Green Snakes on the Ceiling

Sissy and Maddie came home yesterday. We're glad they're back. G-man shucked some corn from the garden tonight.

Some people know that back in the spring I was studying for the LEED exam. They changed up the rules for registration, so I chickened out of taking the exam. They are changing up the test and it looked like I should wait to see the new format moving forward. (At least that was my excuse, right Bill?). It was a good chance for me to get into the issues associated with the architecture and engineering professions. Our firm has several LEED Accredited Professionals, and they have designed LEED Certified Buildings. With the new adminstration, "sustainability" as they call it, is sure to be a major part of the public projects that we work on. As I grew up hearing, if you can't beat 'em join 'em.

A few of the professionals in the office and I formed a group we called the "Sustainability Forum." We met every other Thursday at lunch for 3 months and heard presentations from members of the group on various issues. The whole process was very eye opening to me. One of the things I learned about early on was a "Personal Sustainability Plan." The idea is you don't change your world by preaching about what others do. You take steps yourself to make a difference and become aware of how you can make changes. No one wants to be labelled a "tree hugger." With this post I'm not trying to be an environmental holy-roller (my mom's word for zealot). If you won't tell anyone, I will tell you a few of the things I have done, am doing, or may do. 

One of the first things I did was to change out ALL of my incandescent lights with CFLs. That took some getting used to. I don't really like the light as well, and for the "can" lights, they take a while to come fully on. I also talked Sissy into going to a program the City put on, and we started recycling. She watches too much Fox News to be a believer in global warming (or climate change, whatever.) The recycling of paper and plastics we do has cut our weekly garbage amount in half. Twice a month I take it to the recycling center on Saturdays. We also raise the thermostat in summer to 76 during the day. We are also more conscious of our water use (showers, etc.) It obviously has had a good impact on our electric and water bills; more than we really thought it would be. 

At work I am trying to cut out a couple vehicle trips per week by walking to lunch. Last week a couple of friends at work and I walked to Bodacious BBQ, a pretty good walk from my office. We discovered a lot of nice landscaping along the way we hadn't noticed before. We also do some recycling at work. I'm trying not to use as much styrofoam, and cut down on bottled waters.

One thing I wanted to do since I started this program was to have a meal that was produced totally on our farm. Tonight, we finally had it. We had steaks, squash, onions, tomatoes, and corn. We also have potatoes and will soon have beans for future meals.

As for future plans, I would like to reduce the size of my yard, since maintaining (mowing, watering, fertilizing) the yard is not very environmentally friendly. 

When I was a kid, the world was my trash can. Driving down the road, I would chunk bottles and wrappers out the window and not think twice. I'm embarrassed to tell my kids that. Many years ago I helped the Rotary Club clean two miles of highway through the Adopt-A-Highway program. If you do that, you will never again think of throwing anything out on the highway. Then came the "Don't Mess With Texas" slogan and I think its a much cleaner place...another thing I don't do anymore is use tars to start fars.