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Sunday, February 17, 2008

Thoughts on Week 7

Week seven had quite a few things going on. For starters, my ear is finally on the mend full time and I am beginning to see the light at the end of the tunnel on bills, paperwork, garbage tallying, pics, and everything else I had fallen behind on. Of course now my kids have off tomorrow and the next day (some schoolwide thing) so I won't get much done there, but otherwise I feel like I'm back on track.


The ABC news piece, which kind of came out of nowhere was pretty cool and I was quite happy with it. As they mentioned, I went with a group of school kids to Puente Hills Landfill, the largest landfill in the country, and we toured the landfill, the recycling center, and a water treatment facility there as well.  To say that it was a learning opportunity is a slight understatement. I'll be posting about that as soon as i get the pics problems all sorted out.

On that note, i'm upgrading my software on my computer tonight due to a whole slew of tech problems, so if you don't hear from me for a day or two, you'll know what happened.

7 weeks in and I finally have gotten most of the shopping routine down as far as what to bring when I go (bags, tupperware, etc.) I'm not going to lie to you, it took a lot of re-training, and a bit of prep ahead of time to figure out what we are eating that week, but it's now not much more time consuming than before, possibly because it's more organized. That said, i keep on forgetting to bring egg crates back to the farmers market so we now have 4 sitting on the fridge. I haven't listed them because I'm hoping to return them to them next week as they are clean and can be re-used.

Last night (saturday night) came the thing that i knew would come up. My wife has been working 6 days a week on a deadline and she decided that she wanted to order in takeout from this place we usually get from. It gets here and I'm absolutely amazed at how much plastic is involved. Now having said that, I was fairly happy to see that they were actually quite sturdy so they will be re-purposed for art supplies and hardware stuff.  We forgot to ask for no utensils (why they deliver utensils to houses is beyond me) so those are being saved for further use down the line. We also got a bunch of soy sauce packs which we'll save but unfortunately will need to be discarded when done. Anyway, bottom line is we learned what not to ask for when ordering in.

One final thing. I had to buy hand soap for the bathroom and it come sin one of those little pump jobbies. Now the old one (which we keep for projects for the girls) still works fine but I don't seem to be able to find bulk hand soap to use to fill these things up. Anyone know where you can find this stuff?

Dave


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Week 7 Pictures


Things are still looking up in the basement. No significant smell at all. That said, I've decided that this week I'm going to move everything to the other side of the basement (the other 4 feet you can't see that is) and clean everything. No real reason, just paranoia about pests and bugs. I think I'll probably do that every month just as a precaution.


Added a new lightbulb and two batts to the e-waste pile. I have a call in to the e-waste people to come in and see them soon.


Garbage is still looking extremely minimal. One of the things i plan to do this week is way it and keep a tab on that. Sort of catching up to the end of the month report.

A few more bottles but nothing serious. I wish beer/soda bottles could be re-purposed easier.


Not much new in the paper/cardboard department.


Another task to tackle. I want to rearrange this somehow as it is a really poor use of space.


And finally the bag of bags which seems to be holding it's own just fine.

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CNET Article

I keep on forgetting to post this but CNET ran a very cool article on me and a few other folks who are/have done similar things. As usual, the dog got top billing. It kind of amazes me how press wise this thing has taken on a life of it's own. Enjoy!

Dave

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Day 48 - Sunday 2/17/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 business card - worms (after I put it into my computer of course)
  • 2 pieces scrap paper - worms
  • 1 piece bakery tissue paper - worms

I love a day like today don't you?

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Day 47 - Saturday 2/16/08

Today's Haul:

  • 2 lollipop sticks with plastic wrappers - garbage
  • 1 beer bottle w/cap - recycling
  • 1 cardboard beer bottle six pack - recycling
  • 1 plastic pretzel bag - recycling
  • 4 heavy duty plastic takeout containers - repurpose
  • 1 heavy duty plastic bag from takeout place - repurpose


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Day 46 - Friday 2/15/08

Today's Haul:

  • 1 beer bottle w/cap - recycling
  • 4 pieces scrap paper - worms
  • 1 cardboard medicine box - recycle
  • 1 paper insert from medicine box - worms
  • 3 tissues - worms

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ABC News



ABC 7 came and did a little piece on me the other day. A few weird video glitches, but otherwise a fun piece. I'm convinced that I don't look that weird in real life, but my wife disagrees.

Dave

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