Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Earth Day

So I had planned on writing something yesterday for Earth Day. It didn't happen. I will however write something today. In my quest to be greener, I feel like I am still falling short. I have been working hard at remembering my own bags for the grocery store. The clerks usually give me a funny look and then still only put a few items in each bag. I end up grabbing groceries before they can to stick in my still empty bags so they won't give me any plastic bags. Sometimes it feels like the bagging person, gets paid by how many plastic bags they use in a day. Seriously!

Sunday with my Girl Scouts, they decorated canvas bags for the grocery store. The bags had a piece of the Girl Scout law, either make the world a better place, or use resources wisely. Each bag was similar and yet different. My oldest daughters was awesome! I am constantly amazed at her effortless artistic ability. She would have loved to have taken an art class at school this year, but she wasn't willing to give up choir. I guess I could always sign her up for a class at a local studio. Where I would find the time for it, I am not sure.

Yesterday's Weekly Grist was informative as usual. I particularly liked their top ten. I will definitely be looking into some of these items. The led lights and power strip were two of my favorites.

Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Living Greener?

So much for my resolution to live greener. I have always been a good recycler, and try really hard to garden organicly. This year however, I decided to work a little harder at leaving less of an impact. Remember how I said that I wanted to start using my own shopping bags? Well I am using my own most of the time. That has been great. The checkers seem inconvienenced by not using their bags, but screw them!They are so wasteful with them sometimes only putting one or two small items in a bag. Last night for example, we were at a store and purchase a pair of capri sweat pants and two packaged t-shirts. When I told the clerk we didn't need a bag, he looked shocked. Please! We could totally carry these ourselves.

Anyhow I found out yesterday that most of this work has been in vain. A few months ago we got a water bill for almost 500 dollars. I thought to myself, oops I must have missed the last bill. We are billed bi monthly. Now the ammount seemed high even for 4 months, but I really didn't pay much attention. Well then we got another 500 dollar bill. I then called the department of utilites and they were less than helpful. Their inspector came out and was supposed to knock on the door to make sure we weren't using any water when he checked the line. He didn't he looked and left a note that said we had water running in the house. Well, because he didn't knock I didn't know if we did or not. So the lady at the department of utilities, which I would like to call the department of uselessness suggested that I dye test my toilets. I questioned whether that could really make my bill go up by almost 4 times. She assured me that it could. I asked even if I couldn't hear my toilets running and she said yes. Well....the plumber yesterday told me no. He also told me after turning off the water to my house, under the house that we had a break somewhere from the meter to where it comes out of the ground under the front corner of the house. YEAH! We get to dig up our front yard! In my quest to live greener, during a near drought(we have been under water restrictions) I have been using tons of water. I am shocked that this wasn't a red flag to anyone at the department of uselessness. I mean we aren't allowed to water our lawns, or wash our own cars, but apparantly can have HUGE leaks in our front yards. Or course a dear friend suggested that I look for the silver lining. Hmm....the oak trees in the yard have been well fed...I will have one nice green strip of grass where they have dug up the line. Umm...my water bill should go down...and considering the size of the leak, I should have better water pressure. And, I can once again continue my quest for greener living.

BTW, I am typing on my new laptop, and keeping hitting an unknown key that causes the cursor to jump somewhere else on the screen. It is getting VERY frustrating and I don't know what key it is or how to stop it. The strange thing is this has never happened to me on any other keyboard ever. So, if there is a typo I missed...sorry.

Wednesday, April 02, 2008

Technology Sucks...Sometimes

So the cookie sale is over. Finally! I just have some money collecting, and a little paperwork to do. The girls and I finished up two large projects for the cookie pins and submitted them electronically. I took a break planning on making the hard copies later in the evening. Well later when I came back the screen on my laptop was BLACK! When I rebooted the screen quicly flashed some ugly color, and then went black again. So, I took it itno geek sqaud today and they say the LED screen has gone bad. YUCK! So I bought a new laptop and paid for them to transfer my files to the new one. They however did not get all of the music...actually they only took the itunes. This works great for me, but not my hubby as his MP3 player doesn't use itunes. The most frustrating part is I was told they were making an exact copy of my hard drive...LIARS. Anyhow, now I have to either take it back to them, and watch them connect the two hard drives and tell them what to take, or figure out how to do it myself. Apparantly the spot on my old laptop to connect another monitor was also not working; LUCKY ME! As far as I can tell they got everything else. Now I just need to figure out how to get all my bookmarked sites back. And I need to figure out this new keyboard as every once in awhile, I touch something and the cursor jumps back a few lines.

On another frustrating front, we took Craigs new/used car in yesterday for its inspection. We knew they wouldn't get to it until today. Well they called this morning and ask how to shut off the alarm. I told them to use the correct key to start the car. I don't think they liked that answer. So apparntly there is a keypad to type in a code if the wrong key is used. Which I am sure they did, or the alarm wouldn't have gone off. Only problem is Craig wrote the code down on a scrap of paper that I had recycled, and while I was on the phone with the mechaninc, the recycle truck was pulling away. So I went to the mechanics and I have no idea what they did, but no matter what I did, keyless entry unlock, anything...the alarm went off. So I called the dealer, who called the previous owner to get the code. We typed in the code, and the alarm still went off. Now we have driven this car 3 or 4 times with no problem, so I don't know what they did, but long story short, they took the alarm out. The car however, did not get inspected today.

This keyboard is truly driving me crazy! I wish I could figure it out, and why it keeps jumping around.