Rancid-Tea

Going Green

I believe that no lifestyle change should happen overnight. If you want to lose weight, you can’t start a drastic diet and expect to stick with it for the rest of your life. You need to make gradual changes to a healthier lifestyle. On that same vein I think that you can’t just wake up one day and declare that all of your future behaviors will be eco-friendly.

Ethan and I are trying to live greener. We certainly have a long way to go, though probably less so than the average American. So far we both drive fuel efficient cars, we buy compact florescent light bulbs, we recently purchased an Energy Star washer and dryer, and in general we try to buy products with minimal packaging and recycled or renewable content.

Our most recent decision is that we won’t be grabbing those horrible plastic produce bags at the grocery store anymore. I don’t know why we didn’t decide this sooner, but those bags are really just ‘pre-garbage.’ It’s so easy to grab one for every type of produce you buy, then use them for a week or less, and throw them away. They aren’t really good for anything else, because they’re flimsy and have no handles and they’re much harder to recycle than plastic grocery bags.

I’m trying to decide if there are reusable alternatives, especially for things like granola. It’s important to put that in a bag, but there has to be a better way. Perhaps small paper bags would work. At least those are reusable and recyclable. And they are made from renewable resources, not petroleum products.

It’s kind of fun trying to save the planet, one idea at a time.

Dogs

Yesterday at my workplace, two people brought their dogs in to work for the first time. They both had small dogs who both seemed friendly and calm. Since there was an explosion of dog at work, and Ethan got off early yesterday, he brought Ludo down for the weekly fiesta.

At first, Ludo didn’t know what to make of the little dogs, who all crowded around him. The three he hadn’t met ranged from 10 lbs to 30 lbs, and he currently weighs in around 60. After deciding that these little dogs were probably not a threat, and that they weren’t very easy to play with, he began running from person to person, saying hello.

As it turns out, one of the small dogs decided it didn’t like him at all, and gave him a few nips. Ludo’s only prior experience with small, painful injuries inflicted from small, angry animals is with the cats, who happily whack him in the face whenever he gets too close. Much like with the cats, Ludo of course took this as an invitation to (exuberantly) try to make friends, which was obviously not this little dogs desire.

I amused to find that Ludo was so intimidated by such a little dog, and pleasantly surprised that he didn’t so much as growl back while being bitten and snarled at.

Hair Excitement

Last weekend, I decided my hair was in rather bad need of color. I had at least half an inch of blond showing, and my color was getting a little dull. It was time to open a new packet from mehandi.com, but when I went to grab it, I found another open bag of henna. I was pretty sure it was from a box of Light Mountain Henna, which wasn’t as easy to work with, but gave good color results.

After spending about an hour in a chair with Ethan applying the unwieldy paste to my head, I noticed that my drips were kind of blue, not orange. I figured that there must be some indigo in the henna, and decided to wait for the results.

As it turns out, it was all indigo. After rinsing my hair most still looked red, but my previously blond roots were electric blue! Thankful that I had gotten the process started I mixed up my Mehandi henna and spent another hour of Ethan’s time having that applied.

Four hours later, there’s no visible blue. My hair might be a little darker than before, but doesn’t look technicolor. I guess this is why they always say to do a strand test before coloring your whole head.

Launch Time

Last week at work, we released a huge website that had a ridiculously tight deadline, was changed dramatically from day to day and was designed by a giant advertising firm that the company I work for is hoping to partner with, so we had to deliver on time. That meant that I put in almost 12 hours on Wednesday and 14 on Thursday. I got Friday off, but did have to field two calls to bug fix, one at 1 am and one at 8:30 am, and then another around noon.

As bad as that probably sounds, my coworker who called me at 1 am worked almost constantly from Wednesday morning until after noon on Friday. By almost constantly, I mean that he took off about 1 hour, twice a day to drive his girlfriend back and forth to work, because they share a car. He ate his meals at his desk and didn’t sleep.

We have another project that I’m working on that’s launching this week and another that was supposed to launch a couple of weeks ago, but still isn’t ready and will launch whenever it’s complete. Ugh. I guess I’m just going to have to hang on for the ride, and hope to get onto some more big projects that don’t launch for a few weeks.

Ha ha! April Fools!

Being that parked cars are the deer of the inner city, sometimes leaping into your path when you least expect it, I shouldn’t have been surprised when I walked up to my car this morning to see that one of the doors had been smashed in, with big stripes of black paint where once it had all been white. “Silly car,” I said, “you shouldn’t be jumping into the street in front of oncoming vehicles!” Alas, my car said nothing, but only looked sad and slightly ashamed.

I waited patiently for my car to pop its door back into its original shape and cry “April Fools!” but alas, that didn’t happen.

Then I went back inside, and informed the police, my coworkers and the insurance company just how unruly my car had become, and what a situation it had gotten itself into.

No Sleep, Non-Profits and Websites

Last weekend I took part in the F1 Web Challenge as a developer. I arrived at 7:30am on Saturday morning, we started working at 9:00am and didn’t stop until noon the next day!

The point of the whole thing? To create a website for a non-profit to help them achieve their goals without spending some of their limited funds for professional help. With 11 pairs of development teams and non-profits, they estimated that over $250,000 in time was donated!

It was very fun (I have to admit that I took a small nap around 5 am on Sunday, but only for half an hour) and we got an amazing site together. Our non-profit rep, Brian, was awesome to work with. He kept exclaiming that we were so cool for doing this for them and how they never could have had the website without us.

In the end, 11 non-profits got professional websites (all should be live within a month), 88 developers got to help out, and many volunteers provided food, entertainment and organization.

Afterward, I was in no condition to speak in sentences, let alone post something here, so I slept for about 16 hours, and went to work on Monday.

Diamonds are for… what now?

Recently, while listening to the radio with Ethan, I got fed up (once again) with all of the diamond ads which are being run non-stop before Valentine’s day. After a groan of frustration, I turned off the radio and Ethan asked what the big deal is. I seemed to be overreacting to the minor irritation of being told that I should be spending money on something totally without use (or rather, that Ethan should be buying that for me). Well, my problem stems from the way that jewelers advertise for those precious jewels.

With most objects for sale, the advertisement tries to tell you why you need or want to buy an item, why it’s better than the competition. With diamonds, they skip that step. All diamond advertising

At Long Last

Well, Ethan and I were able to get everything moved from our apartment to our house between Friday the 28th and Sunday the 30th. Between some time on that weekend, and this Monday, we didn’t have Internet at home. We also didn’t have a bathroom for three days. Our bathroom still doesn’t really have a door, but having a toilet is a big improvement over not.

We got the dumpster on Monday (after three delays) and so we finally cleaned out one of our ‘rubble rooms’ this week. That allowed us to move some stuff around a bit more, and now we can use most of the downstairs of our house, and all of the upstairs!

On the 5th, we got our puppy, Ludo!! He’s a very sweet, cuddly puppy and I will have to post pictures of him soon. Ethan and I have been very busy though, so I haven’t had a chance to do much other than work or sleep lately.

I should have more updates (and hopefully pictures soon!

Reconstruction Pt 1

The plumbers are almost finished with the rough in stage (which means all the pipes will be in place but the fixtures won’t really be hooked up), and when they are, an inspector will come out an hopefully approve their work.

Our first trip to Home Depot turned out to be pretty useless. We bought a bath tub, a sink, a sink faucet, a shower faucet and an overflow drain for the tub. We returned everything but the tub and the sink faucet last night because the sink was too big, when you buy a bathtub, you should also buy a bath faucet, not just a shower head, and apparently “inspectors don’t like flip-trap drains.”

We have to return the bathtub too, as it is also too big, but the Prius just wasn’t designed for bathtub hauling and Ethan and I weren’t designed for it either. That will have to wait for this weekend.

We did get the supplies we need for putting in a new ceramic tile floor in the bathroom. We’ve watched the Hometime video on ceramic tile a few times now, and since our bathroom floor is less than 20 square feet, I think it shouldn’t be too challenging for us. It will be nice to have the bathroom looking half-way usable for the first time.

I haven’t figured out how we’re going to move all of our stuff into the house (which is still full of rubble, as we don’t have a dumpster yet) in the next 11 days, but we’ll figure it out I guess. We may just have to start loading random stuff into our cars every time we go over there, and drop some off each time we make a trip.