I Hate Leaves!

When I purchased my home one of the last things the previous homeowner said to me before handing me the keys to my house was, "I left you a couple of rakes in the back. You're going to need them".

At the time this statement meant very little. What leaves? It wasn't until mid July that I started looking up at the massive trees, thick branches straining from the weight, and thought, "Every one of those leaves are going to be on the ground at some point".  I should have begun developing a strategy then, but for some reason I thought that if I didn't think about it that the problem would somehow go away.

Well about 3 weeks ago I noticed the first signs of trouble. It was a couple of leaves at first, then a few more, and within a week the lawn had a golden blanket of freshly fallen leaves. It was time to address the issue. Not knowing where to begin I called the City of Kingsburg.....

Clerk: City of Kingsburg
Darrin: I was wondering if the city had any sort of plan for excessive leaves.
Clerk: Well you should have a green waste can in the alley.....
Darrin: (Trying to suppress uncontrollable laughter) I think I might have more leaves than that.
Clerk: You could just bag them up in Hefty bags and then just put then in the can when you can fit them in....or...hold on let me ask somebody.

So I hear her in the background asking a fellow city employee and she informed her to tell me to just rake them out into the street and the city will occasionally come by and pick them up.

Darrin: Occasionally? Hmmm....what exactly constitutes "occasionally"?
Clerk: Well there's no set schedule

Now, imagining my leaf pile and wondering how cars will negotiate the street with my leaves in the way, I hung up. They want the leaves in the street. Then leaves they will get.....

So I grabbed my rake and it didn't take long to realize why all those gardeners carry leaf blowers. Not only was MY yard covered with leaves, but my leaves had also been blowing onto my neighbor’s yard and covering her lawn as well. Which brings up an important philosophical question......at what point is your leaf no longer your leaf? The moment it touches down in the neighbor’s yard, a week later, forever? If it blows down the block is it still your leaf? Can they trace them? But I digress.....

So out of guilt I raked MY yard and the neighbor’s yard. Of course my neighbor, rather than come out and thank me, decided to come out and let me know that the previous week her gardener had blown "MY" leaves off her yard and my yard. (I was sort of wondering where they went). It didn't take me as long as I thought and I soon had a nice Volkswagen-sized pile of leaves by the curb, patiently waiting for the next city employee on Leaf Duty.

Triumphant, I took a swig of my coffee, leaned against my rake, looked up at my yellow-leaved nemesis and had the most sobering thought of the morning...........only about 1% of the leaves have actually fallen off the tree. This is just an estimate of course, but even with a 2-3 percent margin for error I've still got a lot of leaves in my future. So....if anyone is sitting there thinking, "Hmmm....I'd better start shopping for Darrin's Christmas gift." (which I'm sure most of you are) I'm going to make your life easier.

Darrin's Christmas List:
Heavy Duty Industrial Grade 5HP Gas-powered Leaf Blower
A new rake
Stock in Hefty.

Reflecting on the Harvest: Rookie Gardening Tips

My first foray into gardening was a mix of successes and failures. I’ve always believed that that God had granted us “dominion” over the earth but most of the time my garden proved less than willing to easily succumb to my domination. I am pretty much at the end of the growing season and I have picked what I am currently considering the “final harvest” I say “currently” because it is California and any day now the temperature could rocket back up into the 80’s and within 48 hours I’ll have a fresh batch of mid-November veggies waiting for me when I get home.

However, I am going to assume that this is it.

My tomatoes stopped producing a while back which left me with peppers, a few more peppers, and still another round of peppers. This is what I picked last night which doesn’t account for the two bags I froze and the dozen peppers I roasted last night for dinner. I’m through with peppers!!!!!

Since this is my first garden I decided to help other rookie gardeners with a list of the things to expect from your first garden.

1. A gang of snails can and will completely decimate an entire garden of seedling plants almost overnight. Forget all the online organic crap they try to tell you will work to get rid of them. Go for the snail poison early and often.

2. If you start seeing veggies disappear overnight and you think something might be eating them, something probably IS eating them. I figured my neighbor was helping herself until I caught the real thief……

Possums appear to prefer zucchini, bell peppers, and squash. They tended to shy away from the jalapeno peppers and Anaheim chili’s. They must have been gringo possums.

3. Plant half as many zucchini plants as you thing you will consume. You’ll have so much zucchini that by the end of the season you’ll be making zucchini ice cream just to use up the damn things.

4. Ditch the organic dream while you still have your sanity. 100% organic is only for the jobless hippies that have nothing better to do than pick weeds and hand remove bugs off the leaves all day.

5. Don’t overwater your tomatoes. Just don’t.

6. Don’t plant and pick Habenero peppers unless you are certified in the safe handling of bio-hazardous chemicals. Just one of those buggers in a batch of salsa will eat through a plastic bowl. I don’t even want to know what it did to my stomach.

7. Your tomatoes probably aren’t going to be as pretty as the shiny red hot-house ones you buy in the store, but they will taste a thousand times better.

8. Use copious amounts of Miracle Grow.

9. Deny using Miracle Grow. You just have a green thumb right?

10. Enjoy your garden.

The garden didn’t turn out perfect, but it was fun and there was a certain sense of accomplishment in growing even the small about of food I was able to produce. Next year I may expand my garden but for now I am taking a well deserved winter break and giving my soil a little rest.

Introducing my son to ‘Grease’

So last Saturday I sat on the couch with my son and watched the movie ‘Grease’. There are few movies that transcend generations but Grease is a movie that you can view one or a hundred times and it’s like a brand new movie. I realized early in life that I was soul mates with Olivia Newton-John. Olivia didn’t realize this at first but after a few years and a couple of restraining orders she embraced my role as possibly her biggest fan.

So as you might imagine driving to work today I was stunned when I spotted the billboard……

In huge letters the billboard read "Olivia Newton-John: August 24th"!!! I about took out the car next to me as I took a double-take, not sure I was actually seeing what I was seeing. I got to work and had to check it out for myself. Sure enough, August 24th at the Chuckchansi Gold Indian Casino, Olivia will be in concert! The reality is still sinking in.

This news brought back many memories. I fondly recall the first time I watched Grease. Innocent Sandy struggling with her feelings for the "bad boy". All set to rather catchy music. Of course the "money shot" being the moment at the end of the movie where the innocent Sandy waltzed into the school carnival (I still wonder why my school never had rides at their carnival) wearing skin tight black leather pants. It's a mental image not easily forgotten and the subject of several late night adolescent moments of self gratification.

It was also the moment I knew that she was the one for me. From that point forward every girl would be measured against what would become known as the "Grease Olivia Leather Pants Entrance". Of course as the years went by other points of reference were added like the "Lets Get Physical" video and the roller skating scene in Xanadu.

Disappointingly, her film career went downhill after Xanadu, but what do you expect? Once you've stared in a masterpiece like that there's really nowhere to go but down. Plus I think she got typecast as a Disco Roller-skating Greek Muse. Those roles don't come around every day.

Her hits span over three decades, but one song stands out. "Have You Never Been Mellow" is pure genius. You can't listen to that song without really looking deep inside and asking yourself...."Have I never been mellow?" With introspective lyrics like that it's no wonder she's still a hot ticket on the Indian casino circuit.

Of course no discussion of Olivia would be complete without the mention of perhaps one of the greatest songs ever penned....Magic, another Xanadu soundtrack hit. I can't listen to this song without feeling an overwhelming urge to strap on a pair old roller-skates and do a reverse direction couples-only skate. Oh the memories....

I enjoyed July 5th more…..

This year July 4th was fairly uneventful. Typically my kids and I travel to Portland, Oregon to visit my parents. We spend the weekend eating, drinking, and lighting off the type of fireworks that would put any California Fire Captain into an asylum. Unlike California the residents of Oregon and Washington get to enjoy fireworks that actually leave the ground. If you have the budget you can buy mortars that can be seen from Idaho on a clear day.

So as you might imagine my kids having grown up playing Roman Candle wars with their cousins were not really interested in buying a couple of “safe and sane” fountains. So we took in the local fireworks show and decided that the next day we would go fishing.

Little did I know that on this 5th of July 2009 we would do a lot more “catching” than “fishing”. Courtright Reservoir, Elevation 8,170 feet. (We actually saw snow not too far above the lake). 13 fish in 4 hours. We would have had our limit (15 fish) but Brieana decided it was time for us to leave. And as most of you men know when the woman is ready leave you pretty much need to start packing up regardless of the fishing action. :)

It was certainly one of the better day’s we’ve had recently and we ate every bit of the catch though with 13 fish I needed to get creative. So after pan frying the first night I found a really good recipe online for baked trout. Click here to see it. I added a couple of fresh chilies and a jalapeño from the garden to spice it up. Then after baking it I topped it with some fresh tomatoes. I also used fat-free sour cream just because I don’t need the extra calories.

I also realized one of the reasons I actually decided to have kids…………..so I don’t have to clean all the fish!! He’s actually pretty good.

Disneyland on Steroids…

Saturday I drove to Livermore, CA. to pick up Jake from my sisters. On my way to pick him up I noticed a huge building off the freeway with a sign that said, “Bass Pro Shops”. I picked Jake up and told him that before lunch we were going to take a side trip. He asked “to were?” and I told him a “fishing store”. He was moderately enthused until we walked in the door….

It was as if Walt Disney himself designed the perfect 120,000 square foot theme park/retail store. Shooting gallery’s, bow hunting demos, aquariums, stuffed wildlife, and EVERY outdoor product imaginable. I consider myself to me somewhat of a sporting goods store connoisseur but nothing prepared me for this.

I could have spent all day there.

I told Jake to “look natural and act like you’re about to get eaten”. The most disappointing part of the trip for Jake is that I refused to buy him a “souvenir”. He wanted a machete….. 

It took all of my parental restraint to deny my son this tool of destruction but I refused. If he knew how close he was to talking me into it he would probably be a machete owner. Few things in life are more empowering than a 24 inch razor sharp serrated blade in the hands of a 9 year old. 

Bass Pro Shops

Technorati Tags: bass pro shops,manteca

An Eventful Day!!!

So yesterday I picked my first two tomatoes of the season!!!! They weren’t quite as ripe as I would have liked but the second I touched them they fell off the vine so I suppose they were ready. I am officially in “Farmer Mode”!!! I actually planted WAAYYY too many peppers and tomatoes so I’ll probably start randomly leaving them on the porch of strangers.

I also got to spend the day with Jake, Jake’s mom, my sister, and her family, at Magic Mountain!! (Brie is in Florida) It was sort of a last minute trip but we had a blast. 

How I know my kids are really my kids…..

…..they’re champions!!! :)

Jacob holding his 2009 River Park Little League AAA Championship Trophy!!

 

Brieana wearing her Gold Medal for the CIAL 200M Freestyle Relay for Kastner, defeating all of the biggest and best schools in Fresno/Clovis!!

I know I started this blog as more of a analysis of life as a Republican rookie tree hugger. However, at times I have found it necessary to venture from the message and share experiences that I find to be either interesting or in this case just plain incredible.

My daughter is a swimmer. I know what you all are thinking…duh. She clearly got her streamlined, svelte, carving-through-the-water physique from her father right? However, you would be wrong.  She did not get the swimming gene from me and I am forced to give credit to mom on this one.

In the Valley’s most competitive junior high swim meet she rose to the occasion and got a Gold medal in the 200M relay. They nearly broke the meet record and pretty much buried the other teams.

 

Last night Jakes baseball team won the AAA River Park Little League Championship. In the semifinals in the very last half of the inning with the score tied, Jake hit a walk-off RBI hit to win the game catapulting the team into the finals where they beat the Cubs, a team that had dominated the league for most of the season.

Next up…..the Tournament of Champions which is the District Little League tournament.

We’ve had a pretty good year and I couldn’t help but take this opportunity to brag on my kids a bit. Thanks for indulging me. :)

Catching a Thief….Part Deux

As mentioned in my last blog post I had my suspicions that the half-pint sized baby possum that I had trapped the night before was not acting alone. I had a hard time imagining the tiny possum carrying off a baby carrot much less a full sized zucchini. So I reset the trap…….

At about 10:00 last night I hear the trap snap shut. Thinking it was still pretty early for a possum and that I had probably trapped my neighbors cat again I got out of bed to inspect. There is was….a full grown mama/daddy (I didn’t inspect closely) possum. It was not pleased at the situation and was not shy about sharing those feelings with me.

Teeth bared, going crazy in the cage, I realized that I was going to have to move him to a more distant location. So I went out, picked up the cage, and the possum went ballistic. Thinking that it was way too dark to be carrying around a crazed possum by a tiny cage handle I moved quickly moved it to the grass so it would at least make less noise that it would have on the cement.

   The good news is that I picked a nice juicy zucchini this morning and will be consuming it for lunch. Hopefully that is the last of the possums but I am going to be resetting the trap just to be sure…..

Technorati Tags: possum,trap,zucchini,thief,stealing

Catching a thief…..

I have a gorgeous garden. I’ve always enjoyed fresh produce, but it wasn’t until last year that I was introduced to the experience of producing your own vegetables. So this year I decided to plant a front yard garden. So in early spring with the help of my (at the time) personal master gardener, I interplanted Brandywine tomatoes, San Marzano tomatoes, one other type of tomato that I forgot the name of, zucchini, yellow squash, red bell peppers, jalapeño peppers, Anaheim chilies, and my personal favorite, Big Jim peppers.

After being nearly wiped clean by a stampeding herd of hungry snails, I replanted, and watched as my garden grew fast. Like really fast. Some might call it beginners luck, but I call it copious quantities of performance enhancing plant steroids. No worries though, the chemist at the lab promised me that it was safe for humans, and as a bonus my garden gives off a nice soothing neon green glow eliminating the need for any additional electricity-consuming yard lighting. Just doing my part for the environment.

About a month ago I started noticing zucchini and squash starting to develop. Then they would be gone. More zucchini/squash……then vanished. Something was eating my vegetables. At first I suspected my next door neighbor. She seems a little shady at times. However, then it occurred to me that she weighs over 300 pounds so I doubt that when she goes out at night looking for a snack that fresh veggies are what she is after.

So my focus turned to thieves of the furry variety. I Googled “Disappearing Zucchini” and found a blog entry on possum vegetable thieves. I had a hunch I was onto something.

I went down to Harbor Freight, bought a live animal trap and waited for the sound of the trap door slamming shut on whatever thieving creature was lurking in the night. SLAM!!!!!! I rush outside to find my neighbors cat in the cage. So I let the cat out before any of my neighbors noticed me trapping their pets and reset the trap. Woke up the next morning…..

  

A baby possum!!!! It was actually kinda cute. If it wasn’t mooching off my garden I might have let the thing go.

Of course I can’t imagine that this singular marsupial was responsible for the decimation of my zucchini. It must have accomplices so I am officially on a possum mission.

Technorati Tags: possum,zucchini,squash,stealing,garden

Memorial Day Camping!!

One of my pure joys in life happens to be camping. I love everything about camping. The relaxation, the smell of the forest, campfires, and camp cooking. It’s just a fact that everything tastes better when you’re camping.

Memorial Day weekend was what I call pseudo-camping. We had no reservations and I happened to get lucky Saturday morning and pulled in to Camp Edison in Shaver Lake right after a cancellation. Very lucky. Camp Edison is a great place to pull in your RV, hook up all of your fancy equipment, and enjoy the same comforts you would have from you Lazy-boy chair at home. We lack the fancy RV, but we were able to take advantage of the free cable and catch soon-to-be World Champion Los Angeles Lakers systematically dismantle the Denver Nuggets.

Often camping involves fishing yet for some odd reason 90% of the time my son Jake is with me we get skunked (that’s fisherman language for NO FISH). Don’t ask me why but literally the last 4 times we’ve been fishing we haven’t even had a bite. Jake is 9 and at a pivotal age where his boyhood experiences will be engrained in his psyche. I don’t want my inept fishing skills to turn him off from the experience but I was beginning to believe that he was just bad luck. :)

So Saturday morning we get up and I announce that we are going fishing. At which point Jake says, “Dad, how come we never catch fish?” No sooner had the words left his mouth that I realized that the gauntlet had been thrown. We were going to catch fish if I had to sit out there all day. And catch fish we did….

First day we caught three, second day we caught four. And while I hate to see others get “skunked” no one else on the shore caught a single fish and I confess to feeling a touch superior. Everyone was wondering what we were doing different. Hated to admit that we were just simply overdue for some luck.

Jake with the catch from day one.

Jake playing with a fish head…..

Technorati Tags: Shaver Lake,Camp Edison,Memorial Day,fishing

Filler post….

So I realize that between baseball games, swim meets, and that pesky 40 hour-a-week task they call work, that I have had little time to pay ample attention to my blog. However, my hard drive is going bad so I started sorting through old files and ran across an old rant of mine. I can’t even remember when or why I wrote this piece, but I have taken the liberty of amending it to account for the clarity I now posses. :)  The amended 2009 answers are noted in RED (Yes, that was intentional for all you Bible buffs.)  The article is entitled…

What would you ask God?

If God appeared in front of you right now and said, “Ask me anything and I’ll give you the answer.”, what would you ask him? I have always had moments where I’ve thought to myself, “that would be a good question for God” but I’ve never formally sat down and prepared a list. However, the more I think it, it only makes sense to be prepared if I ever do get a sudden opportunity to have life’s questions answered by the creator himself. So here it is…..what I would ask God….

In no particular order of importance:

1. How do you keep track of all those prayer requests?
2. Did you ever consider creating a hotter hell for the really bad people?
3. If you know my thoughts and actions even before I’ve done them couldn’t you let me know ahead of time so I could avoid the bad stuff that you already know I’m going to do? You could just email me a list every morning. (No emails received to date)
4. Is there life on other planets? If so, are we the “higher” life form or were we your practice run?
5. What was the purpose in hardening Pharaoh's heart? Wouldn’t it have been easier to soften it?
6. Would Adam eventually have eaten the fruit had Eve not beat him to it?
7. What did the shepherds do with all their sheep when they came to see you in the manger?
8. There are 6.5 billion people on the planet. So if I’m a “one in a million” kind of guy does that mean there are 6500 guys out there just like me? (There are now an estimated 6.8 million people on the planet and I’m still waiting for my answer.)
9. How high will Google stock get? ($747.24. If we only knew….)
10. Have you ever come down to earth again just to check out how much it’s changed in 2000 years?
11. How come you stopped writing the Bible?
12. Is the huge shade tree in my backyard going to eventually damage my foundation? (Yes…)
13. Who will I be surprised to see in heaven?
14. Who will I be surprised to NOT see in heaven?
15. Did Dave Kingman ever forgive me for beating the crap out of him for no reason back in the 6^th grade?
16. Did Paul ever utter the words, “screw this, I’m going back to tax collecting”?
17. Why are people right-handed or left-handed? Wouldn’t it have been more productive to make everyone ambidextrous?
18. Was there another shooter on the grassy knoll?
19. Did Sadaam ever have weapons of mass destruction? (Apparently not.)
20. Were the dinosaurs just too big to fit on the ark?
21. That cute blonde in college that I was too chicken to ask out…. Would she have said yes?
22. Will the Rams ever make it back to the Super Bowl? If so, when and what’s the point spread.
23. Where is Jimmy Hoffa’s body?
24. Was trading Shaq a mistake? (2009 Update….probably)
25. Where is Osama Bin Laden hiding? (2009 Update. We STILL have no clue. Yet I can sit in my office, go to Google Streets, and see the tomatoes in my front yard growing in my backyard in real time.)
26. Does size really matter? (They keep telling me that it doesn’t)
27. I’m sure Bathsheba was smoking’ hot but was she really worth the trouble?
28. Does Bigfoot really exist or was the video a hoax?
29. Is professional wrestling real?
30. What are this week’s Super Lotto numbers?
31. Reggie Bush or Vince Carter? (2009 Update…they both suck.) 
32. Do I increase my chances of getting something I ask for by continuing to ask for it or have you pretty much made up your mind whether to give it to me way ahead of time?
33. What was the purpose in giving me a slow metabolism?
34. Do you ever get tired of hearing the same songs over and over on Sunday mornings?
35. Have you ever looked down and thought, “Now why did I make that darn promise after the flood?”
36. Have you ever thought. “Should I really have “blessed” Darrin with this strange sense of humor?”

Springerquest 2009

As we speak college students all over the country are in-route to tropical locales such as Cancun, Cabo, Miami , etc. to celebrate the ritual known as “Spring Break”.  However, for some the allure of free-flowing alcohol and wet t-shirt clad co-eds pales in comparison to the “other” spring break that occurs annually on the historic Columbia River. The spring salmon season.

Every year thousands of heavily layered revelers converge on the waters of the Columbia River hoping to land that elusive “Springer” salmon. Tomorrow I will be joining the huddled masses (we huddle for warmth) on the river in hopes that at the end of the day there will be a large slab of Chinook salmon meat on the grill.

Destination…….Springerquest 2009!!!

 

Yes it’s an old picture but it’s the best springer I’ve ever caught. :) Jake still doesn’t like touching fish

Beer, Camouflage, and Dead Zebras

It’s show season and this weekend I had the pleasure of attending the annual Portland Sportsmen Expo. February in the Northwest is not a real hotbed of recreational opportunities but the sportsmen show for many is one of the few reasons for the dedicated hunter to get out of bed, put on your best Sunday camouflage, hop in the truck, and shop for all of the latest gear.

For me it is mainly about people watching. I love people but I wouldn’t exactly say that the average sportsmen show attendee and I run in the same social circles. It’s a different crowd than I am used to but I always find the show entertaining as well as educational. For instance I learned that a cold beer is a perfectly acceptable breakfast beverage for the avid sportsmen. I also learned that…….

You can take an otherwise perfectly functional boat, glue sagebrush to the entire surface area, and you now have an almost undetectable $40,000 high-tech duck hunting blind. That’s commitment.

I learned that for less than the price of your average automobile you are guaranteed to come home with your very own leopard carcass. Of course one must ask if it is still “hunting” if they guarantee your success. At the point they could just UPS it to you.

I learned that it’s actually possible to compensate for undersized genitalia if your elk horns won’t fit above the fireplace.

I learned that it’s possible to stuff a dead animal and make it look a little TOO real. Not recommended for households with sleepwalkers.

I learned that just when you think you’ve shot and killed every animal there was to kill, there’s always those ferocious zebras still out there grazing on the savanna. Roy Rogers stuffed Trigger so why not?

Yes it’s always an entertaining weekend and this year was not disappointing.

The STP: Seattle to Portland!!!

For the last 10 years my brother-in-law (Brian) and I have vowed that one day we would ride in the STP. The annual Seattle to Portland bike ride. Every year 10,000 people converge on the University of Washington campus to begin a two day (and in some cases one day) journey through the state of Washington. As far as bike rides go it seems pretty straight forward. The terrain is relatively flat, lots of on-course support, and even the few hills that are on the course are fairly small. At first glance it would seem that the STP ride would be a goal that is reasonably easy to achieve. And it would be aside from one small detail..….the 206 miles of road that separate the two cities.

200 miles is a long way and there’s really not any way around that fact. I complain about driving in a car for 200 miles much less sitting on a bike for the same duration. Even 100 miles is a long time on a bike. A couple of years back I did a century ride (100 miles) and it took a team of surgeons over an hour to extract the bike seat from my ass. Not pretty I assure you. I could not fathom having to go to bed and get up the next day and do it all over again.

Only an insane person would ride 200 miles in two days. However, as daunting as 200 miles seems it becomes almost ludicrous when you consider what my brother-in-law suggests that we attempt. Brian is completely convinced that not only can we do 200 miles in two days, he feels we can join the ranks of the certifiably insane and do the ride on a single day. This, my friends, is what one would call, “talking out your ass”. I love Brian and I appreciate his bravado but at some point fact must be separated from fantasy. While I could get into why this isn’t possible for us I will forgo the details in lieu of the following. As they say, "A picture is worth a thousand words” and here we are.

While I certainly wouldn’t consider this our finest hour, you can clearly see that neither of us will ever get mistaken for Lance Armstrong. Given the current state of things I would consider 200 miles in TWO WEEKS a more attainable goal.

While I am slightly concerned with our ability to complete the 200 miles I do have reasons to be hopeful. Brian is currently working with a trainer, a life coach, and a nutritionist. So while he probably needs to add a “realist” to that list he is at least on the right track and is probably burning calories as we speak.

Understand that I am equally concerned for my own ability to complete the ride. I have a lot more riding experience and may be closer to the 200 miles goal but I have certainly been in better shape than I am now. So it’s back on the bike for me and I really feel confident that with a few months worth of training and it is something we both can accomplish. Albeit in TWO days.

Confessions of a spending addict…

This month my girlfriend Jenn and I have undertaken the monumental task of non-consumerism. I confess this was originally Jenn’s (of Jenn’s Coop Blog fame) idea since between the two of us she has the more dominate tree embracing tendencies. Usually I will just follow along if I think it’s a good idea or ridicule her mercilessly if I deem the idea pointless.

The latest idea consists of eliminating the purchase of anything other than unprocessed food (preferably from a farmer’s market) and essential items involving basic needs. Personally the term “basic needs” is tricky since often my insatiable need for my morning Starbuck’s overrides my commitment to reduced consumption. So while I’ve had several relapses I have actually gone two full days subsisting on food items gleaned from the refrigerator.

As rewarding as this feels, it has been eye opening in that I realize how many times a day that buying something crosses my mind. Anything really. It doesn’t matter if it’s an Egg McMuffin on the way to work, running over to the bike shop on my lunch, or dropping by Target on the way home. I’ve found that a good portion of my life revolves around spending money. Sometimes it’s a little, sometimes it’s a lot, but it all comes down to the same thing….consumer high.

You know the feeling……

…..the adrenaline rush of pulling that new item off the shelf, sauntering proudly to the checkout line, pulling out that small rectangular piece of plastic bliss, and exit triumphantly to your waiting vehicle. Cresting the summit of consumer high, you cross the threshold and into your home to display your newly purchased wares as the family looks on in awed silence. Then suddenly from the dimly lit hall emerges a dark brooding figure that asks, “So how much did all that crap cost?”

Instant buzz kill….   

Yes the high is usually short lived and we’re soon faced with the decision whether or not to go out and feed consumer addiction. Certainly my description of “consumer high” is tongue-in-cheek, but for many it is probably not too far off the mark.  My concern lately lies in how little I actually think about my spending and how mindlessly I make purchases without thinking through whether this is, in fact, a “basic need” or I’m just getting my next “fix”. I can’t honestly say I’ve gone cold turkey, but I’d challenge you to take a day or even a week and think about every time you spend money, or better yet, every time you think about it.  

Bears On Ice

Late one night I was surfing through the TV channels when a breaking CNN story caught my attention. There he stood, the once majestic Polar Bear balancing precariously on an ice cube no bigger than my sofa. The story went on to explain how the earth was getting warmer, all the ice was melting, and polar bears the world over were destined to carry out the rest of their lives floating around the arctic on small melting chunks of ice.

The news story hit me as hard as a 2 a.m. Sally Struther's starving kids commercial. Immediately the obvious questions rolled through my mind. What would happen to the bear once that ice cube melted? Were the other bears floating around on bigger ice cubes? Smaller?
Of course I imagine the bear was asking his own questions as well. Like "Why did those people with the camera put me out here on this ice?", and "I agreed to all of this for a couple of salmon? Or perhaps he was simply thinking, “When can I get off here and swim over to the 1000 square mile glacier I usually hang out on". Of course this is purely speculation since I have little to no experience relating to the thought processes of a polar bear. Although from the look on its face it seemed a bit confused as undoubtedly the camera crew, with footage in hand, high tailed it to the CNN studios leaving the polar bear standing in the dense exhaust of the boats' dual 1000-Horsepower gas powered engines.

However, the mental picture is a powerful one. Less powerful after seeing the same footage of the same bear on the same ice cube for the 468th time, but powerful nonetheless. I wanted to save polar bears and was determined to do whatever it took to assist in the bear rescue cause. Could we build ice caves? Artificial icebergs? Raise them as pets? Whatever the price we needed to be willing to pay.
Of course I was disappointed to learn that the "stranded" Polar Bear, unbeknownst to him, was in many ways being used to pressure the politicians to deem the bear endangered so we couldn't drill for oil in “polar bear sensitive” habitats. It always seems to come back around to oil doesn’t it?
The tactic worked, the Bush administration’s hand was forced, and the bear was listed as endangered. It’s hard for me to blame Bush for caving to the pressure. (I'm too busy blaming him for everything else.) I mean really, does anyone want their legacy to be “I killed all the Polar bears.” ?
Soon the memories of the CNN footage faded but it left behind thoughts of the earth and whether anyone is actually serious about saving it. Will politics always get in the way of our efforts or will we at some point step up and do what it takes as humans to preserve what is left of the earth? I still want to save bears, but in the process I wouldn’t mind if we also saved the earth at the same time.
On that thought I'd better go. Have to get to the Ford dealership to tune up the truck. Have to keep that ol' V8 engine running smooth. For the environment of course....

The Global Warming Scam Revealed!!

I suppose a good place to start would be to just get a few things out in the open. I’m a white Anglo-Saxon protestant, card-carrying conservative Republican straight from the womb. I don’t know that I had much choice in the matter. My first baby outfit was a “Pardon Spiro Agnew” onesie and at Halloween when most of the kids were dressing up as Spiderman, I was donning a navy blue suit and Ronald Reagan mask. I believe guns belong in homes, prayer belongs in schools, and illegal immigrants belong in their own country. I voted for George Bush, Bob Dole, and…..well….…even George Dubbya……twice. Although I don’t necessarily believe in rubber-stamping every Republican idea that comes across the table you sort of get an idea of where I’m coming from.
For this reason I find it disturbing that I have recently started thinking about the environment. For a good portion of the last few decades environmental issues were off the radar of conservative Republicans. Sure if a trash bin and a recycle bin were side by side we might make the extra effort to toss the can in the correct bin but we really didn’t have time to focus on such minor issues. We had much bigger fish to fry. Really important priorities like flag-burning, drug wars, picketing abortion clinics, and keeping our military safe from those pesky homosexuals. We had a full plate and didn’t really have the time to stop, glance at the global thermometer, and ask, “Is it getting warm in here to you?”
Meanwhile environmentalists were chaining themselves to trees, laying in front of developer’s bulldozers, and taking a courageous stand against the formidable Pro-“Baby Seal Clubbing” lobby. Thereby solidifying the Republican’s long-held view that environmentalist were in fact, wackos.
Fast forward to 2008. It now seems both Republicans and Democrats alike recognize that perhaps a few of those wacky tree-sitters might have been a little more on target than anyone thought. My daughter can’t leave her house without her asthma inhaler, we’re running out of places to put our garbage, and our glaciers are receding faster than Bruce Willis’ hairline. Now living “green” is hip, the “wackos” smugly pass by in their Prius, and even the rightest of the right-wingers are thinking, “Uh oh…now what?”
And this is where my journey begins……