Pictures

Click on the photos to make them larger. You can see my dogs 3 gray hairs. They are so funny. He's had them since he was a pup. Sorry they are so blurry. I am bad with a camera I guess.

So here is the biggest frog I've ever seen. The photo in the rocks there is actually the giant frog and a regular sized frog. His blending skills are stellar, so you have to look for him. Then there are some geese that are migrating I guess. Evil fucking birds. Actually those are much nicer than the canadian geese. That is my dog oscar with the frog, I've lovingly named Jeremiah. Oscar is a mini-dachshund and weighs like 11 or 12 lbs and about 15 inches long and maybe 7 inches tall to give you some perspective on this fucking frog. Also, when I was carrying Jeremiah, he put his legs on my chest and jumped with such force that he flew out of my hand and on to the ground where oscar picked him up and ran with him. He didn't hurt him or even break its skin and the frog hopped away back to the lake, but oscar was drooling for about an hour and hasn't been right all day. I'm starting to think there is something to that legend that says if you lick a frogs back you will get high. There was a gekko or another lizzard like that too, but I just put him in the brush and didn't take a picture. I wish I did now.

It was like 55 and rainy all day. The photos actually remind me of what I think Oregon looks like in the winter. Fucking beautiful. I like it when the sun is out too, but this is perfect weather for me.

Issues

I am having major issues with my main computer, my back up laptop seems to be having issues as well that I cannot even define. It just took me 20 minutes to log on to blogger. It will likely take a few days to get back to 100%. I will still try to make posts and read the ones y'all make.

I just wanted to let everyone know why I'll likely be MIA for a few days.... Maybe even a week. If your suggestion is to use the library, school, or my parents computers, I REFUSE to use a Microsoft operating system. Simple as that. :-)

Questions for Yous Guys

I thought that I'd throw a little accent in there with the "yous guys." As many of you know I've moved in to my parents and I've spent about 3 grand so far making a suitable room for me. I'm used to a high standard of living... Leave me alone, I feel guilty enough as it is. Anyways, I am preparing for a garden next year, a field of wild flowers, and my parents are the biggest waste producers you have ever met. I am starting a binder full of print outs (not green I know) of different things we can do to become more green. I just spent 400 dollars on fucking CFL light bulbs last night, which my mom bitched about. She is afraid my dog will get mercury poisoning. This is what I'm dealing with guys. They are staying or I go, and they loose the house. End of discussion.

My question to you all, since I know Lisa and Kerry (what is your real name hun?) are environmentally aware. I will have specific questions regarding the wildlife here and maybe I'll go into detail with what is around here. I want to know some basic tips you may have though. When my room is done I should have a bunch of left over 2x4s and 2x8s, and I'm going to build a recycling center here, buy a can crusher, and try to get them off bottled water. I strictly use a britta filter and a stainless steel water bottle (I'm petrified of BPA). Can you help figure out how many bins I need? Paper, Plastic (does that need more than one?), Glass, what else? What can't be recycled? Like I think detergent can't be. Also, and this is a big question, anyone have compost piles? I really would like to start one for the garden. I just don't know anything or where to put it. Our property is basically the movie Bambi with an extra shit ton of raccoons. We have a forrest and a super mega massive natural pond nearby. I don't know how to keep them out.

Please be thorough if you can. I would really really really appreciate the help. I am going to do research too, but learning from your friends mistakes is always the best way to learn. So I'd like to start there. Any tips on how to get my parents into it would be great too. My mom is one of those people who will not accept change. Remember the lightbulb story. I will have to sell her like crazy. I just want to start doing some good in this world. When I get past the planning and actually building and practicing, I will keep a photo diary on here. I only have a shitty iPhone, but you'll be able to get the idea.

Unrelated: Farmer's Almanac said we are going to have a fucking freezing winter with mega loads of snow. So if that can be used somehow to green stuff let me know. I know since I started typing this, I am now going to save the saw dust for salt. You can do that right?

I'm also treating video right now that I will then have to upload just for you guys. It is about a company that has built a carbon filter for the air. Their theory is that one day we will have carbon filter farms like the pinwheels outside Palm Springs. You should enjoy it. It is high quality and from Nova Science Now (The Greatest Show on Television).

On a scale of practical to extravegantly expensive, lets keep the top side around moderate please. Unless you know how to grow a money tree. Also ways to make income off of it would be great too. I am also planning a garden, and I want to know what kind of stuff you can grow and can into different stuff that will save money throughout the year. I'm also trying coupons, but that will be another post. I have things I've found I'd like to share with you about coupons later.

Thank you, and please spend some time thinking about this. I really really want to do my part and my parents part in helping save the planet, or at least becoming the model green family in the neighborhood. We are really close with all 10 houses in neighborhood, so they may be able to help or give us stuff to recycle as well. I'm just begging for ideas guys.

Look forward for the video on Carbon Filter Farms later tonight or tomorrow. Thanks yous guys.

Nostalgia

It is 5 am CST and I just got home. Around 3 am I decided to drive around and jam because I was insanely bored. I drove thru the town I went to high school in, and it was a major smack in the face. I got a really a good view of what has happened to our country. You may need a little background information. I was in High School in the late 90's and early 00's - how are we saying that? Clinton was really the president of my memorable youth.

When I was in high school the town I was in was a working class town. Really, it was the type of town that I would want to bring my child up in. I'd say the average combined income of the families I knew was about 60k, mine was about 110k. In my town my family was relatively well off, but not wealthy. The city is now pretty much dead. Now all the houses appear to be lower class, and I would imagine their incomes are substantially less. All the mom and pop stuff is shut down in what appear to be abandoned buildings. The only things that are bigger and better are the hospital, banks, and schools. I feel like it is a very representative sample of the country as a whole.

Then there is where I grew up in Chicago. I lived, and my entire family lived in Wicker Park, Chicago. Now the buildings that were like 200-300k dollars are going for 1-1.5 million. That has been built up like crazy and is crazy beautiful where it was kind of sketchy before.

What happened? I remember when I was in high school corporations were doing anything they could to retain employees. They were matching 401(k)s at over 100% and now I don't think they match at all. There is nearly no opportunity anymore. I know people with master's degrees working as bartenders and serving coffee at Starbucks. When I was in school grown ups told us we couldn't handle the real world... Really? I feel like they couldn't handle the real world and that is why the majority of my generation has absolutely no real opportunity. I know it isn't fair to blame older generations, and I really don't. It is something that just happened and was obviously not intentional. I just don't think the country knows exactly how much harder it is for younger people because we are the ones who don't even get to start a real life. We are the first ones to get laid off because of seniority and we can't get the experience and so we aren't the ones who get hired. I mean seriously, the person who is giving you your coffee likely has an education level that is higher than yours. That is fucked up. They are likely 40-60k in debt trying to pay it off and pay their bills based off that minimum wage salary.

We need to get beyond this stupid fucking partisan bullshit and fix our country. We need to get back to where we were in the 90's when people were only partially miserable, but were able to escape it when they went home. Now we can't even do that. Can we agree that we need to quit outsourcing and focus on buiding jobs? Can we analyze what happens to the population when corporations grow, ie bringing in walmart to small towns. Why is all the money going to large cities? Should fixing health care on paper really take 6 months? You could get a group together at any business school in the country and they could have it fixed in a week or two. The shit that is going on is truly ridiculous and while those people are collecting millions of dollars in salary/benefits an entire generation and like 40 percent of the population is suffering, in the true sense of the word. Our country is dying. I don't even think that is a sensational statement anymore.

I don't know what it looked like when Russia collapsed, but I would venture to guess that it looked something like this towards the beginning. We are in real crisis in America. I'm truly offended by anyone saying that the recession is over. That is horseshit. The reality of the situation doesn't work in business cycles. We don't live by the quarter and we don't get bailouts.

This is a very good production that encapsulates my entire generations situation. I hate John Mayer but some of his trio stuff is really really good. He is just a tad older than me, but I mean this is the way pretty much all young people feel. Now that we did the impossible and got a black progressive into office, people are getting more and more turned off. We gave it our all to do our part and what is the result?

My Thoughts

I am hoping to be able to post interesting political, economical, environmental, quirky stories and maybe once in a while about something cool I have seen or done. If I had gone to the concert Saturday (see the "Who?" post) I would have taken pictures with the thought of posting them. As it was I didn't find out about this excellent idea until Sunday morning when my head was still fuzzy from the night before.
It's exciting to meet like minded people who are interested in learning. In the early 90's when I was very concerned about climate change and our dependence on foreign oil (and our oil use in general) I felt so alone. No one else seemed to have those issues on their radar. Even my now ex husband thought I was kind of a kook. After September 11, I just wasn't buying the official bull especially in the run up to the Iraq war. Then I discovered blogs. Liberal blogs. I honestly don't know how I would have made it during that crazy time without knowing there were people out there feeling the same way I do that were not getting a voice in the typical media. I never thought of starting a blog but now that this opportunity has presented itself I would like to be a part.
Joseph I like what you have started. If this is nothing but sharing amongst a few that is enough for me. Sometime I post a story in an A blog thread that I think is important and am not sure if even one person notices. Also I don't know if John minds people going off topic or chit chatting.

I am excited about this and can't wait to see how it develops! Just for practice I am posting my favorite picture from my vacation in Utah several years ago (before I found out what anti gay a**holes Mormons were). That is my camper at a campsite in Hite, Utah. There was only one other camper besides us.

KerrynowCampau