before I talk about earth day I want to tell you about my weekend!

friday night was SO fun. I have such awesome friends in Raleigh. lucky me. :) We went out to celebrate Marla's last few unhitched nights--she's getting married on friday the 2nd of may--and had a really good time...dinner at porter's followed by drinks at blue martini. lara's husband kevin (who went by mr. giggles and then joaquin) drove lara, marla and me there and matt picked our drunk asses up. and then jennifer, kara and kim shuttled us to and fro. WAY fun. made friends with our bartender so as to get quicker service (it worked!) and drank a-plenty. marla had an excellent time I think! I know I did.

oh! and we color coordinated totally by accident. pretty funny. I only had a few of my pictures that turned out well--my camera battery was dying.

saturday morning I got up and went to the durham farmer's market. I bought: basil, spinach, honey, fresh mozzarella, this natural scouring stuff by shaklee cleaners that works really well, a little present for renee for her wedding, and, drumroll please, some ranunculuses. My FAVORITE flower. I'm waiting for them to open but here's the one I put on my desk. I am SO excited. I was downright giddy at their booth. It totally made my weekend!

And I opted not to buy the whole chicken from Durham. I mean, it was worth the money but I have only a few recipes that call for a whole chicken, and one is a soup that I associate with eating when I'm sick to make me feel better, and I decided that Earth Fare's all natural chicken better suited my needs. It's not local, and I sure wish it were, but I just don't need a whole chicken. My friend Elizabeth has recommended that I do one of those beer-can chicken recipes. I might just have to try it later in the season.

there were lots of people out, including a dude who was telling us we were all going to hell. nice. liars, fornicators, jews, racists, mormans, sinners and the like. I passed by this little old lady on my way out who said to me "sometimes, just the right to free speech just give you a headache?" know what? love it and all, but sometimes, it does.

immediately after this I felt better though. as I was going to my car with my baggus in tow,
I saw a most-excellent bumper sticker. :)

Saturday night was the KD auction for our Shamrock project. The money went to Prevent Child Abuse. I got a little burned when I bought a gift card worth $5 for $7.55 (they were all wrapped up). I know the point was to raise money for PCA, but at the same time? Um, no one else bought a thing that was blatantly worth less than they paid. It's totally fine, really, but for a few minutes I kept thinking "uh, this should've been wrapped in white, not green. it was not a 'valuable' gift." whatever, no worries now. :) we took some cute pictures and had some laughs, and dear matt got me a cup holder. It was a VERY fun idea for an event!

and then Sunday--830 church to sing (totally rolled in at 905, which was the latest we could get there and still make it to sing), then I went to Sunday school, which I rarely do, but they were having a class concerning Earth Day that caught my attention. I learned a few new things (like how the city of raleigh will only accept opened junk mail for recycling) and why, precisely, the don't recycle bottle caps (there's that seal, and it's hard to remove, and there's multiple types of plastic).

after that I napped, cleaned, grocery shopped and led youth. poor kids. I tried to talk to them about earth day and recycling and eliminating trash in the world, and then tried to bring it a little closer to home by talking about eliminating trash in their lives. I had a lesson book about it and everything. I had one girl get REALLY upset at me about #7 plastic bottles v. bottled water. She was convinced that #7=cancer, and I explained that no, it increases your risk, it isn't a guarantee. It's still bad, but it's kind of a wash--increase your cancer risk or use a new bottle every time and indirectly introduce all the pollution from manufacturing, production, distribution, and post-consumer waste into the world, and that increases your cancer risk too. I told her that there are plenty of other bottle options (#2 plastics, siggs, klean kanteens, nalgene's new line) and that using all of the disposable bottles instead was BAD.

Just because it's recyclable doesn't mean you can/should use as much as you want of it. It means you are helping by recycling, but recycling alone doesn't fix the problem. The three R's are in an order for a reason. First try to reduce. If you can't, try to reuse. And if you can't do that, then recycle it.

She was ANGRY. I think she was convinced that she would, 100% without a doubt, get cancer from those bottles (because oprah said so) and I think maybe a bit defensive--maybe she drinks bottled water all the time. Anyway, awk-ward. I felt bad. I kept telling her she was right, that you just should use a bottle that wasn't #7. And she would say "yeah, the ones bottled water comes in." yeesh.

That night there was a pretty storm, the aftermath of which reminded me of Tulsa/Oklahoma, when everything turns orange-ish, pink-ish brown and the sky is a myriad of un-sky-like colors. Matt and I watched Juno, which was good, and I liked the soundtrack. I also liked the way they talked. Very clever gilmore-girls-ee, but harsher and with a bigger vocabulary. :) And then on-the-verge-of-a-sinus-infection Carrie took some ibuprofen for her sinus headache (if I'm taking meds it must be bad) and went to sleep. the end.