Cold?

I call it the lunch cube.

This weekend was so awesome!  I played LotRo all weekend!  And I got so much done!  It feels great!  I baked brownies, banana muffins and sandwich bread.

I finished my super cute, soft, warm, flannel pjs!

I made an advent wreath from stuff around the house.

…..We put up Christmas lights.  And we insulated 3 windows! Imagine what we could accomplish if we could stay home all the time!

Here’s a good project for anyone who lives in cold weather and has old windows.  We got 5 4×8ft sheets of sliver, closed cell, ridged foam; a utility knife; and 4 rolls of 34ft weather stripping for $175 at the local hardware store.  Had to tie it to roof of the car.  Anyway, Knick did some fancy math and figured out how to use one sheet for 3 26×60″ windows.  We cut out the pieces with our fancy new utility knife and duct taped them together.  Then tape around the edges to keep the foam from crumbling/shedding on your carpet.  And go around the edges with weather stripping for a good seal on the window.  Don’t forget to put a tab on the bottom edge, to make it easier to get the foam back out of the window. 

And there you have it!  3 windows insulated in one evening.  The only problem is, its get really dark inside.  So, when you are home during the day, you can just take the foam out of the windows and let the sun shine in. They are also super ugly.  I’m going to cover them with paper, or fabric.  What ever I can acquire on the cheap.  Then I’m gonna paint a scene across all the windows!  Not sure what yet though.  Just trying to get the foam in for now.

There is also this pink ridged foam stuff. But I don't think its as good. It was harder and messier to cut.

This morning it was 0.6 deg F out.  Our older windows on the east side were totally iced over on the storms.  I can’t wait to get the rest of the windows insulated.  I hope it makes a huge difference in our heat costs.

this was THE weekend…

…for leaf peepers. The weather was perfect! Sunny, 70deg, clear blue skies from Friday to Sunday, and the leaves are blazin’! I tried to capture some of the glory that is New England in the fall, but I have to say, these photos don’t do it justice.

Mascoma Lake

Good old New England church

The stream that runs paralelle to the rail trail

The rail trail

yellow

My back yard

Just a cool shot.

There is an old abandon (I think) factory on the rail trail, that I think would make the coolest condos if renovated.

part of the abandon factory

abandon factory

International Talk Like A Pirate Day

9/19 is International Talk Like A Pirate Day. Pirates attacked our wedding rehearsal that evening. My sister got the only picture. When the pastor said “Speak now or forever hold your peace,” they jumped out of the woods! The groom’s men were caught by surprise and the pirate captain was able to take me hostage rather quickly. But in less than a minute the men had killed all the scurvy knaves but one. The groom challenged the pirate captain openly as she held me in front of her like a shield. Stealthily, my sister snuck up behind the swashbuckler and stabbed her in the back! And so, disaster was averted on the day before my wedding.

The not-so-dead pirates then crashed the rehearsal dinner, which was a back yard cook out. Our lovely neighbors used their awesome grill to cook everything for us. That was such a huge help. We just have this little charcoal grill that could feed maybe 10 people tops. There were over 70 at the dinner.

9/20/08 was glorious! Clear blue skies, 70 degrees out, no wind, the trees were just starting to turn. We could not have had better weather!

The ceremony was beautiful. Pastor J did an amazing job! He spoke about losing our marbles, and the importance of saying “You are right. I am sorry. Please forgive me.” And the father of the bride and the mother of the groom read some excellent readings from the Bible and the Prophet.

My mom made all the dresses, by the way, including her own (except for Lottie’s. Lottie did her own.) She worked so hard this year. She is so amazing!

And another huge thanks to Lottie, Linda, and Maureen, who kept mom sane and helped with the last minute sewing and all the decorations while I sat on the couch like a zombie.

The reception was nice. i don’t really remember much of it cuz people kept asking for pictures. And we got some great ones!

The toasts

The signing of the marriage certificate

The AO picture

The Hopkinton picture

The Battle

The Cake

The cutting of the cake

After that it was starting to get pretty chilly and a lot of people left. But we still had some dancing with the valiant few who lasted till the end.

The first dance

The second dance

Some more dancing

blogging

…is pretty cool! I’ve had fun posting. Also, wordpress posted a “related link” on my “Stuff” post. It links to the magazine (as far as I can tell) called Green Daily and they just have a bunch of articles related to sustainable living. I couldn’t stop reading! (until just now) I found a bunch of useful tips in just 1 hour of poking around. (I read slow) And here’s what I found so far:

Ways to get rid of flies – Make sure doors and windows are sealed so flies can’t get in in the first place. Flies dislike pine oil, mint, basil and cloves. I wouldn’t mind putting those things around the kitchen. Also, you can put out a bit of sweet red wine for the fruit flies. You’ll have a floating grave yard in the morning.

Bank of America – all their new buildings are super green, and they have a credit card where, for every dollar you spend BofA will donate a dollar to help community-based renewable energy projects in the US. That seems pretty cool.

Laundry – always do a full load. zip up zippers and do any repairs before putting your stuff in the wash. It helps make the clothes last longer. I guess that makes sense. If the clothes don’t get tangled up and stretched out … less stress on the fabric… *nods*

Eat less meat and save the world – IPCC says meat production, from clearing the land, to cow emissions, to processing plants and transportation, makes up almost 18% of green house gas emissions. Plus a can of beans is generally much cheaper than meat. I don’t have a problem with eating less meat.

That’s all for now! I really should get back to work…

Stuff

A lot has happened since my last post. Finally got that Earth Magic book. Haven’t had a chance to read it yet though. We bought a new car 8/4/08. Still haven’t sold the old one. We went on an EPIC yardsale Labor Day weekend. We hit about 20 yard sales in 4h? I found a cheese grater like the one Nick’s parents have (he’s been wanting his own) and I got a new bike for $5! and some wedding stuff. And I’m getting married in 1.5 weeks. And I’ve been sick for the past week.

That’s about it. Did some cleaning last weekend. Got some more cleaning to do this weekend. Been checking prices on flowers and food for the wedding. Our Caterer, Ron of Seasons MarketPlace in Enfield, is so awesome! He’s been more than helpful and is giving me a GREAT price on this fabulous dinner! He told me how much food to buy for the rehearsal dinner cookout and places to get it for cheap! He’s given me suggestions on flower shops and bakers, he’s letting us use his walk-in (fridge) and his super huge cooler and he’s letting us make the pasta for the lasagna, to make the evening just a little more special! He’s also getting all his food from local farms and he’s using stone ware serving dishes to give everything a home-made look. ^_^ I’m really excited. This is going to be awesome! Plus we are going apple picking at a local farm, RiverView Farm in Plainfield, and they have pick your own flowers for $9 a pound! So we can pick our own flowers for the tables!

Naturally, I’ll have a ton of pics to post after the wedding. Our first awesome photographer’s car fell into the river and she lost all her equipment and all her contact info. So I freaked out when I couldn’t get in contact with her and hired another awesome photographer who runs the beer olympics every year. He’s great and his work is awesome. Eli Burka Photography. I don’t know if I posted about the beer olympics. The pics are online. The beer olympics were 8/16/08. He’s made some really funny trailers for this event.

Anyway, the wedding is going to be awesome and I’m very excited! Wedding planning has taken over my life for the past year and I’ll be happy to relax when it is all over, and look at the awesome pictures. My mom has been a huge help! Because I’m really picky (about some things) and wanted a medieval-ish wedding, I had the girls make their own brides maids dresses (to save money). But, not everyone sews and my mom ended up making 3 out of the 4 dresses. Plus she made my dress! And she’s been doing shopping for me for decorations and such. My mom rocks! And so does my sister! She’s putting together a slide show of pics of us (the bride and groom) to show our guests, and she’s doing my dance music as well! And both my awesome mom and my awesome sister will be in charge of decorating the tent.

So, yeah. wedding stuff has been my life so that’s all I really have to talk about. Besides being “green”. The general idea of the green rant I have not posted yet is that: one should not be “green” because it happens to be “in” right now. One should be “green” because one cares. I don’t like the term “green” either. But its shorter than saying “environmentally conscious” or “sustainable living” and I’m lazy. Oh! I haven’t posted about low impact housing! or my dream house that I will build some day. Another time perhaps. “I sleep now!” (a quote from The Lost Skeleton of Cadavra)

Plantain

Not the banana, but the weed in your back yard. Apparently its also called Plantago. Anyway, this weed is wicked awesome! If you get a bug bite you just pick some of these leaves…

and chop them up….

and tape them onto your bite, just like this…
and, boom! Your nasty bug bite is gone! The leaves suck out the poison from the bite. Even days after you’ve gotten bitten, plantain still works! I got several really bad bug bites the other day, but never found the time to chop some leaves until now. I put them on the 2 day old swollen bites, and now the swelling and itching are gone!

I’ll post more on super awesome weeds in your back yard as soon as I get that Earth Magic book….

Cool Card

My college room mate just sent me this awesome card with an awesome envelope! Check it out!

I removed the writing.

And check out the envelope!

I removed the writing.

But the coolest part is that Tree-Free Greetings uses Kenaf to make their paper! Here’s what they say on the back of the card:
“Paper can be made from any plant fiber, not just trees. We use tree-free alternatives like Kenaf whenever possible. This fibrous plant grows 15 feet in just five months, uses no harmful chemicals in processing and is fully recyclable. Kenaf is grown here in North America – bringing income to farmers and preserving our forests. We continue to strive toward the use of 100% tree-free paper. Unfortunately, it is a struggle to find it in the quantity and the quality we need. Every card purchase helps us to build a more consistent supply of tree-free paper, ultimately helping our forests to stay tree-full.”

Thanks Monica! You rock!

Cool research

Yesterday Lorie Loeb came to the Interactive Media Lab to talk about her work at Dartmouth College. Lorie is co-director of the Digital Arts Minor and Research Associate Professor in the computer science department at Dartmouth College. The reason she came to speak to us is to create connections between groups with similar goals. She and the Lab both seek to create and use interactive technology to teach people in a meaningful way.

The project that inspires me the most is The Real-time Energy Display Project or Green Lite Dartmouth, aimed at lowering energy use at Dartmouth through information and compelling real-time feed-back.

What a great idea! We have all this technology, lets put it to good use! For example, there is a little graph on my water bill showing my water usage for the term. But I can’t make heads or tails of it! And it looks like my water usage for May was way high. I don’t remember what I was doing in May. This graph is useless to me, in terms of monitoring my water usage and finding ways to use less water (not only to cut the bill but save on the environment too!) If I could log onto a web page like Green Lite Dartmouth and see how much water I just used in the shower, maybe I’d take faster showers. Or is it the washer that uses so much water?

Lorie guides students to explore how to use interactive technology and animation to inspire other students to be more conscious of their energy usage. Dartmouth installed digital meters in some of the dorms. The information is fed into a data base and then displayed online and on low-energy displays, so students can monitor their energy usage.

But how do we get people to care about their energy usage? By displaying the information in a fun way that evokes an emotional response. Graphs and charts can get boring fast, but Sonia Lei ‘08 used Flash to animate a polar bear who reacts to the energy usage in the dorms. High energy usage distresses the bear, and low energy usage makes the bear happy.

For me, just having a live meter in my home would help me a lot. The fun presentation is less important to me because I already care. If I could effect the polar bear I’d go around turning on and off the lights just to see all the different animations. But after that, I’d try to keep the polar bear happy.

What I also like about this project is that the information is gathered by dorm, or floor, to inspire friendly competition between groups or teams of students. Who’s polar bear is the happiest today? If the information was gathered from smaller units, like a single dorm room, more passionate students may gang up on someone who uses more electricity… But keeping the groups larger, I think, helps to eliminate that blame game. This is just my uninformed opinion. Dartmouth is doing research into the subject right now! What is a good sample size? Is the polar bear effective? How can we make it better? Is it useful to allow students to have this information sent to their cell phones or to present it in many different ways?

I had no idea work was being done like this. But I think its a great idea and I can’t wait for it to filter down to the individual consumer from the larger organizations.

And this leads nicely into my rant on being “green”, which I will get around to posting one of these days.

GNE

The Knick and I went to the Great NorthEastern War again this year. Its a weekend SCA camping trip to Hebron ME. The war is Canada vs. Maine. We “fought” on the Maine side. There is fighting. Competitions in archery, fencing, and “heavy list” which I think is people in armor beating on each other with heavy sticks. Knick and I don’t compete in any of those at the moment. We get points for Maine by taking classes. We were lazy and only took 2 classes, both herbalism. It was so cool!

In the first class we took a walk around the camp ground and our teacher pointed out plants and told us about their qualities. We found several useful “weeds” in a very small area. In the second class she showed us how to make salves, tinctures, oils, and teas! It sounds hard but after I actually got to watch it being done, its so easy! The most useful stuff is Comfrey and Selfheal. You go out and pick young, healthy looking leaves or blossoms (only as much as you need and never more than 10%), chop them up, and put them in oil (olive oil, coconut oil, almond oil…) and let it sit in the sun for at least 2 weeks. Then you strain the oil, heat it, add beeswax (to preferred texture) and any scent you would like (orange oil, lavender oil, mint oil…), pour it into a container (old chapsticks or little tins) and let it cool! So I’m gonna find a copy of “Earth Magic” by Martin and see what is growing in my yard!

Anyway, that was saturday. Back to friday. The drive was beautiful as always. It takes about 4 hours. We got there with plenty of time to set up. Then I went to the ball. European Folk dance is so much fun! There I met Merrewyn. This was her first SCA event and she came alone to a weekend camping trip!!!!! She is brave. And so we danced. Then Knick showed up (he was playing a card game with some other campers). And so we danced! It was much fun! After we went up to Merrewyn’s camp and built a fire and talked about s’mores and drank some mead.

That night was really cold and we had trouble sleeping (big surprise). Saturday we took those herbalism classes and napped in the shade. I finally finished the embroidery around the collar of Knick’s shirt, so he wore that to court.

Court is long and boring if you don’t know the people who get called up in front of the king and queen for awards. We were there cuz we thought Altani was going to get called up to announce that she had become the apprentice of Master Harold (for calligraphy and illumination). But that happened after court and we almost missed it! But I got some pictures.

Then a pot luck dinner! Knick and I made some skewers for everyone, but there was so much food… We only made 6 and there was one left over at the end! Someone made this really good quinoa with nuts and dates and cinnamon… mmmm…

After dinner there was a bardic circle and we watched people sing, play instruments and tell stories. Then we went to the gypsy camp for some belly dancing. It was a lot smaller than last year. It was really quiet, actually, because the Thunder Mountain camp was having a huge party for one of their members who received a couple awards at court. So everyone was there, and we had to go check it out.

The Thunder Mountain camp was far removed from the rest of the camp ground. And by this point in the night, it was pitch black out. But they lined the quarter mile path with thousands upon thousands of glow sticks! Not only did they line the path, but they hung from trees and wrote messages in the sand. As we walked in the glowing darkness the sound of drums could be heard in the distance. Slowly the music got louder and louder, and then we could hear people talking. As we turned a corner, there was the party! A mob gathered around the camp fire. Dancers and musicians, jolly folk and drunkards. As one beat ended and new rhythm began some fire dancers stepped into the circle. Only here have I found such parties of home brew, music and dancing under the stars.

I have no idea what time we went to bed. But it was warmer Saturday night than it was Friday night, which was good. It sucks trying to sleep when you are cold.

Sunday morning we sat under the camp shade, enjoying breakfast foods and a cool breeze. Once the tents were dry we packed everything and piled it near the road. Then Joris and Altani hit the archery range while the Knick and I helped other people with their tents. Eventually everything was gone, and so were we. I slept most of the ride back. I’m so glad we car-pooled with Joris and Altani! Yay for saving gas and not having to drive 4 hours on 3 hours of sleep! Actually, I have no idea how long the ride was, or how much sleep I got cuz I didn’t wear a watch the entire weekend. It was nice not knowing what time it was and not counting hours in my head.

7/4/08

So I went to this awesome party friday night. It was gonna be at my house, but after I had furiously cleaned all day, my friend called and said we should have it at her house cuz she lives on a lake. But McSoukay didn’t get the memo and showed up at my house just as we were headed out. So we car pooled to the lake. The water was perfect! Just the right temperature! We played badmitten, built a camp fire, roasted hot dogs and smores and had grilled veggies, chicken, corn on the cob, and fresh strawberries. I ate way too many smores…. The weather was awesome too! Clear skies, probably in the 80’s.

At dusk my man brought his fire works out to a rock on the lake. He set the first one off and it fell into the water and started shooting fireworks in every direction. Nick dove for cover and came scrambling back up the hill laughing. He was just fine and none of us got it on tape. So after that he duct taped them to the rock and it worked really well. There were about 5 other people on the lake who also had their own fire works, so we got quite the show and didn’t have to go anywhere! It was awesome! And we set off these really cool spinner things in the street! They are like tiny little fire demons and jump around all angry and change colors. its so cool! I had a great time.

Most of the rest of the weekend was work. But I did take a break on sunday to watch KungFu Panda. Very entertaining. I so don’t want to be back at work today. I still have so much stuff to do at home…