Thursday, September 18, 2008

"if only they were recycled, then I'd be the man!"

~matt

so, yesterday we went to bogart's to celebrate a year and a half. for those of you who are not aware (or who haven't caught on yet) we celebrate our monthiversaries. Matt's parents do it, y'see. They have bigger celebrations when they got to, say, 450 or whatever. It's pretty cute I think. And I must admit I like it even more because it's Matt's idea. :)

I got him a lock-picking kit and a bottle of knob creek. He got me these.
yes, there are 18. yes, they all were signed. they said "I love you! Matt" and every time he wrote Carrie on the envelope there was a heart at the end. I was going to leave them at home today but Matt wanted me to bring them to work and I have an open shelf. :)

I liked them so much that I rated them in Janice-style. They would have gotten a ten but they weren't printed on recycled paper. :)

I'd gone to choir before dinner (and after working from 815 until 650 yesterday) and by the time we were heading home after dinner we were both tiiiiiired. full tummies and exhausted people.

I opened the bedroom windows and spent the night warm under every single bit of the covers. poor matt was chilly as I hogged them all, it was kind of sad this morning when he was saying how cold he was all night! oopsie!

so, some info for you:

exhibit A, the glasses I just ordered. I'm going to have them put in Rx lenses at my eye doctor's. You'll notice they say "eco friendly." That's cause they are made of reclaimed plastic!! I have had the same glasses for three years so I figure it's time to give myself a second option. Best of all, these puppies were WAY cheaper than getting cute frames at their office. a caveat however--not all glasses on their site are eco-friendly. look at the name and/or the note on the side. also, bamboo glasses can't have prescription lenses put in.

ever wondered why carbon monoxide is such a big deal? I mean, yeah, there are detectors and it can kill you, but can't water kill you too? so, if you don't have a CO detector and you have a need for one, here's why you should get it--when exposed to CO, your hemoglobin in your blood (the stuff that takes oxygen from the lungs to the organs) binds to the CO instead of oxygen. As a matter of fact, the hemoglobin wants to bind to CO much more than to oxygen--about TWO HUNDRED times more. This means that all that oxygen that travels around your body is now replaced by CO, and that's why things start to malfunction--vision loss and weakness and all--because your body needs the oxygen. It was alarming to realize *why* it was so bad.

ethanol from corn may be a really, really, really bad idea. okay, well maybe not three reallys, but definitely one. I think I'm going to be telling you A LOT from my paper research. y'see, when you use the corn-based ethanol for a fuel the nitrogen emissions from vehicles remain the same BUT the nitrogen emissions from fuel production go up by as much as 25%. And nitrogen is good, necessary stuff--we couldn't live without it--but in higher amounts it's scary because of what it does. In the stratosphere it will destory ozone. That's bad, of course. But closer to the ground it can actually make ozone, which leads to smog and is something you certainly don't want to breathe in. And it's in acid rain. yeah.

I mean, I 100% believe there's no one solution and that we'll have new problems no matter what we do, but some roads we're better off not pursuing at all. maybe ethanol from wood chips is better? maybe.

oh and did you hear about the chevy volt? WHY couldn't we all have this technology now? with the ten year life cycle for cars SO SO SO many of our vehicles would be ones like this, not ones like my little Mattie the Mazda. the 400 miles with a full charge and a tank of gas is a 25% increase in fuel economy overall (well, sort of. I mean, right now cars are built for that 300 miles on a tank, so SUVs have larger tanks and compacts have smaller, y'know) but 40 miles without a drop of gasoline?!? I could go from home to work to church and back home again without using any gas AT ALL! now, if only they could switch all of our power to greener sources...

and I just think this is worth the read.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

i LOVE those glasses. was just checking out new pairs at Target yesterday thinking they had to be cheaper there and there wasn't a pair less than $120. Seriously. These are awesome. So you can get lenses put in at the dr. office?

P.S. I love your pics too :)

Anonymous said...

I have a broken and bulky old monitor that we just replaced. It's saying...."put me in the landfill...it would be so easy to toss me in the big green garbage can!!"

In exactly one week I may have to give into that little voice if I don't hear from some eco-friendly louder voice telling me how one recycles broken computer screens.

tick....tick....tick.

Anonymous said...

Those are some interesting statistics regarding the use of corn to create ethanol. Of course, using a major food supply as a fuel source seems a little asinine to me in the first place. Does your research paper look at the use of switch grass as an alternative to corn in the creation of fuel, and does it still cause the same amount of nitrogen increase in the atmosphere? I read/saw something about this awhile back and it seemed like a much better idea than corn. I was just curious if you had any thouhgts on that line of reseach.

Keep up the good work Captain Planet!

 
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