After it was plugged in for about 30 minutes and the entire screen turned RED! I fiddled with it, asked a few experts (tech guys around the office) and determined that I had a lemon, a clunker, I was gypped! So on to...


Solution #3 - I cruised on down to the Habitat Restore to see what they had in stock and YES - there was a gorgeous 27 inch tv that worked like new. The awesome volunteers there tested it for me and even hooked up a VCR to show me that it worked perfectly. All this for only $50 and the money goes to a great cause.

While I was waiting to get the tv delivered out to my car (yep, they even carried it out for me) I checked out some of the other offerings. I ofund a potential french door for my reading room and some coin collection boxes. If you aren't familiar with Habitat Restore, it's an awesome resale store for architectural salvage, supplies and occasionally household items and electronics. The proceeds from sales go to the Habitat for Humanity program. Habitat helps people get into houses that might not normally be able to on their own. Check out the Habitat for Humanity website at http://www.stillwaterhabitat.org/. Be sure to take a look at the Restore site and also another favorite, Elite Repeat. These are hardworking, helpful people that need our business.


So in closing this saga, I spent $70 for 2 tv's but met a lot of nice people along the way. Tomorrow I plan on dropping off the "red" tv at the recycling center for a $5 charge. Not too shabby, huh?