Ok so I'm bad when I'm on break

Work and visiting friends I hardly ever see distract me. But I have two things today to chat about. 1) is the fact that the trail mix I got for Christmas came from Walmart. Dad thought it was funny because I hate Walmart and WILL NOT shop there. There is something very wrong with buying a person a present from a place they hate for moral reasons. That would be like buying him pagan stuff. But I digress.

For those of you who prefer tasty organic veggie foods I have scary news for you. We might still be getting those antibiotics they put in farm animals through use of manure as fertilizer.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=vegetables-contain-antibiotics&sc=CAT_HLTH_20090106

Oh what a messed up world we live in.

Its no wonder the Solstice is a big deal

It got dark around 5:30 today. There is nothing, I mean NOTHING, better then seeing the days lengthen during the winter months. That little reminder that it won't stay cold forever. It will only seem like forever before the spring and summer come. It gives hope to those of us who grudgingly aknowlege that it is part of nature and it is a great demonstration of the cycle of life/death/rebirth and therefore maybe has some value and we can learn something from it.....maybe. As long as we don't die of cold or cold season first.

Catch up time

well, I'm back home. A little worse for wear but that is how visits to Grandmother's house go. I ended up yelling at grandma (not the best thing to do) but I almost feel proud of myself for not just sitting there and taking her snipping at me and my sister (really, it started with my sister. No one bitches at/hurts in any way shape or form my sister.) The boy is trying to work to help me be less.....ruglike (getting walked all over). I think its working. The visit was nice except for the last hour or so, but I digress.

I saw this in my zillion e-mails that I haven't gotten to read since I left for vacation.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=toxic-ash-pond-collapses&sc=CAT_HLTH_20081223

All I can say to this is WHOOPS!!!! And bye-bye animals and good drinking water and pretty landscape. Oh yeah, and the mountain justice folks are gonna have a field day. Go mountain justice folks!!!! They're a good bunch.

Reminder to all: There is no such thing as clean coal. Talk to your energy provider and see about getting your energy from clean sources like wave, wind, solar, etc.

Happy (almost 24 hours late) yule

Boy, this weekend has gone by fast. I mean really, really fast. I spent Yule at my good friend's house with a few of my pagan friends/unofficial coven type thingy/open circle. We made pomanders (I don't actually remember the words to the ritual just the actions) and gave presents (I think mostly cause its habbit now). But it was so much fun, and a great way to relax after classes and running about all weekend. Things are a bit stressful around the house because its almost Christmas and my mom got hurt and is mostly relegated to laying on a couch with a good book, which as my father said "wasn't part of the plan". But if that isn't a message from the body to slow the fuck down, I don't know what is. And it is that time of year when the body goes "whoa! Fuck no!". Anyway, I will be going to my grandmother's for Christmas so I will not be posting until next week. Wish me luck that things go smoothly and no arguments and such occur (Grandma and I are very, very different people and in her eyes my way is wrong, thankfully she doesn't know I'm pagan)

Plant Post!!!

well, i have a new plant....6 to be exact. I dunno what they are or how many will sprout. 2 of them are palm like bushes and 4 are some sort of bulb (got them for free from this lady who lives downt he stree) which i added soil and water to. We will see if they will grow and what they will grow into. Yay more mystery plants, and with luck they will flower and be pretty. Which reminds me I should check on the palm bushes to see if they sprouted and to water them. I love tropical plants cause they grow all year round (if kept properly) and they don't add to the co2 levels when they go to sleep for the winter, they just keep on sucking up the co2. Which is a good thing cause they rise and fall a bit with spring and summer and fall respectively. The rest of my plant children are hanging in there the best they can.

Glitter falling from the sky

On my way back from the co-op it was snowing. The snow was so fine that I couldn't see it falling in the dark (saw it all over the sidewalks though) but I could feel it hitting me and under the lights of street lamps it looked like glitter falling from the clouds, it was so pretty. (one of the only times you will ever hear me say anything nice about snow, though we are becoming less angry at eachother)

Today I shall address paper. It has become essential to our lives from writing little reminder notes to ourselves, to writing papers for work or school. We waste alot of it and destroy whole stands of trees (my father would point out that they were grown for that purpose), destroying habitat for animals and causing all sorts of environmental problems. Yes institutions have set up recycling systems and sell paper made from portions or sometimes all post consumer waste (recycled paper) which is a good thing. They say recycle and use recycled paper as much as possible. But what no one thinks about (I have only ever heard it mentioned once) is books. Do you know how much paper is used to satisfy this world's thirst for good books? (walk into a book store and think about that, its mind boggling) I don't know either but its alot. I am a book addict myself. Vacation means me sitting in a chair reading a book all day. In light of this I offer you a couple of options to continue your book digestion in a more environmentally friendly way as well as easier on the wallet. Library sales are amazing (so is borrowing from the library), go on bag day but go early (that is how I have ended up with 3 shelves of books I have not read yet. Bag day is like black friday except that you can buy as much as you can fit in a bag for an itty bitty amount of money). You can buy used books (oh no its been read already!) online and at half priced books (if you have one near you, fabulous invention, really) or www.bookmooch.com a great place to swap books with people all over the country but you have to have books you are willing to give to people.

Oh the holidays are coming

So life is fairly uneventful. Me and one of my old cooking shift mates made a late lunch on friday cause I was hungry (cause class goes from 9 till 1 and I didn't get a lunch break that day) and she wanted to cook. I grabbed an Earthwatch Ohio newsletter from mustardseed when I popped in there on Sunday and found a few interesting articles. Apparently there is a study being done about setting up a windfarm like thing off in Lake Erie (not a bad idea, apparently wind is better off shore and Lake Erie gets more wind then some of the other Great Lakes) and there is a bill in the House of Representatives (HR 1009 <-- thats the bill number) to allow industrialized hemp to be grown. http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/thomas (that is the bill as it stands currently) Industrialized hemp is a good thing, and doesn't have enough THC to get a person high. They are two different species of cannabis. Its good for making clothes, hemp seed oil which is really good for you to name just two and currently it is illegal to grow because of its relation to pot. So everyone should tell thier respective representatives to approve the bill cause I think it would be a good idea.
Regarding the website i mentioned earlier, its pretty sweet http://thomas.loc.gov/ you just go there and type in the name of a bill or its number and it tells you whats going on with it currently. One good thing I got from my environmental policy class.