A new week

What a great weekend! We went to The Aztec in Framingham on Friday night for dinner (one of the things we miss about living there) and hit a bunch of places to run costuming errands before heading home to spend time with Mal. It was a good weekend for costumes, because we picked up some things for Battlestar Galactica costumes, and I got new gold Inara fabric at Sewfisticated. My Serenity shoes arrived on Friday - damn, they fit and are really comfy!

On Saturday after an awesome ballet class we ran some errands, went to a friend's birthday party, and then later met up with another group of friends for hanging out (of all places) in a biker bar in NH http://www.johnnys-pizzeria.com/. Our friend's Dad owns the place, so we had drinks and free pizza before heading to Hooters for a while. Sitting around with a bunch of guys who are usually on tight wife leashes in the presence of Nascar, Ultimate Fighting and Boobies is interesting.

I went with some friends to Waltham's Earth Day festivities http://walthamlandtrust.org/earth-day yesterday while Brian worked on finishing up some of the final renovation work on our 2nd floor and afterwards we both did some cleaning in the garage. Our house is looking like a house again! I need to do a serious cleaning still, but things have been swept and swiffered, which is good enough for until I feel like working on it. I was definitely inspired by the Earth Day demonstrations, and have some ideas that may help in just a tiny way on our little corner of the globe.

Mal had a good weekend, and was out of his e-collar whenever we were at home to keep an eye on him. He hasn't gone near his incision once! I'm looking forward to getting the stitches out early next week and letting him and Jayne get together again. It will be nice to sleep in the same bed as my husband again. :)

Environmental Stuff

Related to Earth Day and other things, I've been thinking a lot about the stuff we use, the stuff we throw away, and what we can do to make things a bit better (both for the world and our pocketbooks). Related to this, I've been doing a couple of things.

I bought a rain barrel http://www.nerainbarrel.com/Waltham.html (the city offers a discount) and we'll pick it up next week. It will get water from the gutter on our garage, and I can use it to water our herb garden (and if I get enough water and a long enough hose, the front yard). I'm thinking of putting a small composting bucket outside, but I haven't done enough research on it yet. I don't do a ton of gardening, but all of the tea leaves I throw down the garbage disposal just seems like a waste. I could also buy a big compost bucket from the city for a discounted rate, but it was way bigger than I'd need. The jury is still out on that one.

I have played a bit with making my own cleaning products at home with some success. For a while I figured I'd use up what I have before making the total switch. I think though, I'm ready to just simplify things now and get the chemicals out of the house. It will be better for us, free up a lot of space on our basement stairway shelves, and will save us money. I'm reading this book for more recipes, cleaning tips and ideas on how to dispose of the bad stuff.

Brian and I are in the process of replacing the incandescent bulbs in our house with these particular flourescents that he likes that are true to natural light (it will take a while - they are expensive). He's picky because of how our costumes can look different in different rooms with most bulbs, and we do end up working on them all over the place.

I'm looking forward to fresh local produce again and as much of a pain in the butt it is to get groceries at various places, the questionable nature of our meat is making me want to make that effort, again. We have so many good resources around us to take advantage of, and we should. We live 3 doors down from a bakery where we could buy fresh bread (that wasn't made in a massive production line in a factory). We live close to various farms and to Russo's in Watertown (which is a wonderful place, if you don't kill someone with your cart in the crowd during the process of shopping). There's lots we can do in that area that I think won't break the bank.

All of these things I think come down to minor life adjustments, that once we're done and work them into our schedule will actually simplify things. It kind of feels like the whole scaling down effort that we went through, and continue to work on. It was so daunting at first but now I can't believe I lived the way that I used to live - its so freeing to simplify that much. It should be a neat challenge. :)

Ice Cream!

I can hear the ice cream man outside somewhere! Well, one of them. We have two different ones (one of the soft serve trucks and one of the premade frozen pop kind of trucks). Hearing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star" over and over again is annoying, but for ice cream I can make the sacrifice.

I have dance class tonight and then I'm picking up Brian to take him to the Burlington Mall so that he can drop off his broken computer for service - maybe we should hit the Brighams in the mall or some other local place on the way home?