Kickin' my own ass

Last night I reluctantly left my warm, cozy apartment mid-Phillies game to venture out into the chilly night and make my way to Club Lambi on the Plateau to see Portugal The Man, The Great Depression, and Rocky Votolato. You may or may not know this, but I hate going to shows. I especially hate going to shows by myself, and last night I was on my own. Happily, it ended up being a really good time, and I'm extremely glad I dragged my butt out the door to have a little adventure.

Portugal The Man was rocknroll. The Great Depression was full of lovely harmonies. And Rocky kicked some serious ass. Yay Rocky! He played mostly new stuff but some older stuff too, including "Like Silver" from "Burning My Travels Clean" and "Montana" from "Suicide Medicine," which I really wanted to hear. While the first band was playing, I attempted to purchase a t-shirt from the merch girl (who I think may be his wife, as she is on the cover of one of his albums) but was thwarted by lack of funds. I only had $8, and they were $15. Damn. After The Great Depression played, I tried to put those same eight dollars to use for one of their CDs, but they were $10. Damn again. When the whole show was over, I did something I never ever do. I went back to talk to the merch girl/Mrs. Votolato. I told her that the show was awesome and I was so glad they had come to play in Canada, and wonder of wonders, she told me I could have a shirt for my measly $8. Yay! Humans are really nice sometimes.

As I walked all the way down St. Laurent to the bus stop at Sherbrooke (and just caught the bus, thank goodness!), I was in a haze of lovely Rocky Votolato music-ness. Mmmmm, good shows are so very good. There were tons of people still out and about, lining up to get into clubs, drunkenly leaving clubs, shouting across the street to each other, chatting on cell phones. It was such a nice feeling to be in a city where stuff actually happens at night and to have just taken part of a little bit of the action.

And the Phillies won.

Don't click

Celebrity Faceoff might rival Snood for most addictive game.

Whirlwind Tour

Vacation! Weee, I just got back from a vacation to Colorado, sadly without Mister Matt, but his absence was somehow appropriate as I was revisiting a pre-Matt time in my life. The main reason for the trip was that one of my college roommates got married. I hadn't seen anyone from college since I graduated five and half years ago, so the visit was long overdue. It's strange how a change of scenery and the company of some friends from the dorms can revert you back to 19 years old.

I would post pictures but I was a moron and forgot to pack my camera. Here are some highlights of the trip. You'll have to use your imaginations to make up the images:

• Seeing Harold, Mar, Crazy Andy, Alley, Woolfe, and The Greek for the first time in over five years.


• Taking one name off my People From College Who Don't Talk To Me Anymore list. Sadly, it's a bit of a long list.


• Eating Mexican food (made by real Mexicans!) and drinking margaritas.


• An absolutely gorgeous drive from Denver to Pagosa Springs (and back again). More beautiful than should be allowed.


• My first ever dip in natural hot springs. Mmmmm hot springs.


• Einstein's Bagels and Target.


• Hanging out with Mar for an action-packed 48 hours.


• Wine with Harold and Quinn the plumber.


• Eating at Watercourse, my sister's favorite veggie resto in D-town.


• Off-roading in an Impala along a muddy ridge overlooking a rushing creek in the San Juan Mountains... and then reversing back out at high speed. Without dying.


• Seeing that The Breakfast Palace is still there... whew!


• Visiting Alley's coffee shop.


• A trip to the Dikeou Collection.


• Drinking American microbrew beer.


• Driving around the DU campus, marveling at all the new buildings and laughing that the library building still sounds and smells the same. And I sat in the (now cleaned and reupholstered) egg chair.


• Oh yeah, and a wedding in a beautiful aspen grove!

What I did on my weekend vacation

This past weekend I went to the Vermont Sheep and Wool Festival. There were sheep. There was wool. There were also alpacas, llamas, goats, rabbits, and border collies. I enjoyed looking all all the fibers in their various stages of processing, from being attached to the animals, to being sheared, picked, dyed, spun, and knitted. Meeting people who do the sheering, dying, spinning, etc, was also pretty cool. I only bought two skeins of yarn: one intended (the wool below) and one impulse (the silk).

Besides the festival, I enjoyed a bean and cheese burrito. Mmmmm... even mediocre Mexican food tastes amazing when you come from the land of Quebec. I really like being in Burlington, Vermont. Being a college town, and this being the beginning of the school year, we did see some stupid college kids, but compared to many other college towns I've visited or lived in during the same time of year, the Catamounts were overall a very tolerable bunch.

Were we to leave Montreal, Burlington would be my first pick. I haven't spent a good amount of time in any of the rest of Vermont, so perhaps there are other places in the same state I would like just as well. Burlington has a nice small town feel, like there is a strong sense of community there. It's nice and laid-back and pleasingly hippy. I know Matt is against living in a hippy town. As leftist as he can sometimes appear, he actually has a deep dislike of hippies (you'll have to ask him what his definition of a hippy is since some might think he is married to one) and is disgusted with liberals. It can be trying for me sometimes. The anti-hippy part, not the anti-liberals part.

I'll leave you with some photos.


Sunset on Lake Champlain


An alpaca


Cormo wool yarn from Foxhill Farms in Lee, MA. One of the sheep who contributed some fleece to this skein is named Carabee.


Silk yarn

You can see many more pictures in the couple of blog posts the lovely Ariadne ladies have posted recently.

Three months down

It's a little crazy to think that a quarter of a year has gone by since I started the Riot for Austerity 90% Emissions Reduction Challenge! Here's where I stand after three months:

GASOLINE
On a daily basis, we are still use 90% less (or perhaps even less) than the average American uses. I haven't actually been keeping track since my primary form of transportation is the bus or the metro, and I don't even use them everyday. I am going to go on a number of trips in the last few months of this year, however, so this is one area where my "progress" is about to do a 180.
Three-month status: On a daily basis, we use 90% less than the average American uses.

ELECTRICITY
I said in my baseline post that we are allowed 90 kwH per month. I only get an electric bill once every two months, so the last bill I got was two months ago, and I was holding steady at my baseline figure of 125 kwH per month. However, since then, I have reread the rules of this challenge and noted that hydro-powered electricity users are allowed four times the standard allotment. Wikipedia (a site that would never lie, right?) says that 97% of the energy Hydro-Québec produces is, well, hydroelectric. So if 97% of my 90 kwH gets to be tripled, my goal is actually 265 kwH per month, which I am way under. I have made some electricity-saving changes around the apartment, so I am anxious to see my next electricity bill. I would still really like to hit 90 kwH per month.
Three-month status: Still waiting for the bill! The last time I got the bill, we used 95% (with hydro bonus applied) less than the average American uses.

HEATING AND COOKING ENERGY
When I did the baseline calculations, I decided that we should only be allowed 10% of the 90% allotment in this category because we only get billed for our cooking energy. I think I was being hard on myself, but I also don't have any more specific numbers about how much of this should go for cooking and how much for heating. Because we can't control our heat, I'm going to just throw up my hands and say we can have the entire 23.5 cubic meters per month. But I'm also not really going to count this category since it is compromised. I'm going to go for steady progress rather than a number goal. This is a hard one for us since we do a lot of cooking from scratch. Beer brewing also takes up gigantic amounts of energy in this category.
Three-month status: For cooking alone, we use 93% less than the average American uses.

GARBAGE
Our scale has been getting finicky lately, and it doesn't like heavy things, so I haven't been able to weigh our garbage or recycling. I have been reusing plastic bags more diligently and thinking hard about each container I recycle, trying to reuse it. I can't do much about the paper. I started a worm composting bin, but I still end up throwing out way more organic matter than I would like. When I have large amounts of it (after preserving foods or brewing beer) I take it to a friend's house where there is a proper compose pile.
Three-month status: Not sure. Still too much waste. :(

CONSUMER GOODS
This one is harder than I thought it would be, especially because textbooks are expensive! Here's how we did, with deductions in place:
June: $98 (88% less than average)
July: $277 (67% less than average)
August: $207 (75% less than average)
Three-month status: We spent 77% less than the average American.

FOOD
This is a hard category too. We buy a lot of stuff in the third (non-local, non-bulk) category. And we cook from scratch for most of our meals, so it's not as though we're buying lots of processed, pre-packaged food. We just seem to buy a lot of ingredients that we can't get (or haven't figured out how yet) locally or in bulk. Our CSA has certainly helped us improve in the local category. I've also started buying more dry stuff in bulk. This past week we hardly bought anything in category three, so maybe we are doing better.
Three-month status: This is only a guess. 55% local, 15% bulk, 30% everything else.

Where's Danica?

This blog has been all Matt all the time lately. That's because I've got me another blog. That's right. I'm a blog two-timer. Don't worry; I will still post over here. But over there, you can read about how I try to be a good treehugger. And maybe you'll learn a thing or two.