Stimulus

Hi all, P~ checking in here... Remember me? I was listening to NPR the other day on the way home from work, and heard one of the public service announcements that they're so well known for. Well it got me thinking.
The PSA talked about the upcoming stimulus payments that so many of us will be receiving in one way or another. As we think ahead about all the wonderful things that we can get with this check in order to do our part in "stimulating" the economy, consider this. Before you run out for that new plasma TV, or even that great new kitchen gadget that you've been eying for so long, ask your self..."will this stimulate the economy?" So many of our goods are manufactured outside the country any more that the chances are pretty good that you're buying some fine Chinese, Taiwanese or Mexican goods. This is doing wonders for our global neighbors economy, but for ours, well, not so much. Unless of course you're the retail industry.

I mentioned that we're putting up a fence the other day. It's a vinyl fence. (I know I know, it's plastic, and comes from the petroleum industry, yada yada, yada.) It is one of those things that I kind of have to do, based on standards in our neighborhood. Anyway, I researched the company that we decided to go with, and found that not only are they a local company, (2-3 miles), but the product that they are supplying me with is manufactured right here in the good ole' USA. I'm glad for it. I think the stimulus money should go back into our economy.

I encourage you to really give a little thought to how you decide to spend yours. Here's a couple of suggestions I heard on the radio.

• spend the money with local businesses.
• set some of the money aside and use it throughout the summer at your local farmers market to support local farmers.
• donate a portion of the stimulus to an environmental charity.

I'm sure there are a million other ideas out there, but you get the jist. I don't honestly think that the stimulus checks that are scheduled to go out are going to effect the economy as dramatically as is hoped, but perhaps we can improve those numbers by giving a little thought to how we decide to use it. If you have any specific plans for your "stimulus check" let me know what it is.
Have a great weekend all. I'll check in as I can.

P~

Resolutions begin - extreme simplifying

In my resolutions I said that we wanted to downsize, eliminate clutter, and simplify our life. A~, my wife, and I spent a goodly part of the weekend going through our basement, garage and storage totes to pick out what came up to be enough to fill a parking stall in the garage with "Stuff". These are things that were "great deals", or are things that we have used in the house, that we just don't have a reason for anymore. We have been toting a lot of stuff around for years that we basically just said to ourselves, " if we haven't used it in the last three years, we can live without it!".

We are having some relatives of my wife's over, that are just starting out on their own, take a look at what we have and we will be giving it to them if they want it. The rest I think we will post of Freecycle for a week and see if anyone needs it, or it will be donated to the local charity store. We thought about having a garage sale. I'm sure that we could make a 150-200.00 if we did. We have been the recipient of a lot of help from both family and the generosity of others throughput our time together, and we want to give back a little if we can. Someone out there will appreciate the stuff that we no longer need.
The other side of this simplifying is that we have made a commitment to each other to not purchase any new junk this year. There are things that we have determined that we will need; a chair for the front room that is not fabric (allergy issues...), a cast iron pot for bread baking, and essentials like clothing of course. The main idea is that we will talk purchases over before we make them, identify whether or not it is a need or a want, and make a slow decision as to whether it is something we actually want to purchase. I hope to have this change of thought process help us to reduce our consumption, simplify our lives, and save us money.

I'll keep you posted as we finish and have more info.

P~

TurnOff, Tune Out, Be Happy (Recovery)

Yesterday I told you about how I found my self becoming unhappy. It wasn't something that I was conscious of, it just came on me. I was lucky enough that the same fates that brought me to this point, presented me the opportunity to change my course.



The Recovery:
When earlier this year I started to blog, one of my primary reasons, honestly, was to have a place where I could rant about all of the things that I was so angry about. I had things to say about politics, world issues and the downfall of society… you know real happy stuff. I found that it was much harder for me to make the time to actually sit down and write out my opinions when they came from anger than I had expected. I’ve always enjoyed writing and it’s also always been something that’s been able to help me organize my thoughts. When I write I have the opportunity to look back and read what I’ve said. It gives me perspective on what I’m trying to convey rather than just spitting it out. I guess reading my own words helped put in perspective how I was thinking. After realizing that there were so many wonderful blogs out there dealing with things that I was passionate and interested in like gardening, homesteading and alternative energy for example, I began to focus more on these things. I began to find my voice again and it was a positive one. I moved to Blogspot as my host in roughly April, and adopted the title “A Posse Ad Esse” or “From Possibility to Reality”, in order to remind me to focus on the possible in life. Not long after I moved the blog, my wife and I also made the decision to cancel our cable subscription for the summer since we would be gone for 3 weeks on vacation and saw no reason to pay for it. These two things, vacation and cancelling cable, combined to thrust me into a cold turkey withdrawal from the news and a strange thing happened; I was happier. I wasn’t walking around with a perma-grin on my face or anything like that, but I was certainly happier. I decided to explore this further and began to earnestly avoid the things that I found causing me unhappiness. I found that even the local news became a mental drain as nothing makes the news like death, misery and misfortune, of course they’ll always throw you that little fluff piece at the end to leave you feeling good so you’ll come back again tomorrow. I made the decision to tune-out of the talk radio and listen to music again and found that I arrived home with a smile more often, and was in a better mood overall. I decided that I may never be able to get the small hobby farm I dreamt of (the dream persists, but not at the expense of today.); but I do have a beautiful home on a ¼ of an acre that I wasn’t making the most of as it was. I began to spend my time in the yard as though I were on my farm. I planned and worked it, composting and tending. My obsession with what I didn’t have became one of gratitude for what I did. I took part in a “Low Impact Week” challenge put on by another blogger that encouraged me to try a new way of daily life. I began to ride my bike to work, consume less, and eat a more local and primarily vegetarian diet. My wife and I began to wean ourselves off of chemical cleaners and started using home made natural ones. All these things, each one small in on its own, began to move me towards a more simple way of living. I began to feel more in tune with my community, and more connected to what I was doing. I was thinking again.


As you can see, making decisions and taking action, combined with focusing on the positive things in life and a little lucky opportunity helped me to dig myself out of the mire. We can all do it, life is a choice. Tomorrow, the last installment, Today.



P~

Repurposing #1

I am a huge fan of reuseing items. Whether you call it dumpster diving, recycling or the new term de jour, re-purposing, I call it good common sense. If I can make good use of something that has already seen a good life of use, or better yet, as is the case with this installment something that has not been used at all and is being discarded, I get a warm fuzzy happy feeling inside. Part of the reason for this is because I think it's a great thing to do, reusing that is, but honestly the biggest part is that it saves me a bunch of money of the course of a year. A lot of times I am able to do things around the house or the yard that I may not be able or willing to do if I had to pay for them. You can see a couple of examples of this HERE or HERE.

Earlier last week we were moving people around the office where I work. This became a good reason for cleaning out and going through a lot of the stuff that we had been collecting around the building. Some guys from our network support team asked me if they could throw some trash into the back of my truck so that we could bring it out to a dumpster, I said yes and that I'd be out

in a bit to move the truck. When I got there, I found that the "trash" was a bunch of the unused keyboards and new sets of computer speakers; they were literally still in their boxes. I couldn't allow them to go in the trash. I took the three boxes of "trash" and the 15 boxes of new speakers home and went through them. After sorting, I found in addition to the obviously useful keyboards and speakers, nearly a hundred old Cd's. After pulling the old CD out and the labels, I now have a box of good CD cases. something there's always a shortage of around our house since we usually buy them in spindles without cases. (Cheaper that way.) Amongst the Cd's were five full versions of Microsoft Word with Certificates and serial numbers. Now granted these are Word 97, they are not the most current versions. But there are a lot of people out there running older machines, or that have their kids running their old machines, that could potentially use this software; it will be donated to our local thrift store who's profits go to both local and global relief for people less fortunate. What of the keyboards and speakers you ask? Well, as with many of our children's schools, ours is always looking to be able to augment it's current computer equipment. I gave them the first chance at the equipment and they jumped at it. My kids will not be at they school for many more years, but I like knowing that classes after them may get to have some use from it.

What did all of this cost me? A little gas from work to home, and a little motivation and time. I find that when I keep my mind and my eyes open, I see so many opportunities to reuse and re-purpose so many things. Often, I find myself thinking "what could I use that for?" when I see something that I know is usable. It becomes a habit once you're able to get beyond the notion that if somebody had something or used something before you that it's no good, it's "trash". When simplifying life and trying to stretch a budget there are few things that can benefit a home or in this case a community like effective reuse.

There's been a lot of reuse opportunities around the house lately. Check in tomorrow for post #2. Till then...

IKEA Madness

There is a new IKEA store opening today just south of Salt Lake City. I was born in Sweden; my mothers side is 100% Swede. I grew up with that sense of style and love for all things culturally swedish, so yeah I have to say I am a little excited to be able to pick up a Marabou chocolate bar, and some good meatballs. But the buzz that I have been hearing about this place has me stopped dead in my tracks. The city of Draper where the new store is located has actually been working on a traffic plan for the last 6 months because of the number of people they are expecting! Last night the news was talking about the number of people camping out there waiting for it to open. ??? Are we THAT deprived of shopping venues here? Like I said, I look forward to going there. But I just can never wrap my brain around waiting overnight for a store opening. I kept thinking, "We have really gotten to a new level of mad consumption habits when a new store is like a cultural phenomenon." I guess the best I can say is that at least from my understanding IKEA is a pretty responsible retailer. For my part I'll wait until the fervor dies down a bit and I need to go that way for something anyway.
P~

fighting the heat fight II

Update on the attic fan:
I got a call from A~ yesterday afternoon, to tell me she had gone upstairs for essentially the first time of the day, and to her surprise our usually HOT bedroom was one of the coolest rooms in the house. Indeed at the end of the day, when the room is usually unbearable, it was actually quite comfortable, a little on the warm side perhaps, but very tolerable. So I think that the attic fan will be making a difference. Yesterday was not really a super hot day, but this weekend should be nearing 90 here, so we'll see. You know I'll blabber on about it when the time comes.
P~

fighting the heat fight

I live in a place that nature really wants to be a desert. It isn't one because of some pretty creative irrigation. Every year we have multiple weeks of 90º - 105º weather. And every year we try to keep our home cool and end up battling mother nature (who might I add puts up a hell of a fight!). We live in a new home with good insulation, good windows and such, and we try to bear with the highest comfortable temp that we can. Still, I know that our A/C ends up running a lot more that we would like. So this year I have installed a powered attic fan. This should help us keep the house cooler by assisting us in fighting the biggest heat load that we have; an attic the gets well into the 120º range. This load of heat sitting over our top floor (it's a two story home), combined with heats' natural tendancy to rise makes our second story a sauna. We have however learned a few really good lessons over the last couple of years from researching how to save $$ and reduce our energy consumption.

• Get a programmable digital thermostat first thing. They are far more accurate, and less susceptible to human error( i.e. forgetting to turn off/down at night). They can be programmed to run during the specific hours needed, or can stay off all day while your out, and turn on only an hour before you get back home so you return to a comfortable house, that hasn't been that way all day for no reason.

• If you have the option of "AUTO / ON" on your thermostat for the fan. Try leaving it "ON" whenever your in the house. the AUTO setting will only kick on the fan when the thermo. senses that the A/C needs to kick on to cool the house (this works for heaters in the winter also). The problem is that as I said before heat rises and cool air settles, we all know that, but our thermo. doesn't; it senses the air around it and that's all. Leaving the fan on all the time, will bring in air through vents cold air returns and will recirculate it through the vent registers. In a home like mine with a second story this has the effect of leveling the temperatures so that the colder air from below gets mixed with the hotter air from above and results in a more even and comfortable house and the A/C needs to kick in far less frequently. We noticed a significant drop in our heating and cooling costs the first year that we did this.

• If you can, work with Mother Nature, she really wants to and is quite helpful if you let her be. Every morning, the west side of our house is much cooler, because the sun is not beating down on it. However in the evening, and even to a greater extent, the opposite is true. We open the windows on the cool side of the house and circulate that colder air in the morning, and in the evening do the opposite; both while running the circulating fan as mentioned above. This allows us to really reduce the running time for our A/C since we don't need it until much later, and then can merely maintain the coolness rather than have to create it. As a side note to this, if you don't have the ability to run a circulating fan but do have a second story, or even a high window or fireplace chimney, open the windows on the highest level or the flue to allow hot air to naturally move up and out creating a vacume that will draw in the colder air from below. This is called creating a thermal chimney and can be a very low impact way of cooling.

There are a lot of other suggestions, but these are a couple that I have employed and can attest to. Hope this can help someone with their home cooling, and maybe save some energy and a little $ to boot.
P~

Low Impact Week

Crunchy Chicken, as inspired by converstion over at No Impact Man, has come up with a great idea, Low Impact week. I fully support this idea, and to one degree or another I will be participating in the challenge. This whole idea I think goes right along with the way I believe that environmental impact should be addressed. It should be a personal matter. Not to say that we shouldn't talk about or raise awareness of it, or what would I be writing about most of the time? But I believe firmly in personal responsibility, and in our own personal journey to find our stride and live deliberately. I encourage any of you reading this to give it a look see, and set a goal for yourselves... I mean it is only a week right? I will post my goals soon, and see what I can do to prepare.
P~

Are we consuming our way out?

I am, by my very nature, the type of person that will always look at a problem and try to find the way to fix it. I do this at home when my kids are fighting, or when my wife is struggling with something. I do it throughout the day both in my job as a web developer and in a hundred other circumstances when I see some problem that I determine needs a solution. This may be something as simple as finding some creative way of watering my cubicle plants, or something as complex as coming up with a new design for a wind turbine with less blade span that I could use at my suburban home. At any rate this natural tendency more often that not manifests itself in some creation or device. Because of this, I think, I am very prone to looking at our forthcoming problem with energy dependence or more to the point lack of energy independence as a “problem” that can be mitigated through Energy Efficient (EE) devices, alternative power sources, and or bio-fuels and the like. Now granted, these are all great alternatives, and we at our house have begun to move in that direction. But do they really address the issue? I read an article today that struck me as very balanced; it made some very interesting points and led me to think about some of my views.
The crux of the article as I saw it was that while we continue to focus on the new and improved, EE, and alternative ways of doing things we lose focus on some of the most elemental things that everyone can do to become more responsible (Ref. this blog entry to get an idea of where I come down on environmental responsibility. I know my views will be contrary to many of yours; I’m not trying to change your mind, just let you know what’s in mine.). Things like reducing our personal level of consumption, giving second lives to things through creative reuse, and recycling our resources. One of the points of the article that struck me was this:

“Enter big enviro telling people that excessive consumption is not bad at all because it gives the consumer the ability to affect change with purchasing power. The erudite techno-magician waves his wand, uttering ‘Don’t look at the mounds of discarded junk that go into landfills. Look over here at the fabulous eco-gadgets of our corporate friends.’”

This made me look at a long held position of mine. As I mentioned on the Earth Day Blog that I put up, I think it is a good thing for large retailers like Wal-Mart to be making efforts to bring “Greening” to the public consciousness. I still believe this to be true. I do however have to revisit my idea of a consumer driven movement towards self sufficiency.
We humans as a species have faced other obstacles to our survival in the past. As we continued to thrive and multiply, we began to have problems hunting or gathering all of the food stuffs that we needed from nature. So we manipulated them to our advantage; read industrial agri-business. This did solve the problem with starvation, but in my opinion changed the quality of the food, and vastly altered the face of the landscape; neither for the better. My point of this digression is that are we poised to do the same again? If we focus solely on EE appliances, and alternative means of replacing our energy, does that really do anything for the problem? We are still consuming at the same rate. I don’t believe that we should, as a populous, leave our city living ways and move to the country to return to a village centered way of life (although for some that wouldn’t be so bad…*wink*.). But I do think we can definitely look at our patterns of consumption and see where we can improve on that before trying to just find a quick technology solution. I’m not going to send my ’87 Toyota to the scrap heap for a new hybrid just to save a few miles to the gallon if you know what I mean. Give the article a read if you have the time, and share your opinions.
‘Til next time.
P~