shley sells out.
that's right, i put a google adsense button on my blog (button blog!) to see just what it was all about. i guess i can make money this way? just click click click! i might start feeling greedy about it soon and take it off, and i certainly don't want to o-ffend by serving the consumer world, but it looks like it's generating relevant material, at least.
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Sunday, March 25, 2007
admission
well.... my compost bucket stinks. i don't know what happened, but what was once a lovely bucket of properly-heated, well-mixed, sponge-like material became a goopy dripping mess overnight and BOY did it stink. ew ew ew. but, no compost shall be thrown away! i cleaned up the leakage and added some more carbon material (i.e. broccoli stalks and leaves gathered from the alley) and will now hope for the best. perhaps i will come by some red worms and make a proper urban compost bin under my sink, letting the wrigglers do all the work of de-stinkifying my waste. worms anyone? check these guys out, they're making a killing from worms: http://www.terracycle.net/
in other news- i saw "breach" last, which reaffirmed my theory that chris cooper has the capacity to be infinitely creepy in the role of uber-patriotic american. unfortunately, the sound system at the theater was seriously fucked, which made it almost impossible for me to concentrate for about five minutes before using all the willpower i possess to turn off the static sensory repector in my brain. i went out to the tell the manager and apparently i was the second person to do so, the first having already cause the poor fellow to start sweating excessively. before opening my mouth there was a moment in which i considered, 'maybe i should spare this guy the heart attack he seems prepared to have." never! i require retribution for the suffering of my poor little ears. this came in the form of two free passes. aw ya.
in other news- i saw "breach" last, which reaffirmed my theory that chris cooper has the capacity to be infinitely creepy in the role of uber-patriotic american. unfortunately, the sound system at the theater was seriously fucked, which made it almost impossible for me to concentrate for about five minutes before using all the willpower i possess to turn off the static sensory repector in my brain. i went out to the tell the manager and apparently i was the second person to do so, the first having already cause the poor fellow to start sweating excessively. before opening my mouth there was a moment in which i considered, 'maybe i should spare this guy the heart attack he seems prepared to have." never! i require retribution for the suffering of my poor little ears. this came in the form of two free passes. aw ya.
Thursday, March 22, 2007
talkin' trash
today's challenge:
see if you can go an entire day without throwing anything away. recycle with abandon, compost yer food scrapes, reuse plastic bags, etc., but don't put things in the garbage can. HARD to do. it's something i've wanted to try for a long time but haven't worked out quite how i can do it. obviously, i would have to have the day off from work, cause even in the liberal food zone there is a heck of a lot of trash produced. at home i have a compost bucket (which is heating up nicely, thank you, and relatively stink free). i also have recycling, (though for some reason they won't pick up clam shell plastic containers, so i have a lot of things planted in salad packaging), so that should provide for some of the things i'm not using anymore. otherwise, i would have to rethink eating many packaged foods and sneezing excessively (or composting my kleenex- ew!).
couple o' facts:
the average american produces about 4.5 lbs of trash per day. coloradans produce about 6.88 lbs. for you average types, that's about 1642.5 lbs. a year. for us above average types, that's 2511.2 lbs. per year. trashy!
landfills are the highest producer of methane gas, at about 34%.
see if you can go an entire day without throwing anything away. recycle with abandon, compost yer food scrapes, reuse plastic bags, etc., but don't put things in the garbage can. HARD to do. it's something i've wanted to try for a long time but haven't worked out quite how i can do it. obviously, i would have to have the day off from work, cause even in the liberal food zone there is a heck of a lot of trash produced. at home i have a compost bucket (which is heating up nicely, thank you, and relatively stink free). i also have recycling, (though for some reason they won't pick up clam shell plastic containers, so i have a lot of things planted in salad packaging), so that should provide for some of the things i'm not using anymore. otherwise, i would have to rethink eating many packaged foods and sneezing excessively (or composting my kleenex- ew!).
couple o' facts:
the average american produces about 4.5 lbs of trash per day. coloradans produce about 6.88 lbs. for you average types, that's about 1642.5 lbs. a year. for us above average types, that's 2511.2 lbs. per year. trashy!
landfills are the highest producer of methane gas, at about 34%.
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
a challenge!
"i wish we still lived in the times when you could challenge someone to a du-el."
if we are all observant readers of shleydom, and i know we are, we will notice to the left that there is a new 'distraction'. (look left.) this isn't so much a distraction as a directive. it's a link to the 'eat local challenge' website and their new 'challenge', which is to eat local food for a week in april.
as you will see, you can define for yourself what eating local actually means. it could mean you eat only things from your farm. it could mean you eat from a 100-mile radius. it could mean, in the case of some prospective participants, that you eat things from the midwest, specifically the mississipp/ohio valley region. in all cases, it might be difficult to find out what is local and what isn't, as some packaged foods don't give you any inkling as to where they came from. oh sure, the picante was made in NEW YORK CITY, but where did those maters come from? and the jalapenos? grown on the hudson? and so the challenge might be to find a local meat, egg or dairy source. it might be to buy in-season veggies from the budding farmer's markets for a week. it might mean to feast upon all the canned products you put up last season. i think the important part of the exercise is to become conscious of the resources used to get your food staples from their origin to your belly. how far did it travel- which is to say, how much fossil fuel was used hauling that truckful of cheerios? what else went into its production? did you SEE the feedlot where that steak came from? (if you did, maybe it wouldn't seem so scrumpcious). eating locally means that you have the opportunity to know more about what went into those eggs in your quiche- beakless chickens snacking on corn feed or little cluckers pecking around for their natural dinner of grubs, seeds, and bits of green?
another aspect of the challenge you will notice is the budget- many people think it's financially prohibitive to incorporate local and/organic/sustainable foods into their budget. looking at supermarket prices in comparison to "farmer's mark-up" prices, it is easy to see why. (incidentally, i will soon be working for 'whole pay check'.) the only thing i can say about this is: shit, man, ya it's expensive and i, of all people, am strapped for cash, but i still manage to get the things i want in my pantry. granted, i do not have a family to feed, but, if you look at the budget on the website- well, my food budget is about half that for a single income household. it's only a week- see what you can do with your usual weekly budget. you probably won't be stockpiling items in your pantry, but you might also end up with some fresh and yummy things that your children won't have to pay for in greenhouse taxes, health problems from pesticides, etc. that's the uber-leftest hippie explanation, but, well, it's true. what did they say about global warming- "eh, i'll be dead by the time the ozone layer disappears, whatev."
also noteworthy:
alcohol is not included in the budget, so you don't have to drink anhauser busch for a week.
participants are encouraged to blog about it!
the act will make you pay attention to how you might do things differently in your daily routines: cooking times, shopping times, etc. it may be that for the week you spend a lot more time doing both of those things and start thinking, "shit, i'm eating locally but i'm sure driving around a lot getting my food." true, but compare it to the distance driven by one train full of grain (grain train!) from the plains to, i don;t know, jersey, then one semi truck full of that one commodity produced to the supermarket warehouse, then another truck full of several commodities to your local supermarket. that's a lot of traveling, too. the difference is that someone else is taking the time.
ok, i've babbled enough about this.
stay tuned for tomorrow's challenge! it'll have to do with composting......
if we are all observant readers of shleydom, and i know we are, we will notice to the left that there is a new 'distraction'. (look left.) this isn't so much a distraction as a directive. it's a link to the 'eat local challenge' website and their new 'challenge', which is to eat local food for a week in april.
as you will see, you can define for yourself what eating local actually means. it could mean you eat only things from your farm. it could mean you eat from a 100-mile radius. it could mean, in the case of some prospective participants, that you eat things from the midwest, specifically the mississipp/ohio valley region. in all cases, it might be difficult to find out what is local and what isn't, as some packaged foods don't give you any inkling as to where they came from. oh sure, the picante was made in NEW YORK CITY, but where did those maters come from? and the jalapenos? grown on the hudson? and so the challenge might be to find a local meat, egg or dairy source. it might be to buy in-season veggies from the budding farmer's markets for a week. it might mean to feast upon all the canned products you put up last season. i think the important part of the exercise is to become conscious of the resources used to get your food staples from their origin to your belly. how far did it travel- which is to say, how much fossil fuel was used hauling that truckful of cheerios? what else went into its production? did you SEE the feedlot where that steak came from? (if you did, maybe it wouldn't seem so scrumpcious). eating locally means that you have the opportunity to know more about what went into those eggs in your quiche- beakless chickens snacking on corn feed or little cluckers pecking around for their natural dinner of grubs, seeds, and bits of green?
another aspect of the challenge you will notice is the budget- many people think it's financially prohibitive to incorporate local and/organic/sustainable foods into their budget. looking at supermarket prices in comparison to "farmer's mark-up" prices, it is easy to see why. (incidentally, i will soon be working for 'whole pay check'.) the only thing i can say about this is: shit, man, ya it's expensive and i, of all people, am strapped for cash, but i still manage to get the things i want in my pantry. granted, i do not have a family to feed, but, if you look at the budget on the website- well, my food budget is about half that for a single income household. it's only a week- see what you can do with your usual weekly budget. you probably won't be stockpiling items in your pantry, but you might also end up with some fresh and yummy things that your children won't have to pay for in greenhouse taxes, health problems from pesticides, etc. that's the uber-leftest hippie explanation, but, well, it's true. what did they say about global warming- "eh, i'll be dead by the time the ozone layer disappears, whatev."
also noteworthy:
alcohol is not included in the budget, so you don't have to drink anhauser busch for a week.
participants are encouraged to blog about it!
the act will make you pay attention to how you might do things differently in your daily routines: cooking times, shopping times, etc. it may be that for the week you spend a lot more time doing both of those things and start thinking, "shit, i'm eating locally but i'm sure driving around a lot getting my food." true, but compare it to the distance driven by one train full of grain (grain train!) from the plains to, i don;t know, jersey, then one semi truck full of that one commodity produced to the supermarket warehouse, then another truck full of several commodities to your local supermarket. that's a lot of traveling, too. the difference is that someone else is taking the time.
ok, i've babbled enough about this.
stay tuned for tomorrow's challenge! it'll have to do with composting......
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
and so, on to the chickens
that being said- my reprise of autocratic bloginess- i would like to talk about chickens.
*please note that this post was started on the heels of 'robin', but my computer batteries sudden death stopped me from writing for awhile.
in addition to bunnies, i would really like some chicky chickens in my life. (benefit of bunnies= watching them be cute while sleeping and lopping around! benefits of chickens= eggs.) i have investigated the requirements for gaining a zoning variance to allow me to keep chickens in the city limits, but have met with some resistance from the mancave, for this is where chickens would actually be housed. understandable, who wants to have chickens? i do! but the mancave space is already being co-opted for shley's rooftop garden project, so chickens might have to wait their turn in the greater scheme of urban farm living.
my desire to keep chickens is strengthened by weekly encounters i have with the chicken lady. not, "straight from my body onto your plate", but might as well be- she's a little cluckish in her body language and prone to excitement over
'her girls', but is very nice and yesterday BROUGHT ME EGGS!! hoorah! i got six eggses from her metrochicks, along with knowledge as to which body produced which egg. "the biggest one is henrietta's, the two pale ones are rosie's." perfect chicken names, no? i wonder if she has a camilla, cause when i get chickens i'm going to name them all camilla, like george foremen's kids. camilla one, camilla two, etc.
i wonder if, when i finally do acquire some on-site egg producers, i will fall into the strange phenomenon that is: bird-keeper's excessive pride in their birds. all the people i know that have birds, of any kind- chickens, parakeets, parrots- have this habit of puffing out their chest about their feathered creatures. i had a class with a woman that actually brought her bird TO CLASS so that we could admire it and talk about how beautiful and royal she was. chicken lady talks about 'her girls' as though they are offspring and will go on about them at the drop of a hat. some people are like that about their himalyen cats or purebreed rat dogs, some about birds. cluck cluck.
*please note that this post was started on the heels of 'robin', but my computer batteries sudden death stopped me from writing for awhile.
in addition to bunnies, i would really like some chicky chickens in my life. (benefit of bunnies= watching them be cute while sleeping and lopping around! benefits of chickens= eggs.) i have investigated the requirements for gaining a zoning variance to allow me to keep chickens in the city limits, but have met with some resistance from the mancave, for this is where chickens would actually be housed. understandable, who wants to have chickens? i do! but the mancave space is already being co-opted for shley's rooftop garden project, so chickens might have to wait their turn in the greater scheme of urban farm living.
my desire to keep chickens is strengthened by weekly encounters i have with the chicken lady. not, "straight from my body onto your plate", but might as well be- she's a little cluckish in her body language and prone to excitement over
'her girls', but is very nice and yesterday BROUGHT ME EGGS!! hoorah! i got six eggses from her metrochicks, along with knowledge as to which body produced which egg. "the biggest one is henrietta's, the two pale ones are rosie's." perfect chicken names, no? i wonder if she has a camilla, cause when i get chickens i'm going to name them all camilla, like george foremen's kids. camilla one, camilla two, etc.
i wonder if, when i finally do acquire some on-site egg producers, i will fall into the strange phenomenon that is: bird-keeper's excessive pride in their birds. all the people i know that have birds, of any kind- chickens, parakeets, parrots- have this habit of puffing out their chest about their feathered creatures. i had a class with a woman that actually brought her bird TO CLASS so that we could admire it and talk about how beautiful and royal she was. chicken lady talks about 'her girls' as though they are offspring and will go on about them at the drop of a hat. some people are like that about their himalyen cats or purebreed rat dogs, some about birds. cluck cluck.
robin
robin is the name of kermit's nephew. just in case anyone else woke up this morning wondering the same thing.
how much time do we spend in our age-of-technology-lives waiting for things to happen on our little personal devices? check the cellphone for calls. check the blog. check email. check news. check weather. check email again. check phone. i am at the end of beethoven's 6th and have nothing to show for it save for two new downloaded widgets for my dashboard, all in the effort to create more things for me to check.
in this, my new cynical perspective on 'the internets', i have concluded that my blog is nothing more than another thing for people to check during their daily time spent in cyberspace. i don't even have to do any maintenance here for readers to take the time to make comments, check back for responses to comments, make more comments, and occasionally chide me for not contributing to the great comment forum that my blog has become.
i began the blog as a sort of journal, but over time discovered little notes were being made in the margins that had nothing to do with my thoughts or experiences, hence, perhaps, my ambivalence about posting on a daily basis. there is a lot going on in my life that i could write about but i seem to have lost the motivation to put it down here in shleydom. let the invaders wander around the cyberscape and realize there is nothing left to pillage, then leave from boredom.
ok, i don't mean to sound quite so condemning of the familial comments i receive- i especially like the poetry!, and interest in compost is noted and appreciated! i guess i just want to get back on track here with the shleyness of this space. if i have offended some, then..... sorry. you are always welcome in shleydom.
how much time do we spend in our age-of-technology-lives waiting for things to happen on our little personal devices? check the cellphone for calls. check the blog. check email. check news. check weather. check email again. check phone. i am at the end of beethoven's 6th and have nothing to show for it save for two new downloaded widgets for my dashboard, all in the effort to create more things for me to check.
in this, my new cynical perspective on 'the internets', i have concluded that my blog is nothing more than another thing for people to check during their daily time spent in cyberspace. i don't even have to do any maintenance here for readers to take the time to make comments, check back for responses to comments, make more comments, and occasionally chide me for not contributing to the great comment forum that my blog has become.
i began the blog as a sort of journal, but over time discovered little notes were being made in the margins that had nothing to do with my thoughts or experiences, hence, perhaps, my ambivalence about posting on a daily basis. there is a lot going on in my life that i could write about but i seem to have lost the motivation to put it down here in shleydom. let the invaders wander around the cyberscape and realize there is nothing left to pillage, then leave from boredom.
ok, i don't mean to sound quite so condemning of the familial comments i receive- i especially like the poetry!, and interest in compost is noted and appreciated! i guess i just want to get back on track here with the shleyness of this space. if i have offended some, then..... sorry. you are always welcome in shleydom.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Tuesday, March 06, 2007
my bucket
i think my apartment might start smelling soon. today, in a moment of inspiration and impatience, i filled a kitty litter bucket with leaves, sticks, coffee grounds, onion skins, and tp rolls and shoved the thing under my sink. in all likelihood this will turn into a rotten mess and not the beautiful compost that i desire for my flower pots. oh, i have the BOOK on composting now that i'm enrolled in the master composter class, but did i take the time to look up kitchen composting methods? did i? no. i did not.
stay tuned for updates on the bucket.
stay tuned for updates on the bucket.
Friday, March 02, 2007
it's march 2
and i'm still cursing the british people's dismal understanding of electronic techonology. WHY can't they simply write a website that MAKES SENSE??
i'm trying to find a recipe for this delicious ginger cake and can't make sense of delia's website. dame delia is the british equivalent of julia childs or betty crocker- except she isn't a no-nonsense women like our strong american-bred cooks! noooo, she's got to make difficult-to-navigate message boards that offer NOTHING by way of actual information.
hmph.
i'm trying to find a recipe for this delicious ginger cake and can't make sense of delia's website. dame delia is the british equivalent of julia childs or betty crocker- except she isn't a no-nonsense women like our strong american-bred cooks! noooo, she's got to make difficult-to-navigate message boards that offer NOTHING by way of actual information.
hmph.
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