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Going Green

Assignment (from Neilochka): Ask five of your favorite bloggers to do a “Green Meme.”

Ok, I realize that Earth Day has passed me by and Earth Month is just about over, but that’s me. Always late to the party.

Anyway, since we should think about the planet all year round, I’m squeezing my post in under the wire with the promise that these are things I’ll be doing even after April 30.

1. Using less energy. I shut off lights when I leave the room. I won’t turn on the air conditioner until the heat is really uncomfortable. I sometimes drive the Captain nuts in the winter because I wind up using our living room coffee table as my office. “You have your own home office!” he complains. “It’s a nice room with a view of the lake. Why won’t you ever work in there?” Well, when being in my office would require turning on a few lights plus the electric heat, it just seems to be more sensible to stay in the living room. Why use up all that energy for two rooms when I could be perfectly happy on our couch? My next step is to plug “vampire electronics” into power strips and shut them off when not in use.

2. Recycling. This may seem like a no-brainer, but it’s a foreign concept to the Captain. I try to save the recyclables from the trash and put them into the correct bin. I also reuse plastic bags whenever I can (my next step is to get a couple totes to use for shopping) and use the envelopes from junk mail for scrap paper. Eventually I’d like to train HIM to recycle as well.

3. Testing out my green thumb. This is really more of the Captain’s initiative than mine, but we’ve created a garden and we’re trying to grow our own vegetables. While we’re out there, I do my best to convince him we don’t need to cut down any more of our trees.

4. Going paperless. I use online bill pay and try to opt out of receiving paper. I have receipts and confirmations emailed to me so I don’t print out unnecessary pages. My printer hasn’t been used in so long, I’m not even sure if it works anymore.

5. Conserving water. On the weekends we always team shower rather than run the shower twice. It’s a habit left over from when we had a tiny hot water heater and only one of us could have warm water for our shower. Even though we now have plenty of hot water, I know that if I shower alone I’ll linger much longer than when I’m getting clean with someone used to soldier showers. Needless to say, this is my favorite green effort.

Not the most impressive list, but I hope by next Earth Month I’ll have new initiatives to add. I don’t want my future grandchildren living on the kind of planet Earth WALL-E inhabits.

I’m not going to tag anyone, but feel free to blog about your green efforts as well. Rules are below:

Post five things you plan to do for the environment over the next month on your blog. At the end of your list, tag five of your favorite blogs, and include a link back to this post using the hyperlinked text “FilterForGood Blog Meme Contest.” Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs, or on their Twitter accounts (using the hash tag #FFGBlogMeme). Also, be sure to include these rules at the bottom of your post.

An Extra Bonus

At the end of Earth Month, FilterForGood will choose a few lucky bloggers who posted their five things to win some Brita/FFG gift packs to help you go green! Be sure you link back to the original meme post [http://www.filterforgood.com/blog/?p=1407] to enter the contest!

Category: Meme  3 Comments
Awesome, Something Else to Worry About All Day

Found this quiz over at Suze’s. Based on my last post, the results were as expected.

Your Score: The True Neurotic

You scored 70 anxiety, 85 awkwardness, and 51 neuroticism!

Congratulations, you are The True Neurotic, you nail-biting, conflict-avoiding worrier, you. You’re plagued by self-doubt and anxiety, which makes social activity hard–even though you may be well-liked, you feel under a storm of silent criticism. It doesn’t help that people give you funny looks for organizing all your pens by color or sharpening your gnawed pencils to a delicate point.

Your high anxiety score implies that you are unable to relax, worry about the future often, and probably are plagued by irrational fears and self-doubt.

Your high awkwardness score implies that you are socially inept, probably stick out from the crowd, and feel uncomfortable in large groups of people, such as at parties.

Your high neuroticism score implies that you exhibit neurotic behaviors–probably organization, fanatic obsessions (can you recite the entire first LOTR movie?), repetitive mantras, constant checking, or orderly rituals.

Link: The Neurotic Test written by littlelostsnail on OkCupid Free Online Dating, home of the The Dating Persona Test
View My Profile(littlelostsnail)
Memoir, Abridged

If you’ve known me for any length of time, you are probably aware that I’m not one to embrace memes (that’s a hint never to tag me unless you enjoy being disappointed). However, there are exceptions to every rule. In this case, I found the Six-Word Memoir Meme (which I discovered over at A Curious State of Affairs . . .) too thought-provoking and fun to skip.

The inspiration for the meme came from the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Famous and Obscure Writers, which in turn was based on an anecdote that Hemingway once bet ten dollars that he could sum up his life in just six words. His memoir was reduced to: For Sale: baby shoes, never worn.

Tending to be wordy myself, compressing my whole life into such a short span seems a worthy challenge.

Now, if you’re a regular reader of TouchedByMadness (or its previous incarnations), you’ve read many of my memoirs already and have most likely realized that if no one else, I amuse myself.

So, as the animated storyteller who may never truly convey to her audience the vibrance and hilarity of each tale, I think my life is best summed up with:

Yeahhhhh . . . you had to be there.

Pretty monkey!

If you want to play too, here’s what to do:

1. Write your own six-word memoir.
2. Post it on your blog and include a visual illustration if you’d like.
3. Link to the person who tagged you in your post and to this original post if possible so we can track it as it travels across the blogosphere.
4. Tag five more blogs with links. (If you must.)
5. And don’t forget to leave a comment on the tagged blogs with an invitation to play!

Category: Meme, Memoir  6 Comments