How green am I?

Thanks for the great suggestions for greening up my life. Reading them made me think maybe I'm not as bad I as thought, since we already do most of the things you suggested. I thought I'd take stock of the situation by listing the things we already do that I consider environmentally friendly. Perhaps you'll notice oversights.

• I eat very little meat (~4-6 times per month). EGM eats more, but most of the food we eat at home (i.e. dinner) is meatless. Some of our staples are organic (cereal, granola bars, yogurt).
  
• We use cloth napkins instead of paper.
• We use very few paper towels.
• I carpool to work (which, admittedly, is too far away). EGM doesn't have a car, so he either gets a lift with me or takes public transit.
• With a few exceptions, we don't drive much other than going to work.
• We use reusable bags at the grocery store. Unless we forget, but then we use the plastic ones for trash bags and lunches.
• I almost always make my coffee at home and take it to work in a reusable travel cup. EGM drinks his at home in a ceramic cup.
  
• We use tupperware containers, not ziplock bags or foil.
• The appliances that we have plugged in are the refrigerator, microwave, coffeepot, toaster, t.v., VCR (I should get rid of this), DVD player, modem, wireless router, laptop, and 5 lamps. We also charge our phones and use the vacuum cleaner. In addition, there are 7 overhead lights in our apartment, 5 of which are frequently used. The point here is that I think we probably use less electricity than the average American household.
  
• Most of our light comes from CFLs, but there are a few lingering incandescent bulbs.
• We can't control our heat (from radiators) but we don't use air conditioning but for a window unit in our bedrooms about half a dozen times each summer. We do use lots of fans in summer.
• I try to avoid random chemicals unless I really want them. For instance, I don't dye my hair, paint my nails frequently, use air fresheners or candles (well, I light a candle on occasion) but I do use hair spray, perfumed lotions, and makeup.
• I only flush when I really need to. EGM hates that.
  

Ways in which I think we could improve:

• If I got one of those wheely carts, I could go grocery shopping without my car. I can easily walk to the grocery store, but currently I can't carry the goods home.
• Green cleaning products. But shouldn't I finish the stuff I have? Certainly it must be better to gradually pour the stuff down the drain by using it than to just discard it.
  
• Focus on local/in season food. We're not good about this at all, although we don't buy tons of highly processed or frozen food. We could certainly choose organic options more often, like milk (in a reusable glass bottle!), bread, peanut butter. Better yet, we could make some of our own foods, like bread and yogurt.
• Grow some of our own food. And use the farmers' market.
• EGM buys lunch, snacks, and coffee way, way more than I do. He could cut down on that.
• I could get a Diva Cup.
• Compost.
• Recycle!

I posted all this in part to encourage discussion and of course I'd love ideas. I think I should also review Ruchi's archives for more ideas, although I can't say I'm prepared to give up toilet paper just yet. Plus I know I can find a world of eco from her blog.

Resolutions

I love New Year's resolutions (NYR). I made a whole bunch of them last year and while I didn't religiously adhere to them all, having them did help me keep certain goals in mind. Like I said last year, I think the best resolutions are very specific. Not, "I'll be tidier" but "I will vacuum every Friday". A resolution isn't going to transform your personality. It's a way to help you focus your efforts on a few behaviors that contribute to a lifestyle change you strive for. Plus, it's much easier to evaluate your success when you have specific goals.

This year, I'm not going to make any work related resolutions. I anticipate lots of professional progress this year and I don't think any NYRs are going to impact my work life. I've got to get shit done no matter what. I expect that this year I will graduate, find a post-doc, and publish some papers. The pressure is on, so rules about how much time I can spend reading blogs should be irrelevant.

So, I will make two resolutions in my personal life.

1. I will send a birthday card to every member of my immediate-plus family. For those of you following along at home, that's 28 people. I've been contemplating this one for a long time. I always (try to) call each of my siblings on their birthdays, but I blow off their spouses and kids. I feel bad about that, especially the kids. So this year, I'm going to remember them all. First I need to check that I know them all.

2. I will implement one new green activity each month. I've been feeling rather bad that my life's work is devoted to climate change sort of stuff and yet I lead a not-so-green lifestyle. It's not abominable, but there are some serious oversights and inconsistencies. For example, we use cloth napkins instead of paper, but we don't recycle (curbside pickup here is ... suspicious, so we will have to take our stuff to a recycling center ourselves). I intend to write a blog post about our efforts each month. Oh, and you might think this is super lame, but I'm going to wait to start the first one until EGM gets back because I want it to be something we do together rather than something I'm invested in that he ignores, because then it won't last.

I'm not sure what 12 things I'd like to do, so I welcome suggestions. Recycling is definitely one. I'd like to get a kitchen vermicompost bin. I'm interested in growing vegetables on the deck when it gets warm and I want to make an effort to shop at the farmer's market. What else should I do?

yay!

I've been thinking about what I want to write about the year that just ended and my hopes for the year that just started, but in the meantime, I absolutely must tell you:

I bought a new t.v.!!!!!

You may recall that my current television started to crap out in the fall. The sound worked fine, but the picture would sometimes not appear. A slap on the top of the box would usually fix it. However, for the last couple of months not even a serious pounding would summon the picture. In an attempt at non-consumerism, I might have tried to get it fixed but I knew that the digital revolution was coming (yes, I know I could have gotten a new tuner. but that combined with the fact that the repair probably would have been very expensive made me decide to scrap the 2002 analog model). Anyway, I bought a 32-inch Samsung LCD and I love it. The digital signal is amazing. The picture is not at all fuzzy, wavy, or shadowy and there are some extra channels. Awesome.

Now I can reconnect with my Netflix account. And much more importantly, I got the new tube in time for the next season of Lost!

Happy New Year?

Today I drove back from my hometown. I had a great visit with my family. I sorely missed EGM, but it was actually kind of nice to have some time with my family by myself. It was easier to make plans without worrying if he would be bored and I could spend more time just playing with the kids, visiting neighbors, and shopping with my mom and teenage nieces.

I LOVE New Year's Eve and resolutions and all that, but tonight I'm think I might miss out on the fun. I'm supposed to go to a party tonight but I have a terrible headache. I rarely get headaches, but this one is bad enough that I might stay home. And not really care that I'm missing NYE. I just ordered a pizza; maybe eating will help.

More reflection and discussion of resolutions tomorrow.

I hope you all have a terrific New Year's Eve!

Peace out

I'm off to Hometown in a few minutes. The weather looks okay -- rain, not ice or snow. There is a car totally stuck in its parking space right outside my building. It got walled in by snowplows and now the driver has been revving the engine, trying to get out for like 5 min. I'd go help if I thought I could do anything (if EGM were here, I'd send him outside to push). I hope my car doesn't get stuck.

Have a warm and safe holiday, everyone. I hope it's free of guilt, work that isn't fun, and silly arguments.

RBOSnow day

• I spent the better part of last night suffering from nausea. I had skipped dinner, so I thought I was just hungry. I finally got up to find a snack but had to run to the bathroom to puke instead. Afterward I felt 100% better, as though it had never happened. I'm pretty sure it was because I took the second pill of the month on an empty stomach, which has been vomit-inducing in the past. I fear that if I ever get pregnant, I will have some wicked morning sickness.
• My research institution closed at noon today. We would have left early anyway because it was snowing pretty hard, but it was nice to have their blessing to go that early. Traffic turned out to not be too bad, but I was still really happy that it was my carpool buddy's turn to drive.
• I'm hoping that I don't have trouble driving to my hometown tomorrow. Things look manageable right now. Fingers crossed.
• I emailed a potential post doc mentor in Hometown. I need to find out more about what this person does, but I'm not sure I'd be a good match for the lab. It can't hurt to make new contacts, though. I guess there is some small chance I might visit the lab while I'm in town.
• I think I need more iron. I've been feeling sort of weird sometimes lately, like kinda weak/lightheaded/floppy/hungry. I had been vegetarian for a long while but this year I started eating some meat. I still eat very little and almost never red meat. I have a brother-in-law who has some um, non-mainstream views on public health, one of them being that iron enriched foods are not good for us. He was moderately convincing, so we started to avoid Fe-enriched food when convenient. At around the same time, we decided to eliminate high fructose corn syrup from the things we eat most, and that was a higher priority than the Fe thing. It turns out that most of the no-HFCS alternatives also don't have Fe. My point is that I think I hardy get any Fe in my diet and that was fine for a while but I think I've had enough periods now that my stocks are depleted. Perhaps some lamb tonight.
  
• This was a long bullets post. Sorry.
  

Diverting stress

Ecogeoman and I talk a lot more about his work than mine. He has a some slightly paranoid notes to his personality and is prone to anxiety. He likes to talk about all aspects of his work: the details of his own research, projects other people are doing that he finds particularly interesting or stupid, interactions with his coworkers, detailed timelines for his projects. I talk about these things too, but not nearly as much. I'm much more likely to focus on the interactions I have with my colleagues rather than describing details of my work (I think it's really boring to explain enough background information for him to appreciate what I'm talking about). Sometimes, I get a little tired of hearing so much about his work. Not sick of it, just sometimes I'd like to explore other topics.

Last night and today I felt super stressed. I had a little tantrum when I saw Awesome Technician first thing this morning in which I vented about my insecurities about my paper. Then later, I had lunch with Research Advisor and went through the same rant, explaining how I feel like a Bad Scientist because I found errors in my spreadsheets and it took me so long to get through her edits, etc. I felt much better after all this, and I thanked her for listening to me be so melodramatic. She reassured me and said it wasn't really all that emotional.

It occurred to me that I've been dwelling on all the little work stresses I've had lately. Some of them are legit and deserve a little mulling over, but most of them are no big whoop. I think having EGM around to go on about his (non-existent?) work crises keeps me from focusing on my own problems. I get to give him advice (one of my all time favorite activities) and he takes my attention away from whatever bullshit might be on my mind. With him away, I find I'm a little prone to inner monologue histrionics.

Who knew that my ability to partition work and home was all because of EGM? And I wonder if it makes him more stressed to talk about it all so much? Somehow I doubt it.

EGM, I need you to come home now. kthnx.