Blog » February 2008

Last night we ended up at Price Chopper (currently in the lead of the exciting new reality show, "America's Most Dismal Grocery Store"), and found someone else's shopping list in our cart.  I reprint it here for your pleasure.

This is what I saw first, which intrigued me immediately because Jensales Inc. is in Minnesota, and we were in Vermont.  Jensales sells tractor (and other heavy equipment) manuals.  Not just operation manuals, but parts and service manuals, too, so that you can go about fixin' your own machinery.  Cool.  (I don't know what the " & Toys" is about.  I think it might be something ironical.  They don't mention that on their website.)

Here is the actual shopping list:

Oh man.  It's so classic.  I love it (especially "Tums").

(It is not as good as the Best Found Object Ever, The Molting. But how can you top that?)

One thing I love about winter is feeding the birds.  This time of year, the only birds we have are chickadees, mostly because we are too lazy to have the variety of seed-holders and suet-holders and all the other things that it takes to attract different breeds. (Unlike some people... Hi Mom! Hi Sarah!) Also, we really don't have a good place to hang birdfeeders.  The one we do have, we hang from our lilac bush.

Now, our lilac is not particularly tall, and usually the birdfeeder is about 3 feet off the ground.  But with all this snow we've been having, now the birdfeeder is about 6 inches above the (current) ground level.   This has brought out everyone's favorite winter rodent, the squirrel.  Also known, among members of my family, as "those little bastards".

When I refilled the feeder the other day, as I walked up to it, I thought, "Ooh, look at the neat frost marks!  Hey.  Those aren't frost marks."  For you, dear readers, I've braved the cold and snapped an exclusive Super X-Treem CloseUp^TM of the middle birdfeeder rung:

Holy cracked corn, Batman!  Look at those claw marks!  People, that is powder-coated steel!  (Well, maybe.  Like I could identify steel on sight.  It's, uh... some sort of silvery metal!)  I'm not sure why the little buggers don't just reach inside the hole and pull out what they want, but such are the whims of squirrels. 

Last week we went cross-country skiing for the first time this winter.  It was sunny and cold and awesome.  We went to the Zealand Valley, which has a network of cross-country and snowmobile trails (not the same trails, thank goodness, because snowmobile tracks are terrible to ski in).   The Flatiron trail is a ~2  mile loop (and is indeed very flat).  It spends some time winding through woods, some time wandering next to the river, and opens onto big fields (or maybe frozen-over marshland?  It's hard to tell under 4 feet of snow). 

Some of the open spaces were alot bigger than they seemed at first.  Fortunately, it was not too windy out there, even though it was only 13°F.  After our skiing, we went over to a buried picnic table and literally dug a hole down to the bench so we could sit and have some hot tea (yeah, thermos!).  My pants froze to the bench.

Today, 6 days later, it is 46°F, and raining.  What is up with that, weather?  It is hard to get a good night's sleep when the rain keeps making snow and ice fall off the roof in huge chunks all night long.  Hhmph.

Tate pointed us to this article in the San Jose Mercury News and asked what we thought of it.  Well, here's what I think of it: man o man, people are so dumb.

Here's the story:

1. Between 1997 and 1999, a couple in Sunnyvale planted a bunch of redwood trees in their backyard.  Looking at the overhead photo, it is pretty clear that they did this so that their neighbors did not have a direct view into their living room.
2. In 2001, one of those neighbors installed 10kW worth of solar panels on his house. 
3. Now the trees are tall, and they shade a bunch of his solar panels.
4. He invoked the little-known California Solar Shade Control Act, which is now levying stiff fines on the tree-owners for not cutting down trees that shade solar panels.
5. The court found against the tree-owners, but they are appealing the ruling.

This is dumb on so many levels.  

• Did solar-panel-guy think that trees weren't going to grow?  If there are trees almost shading your site, then within a few years they will shade your site.  By definition, that makes it a bad site for solar panels. 
• For the amount of money that 10kW of solar panels cost, you'd think he could buy some common sense. 
• The law says that trees that were there before the panels were installed are OK, except that it also says that if they grow to cover solar panels, then they're subject to removal/fines.  So... trees are ok, as long as they don't grow?  The law really should have some sort of "reasonable growth" clause.

Personally, I'm totally with the tree-owners on this one.  Mr. Solar Panel was dumb to put his panels under baby redwood trees, and I'm pretty sure it's not fair to fine your neighbors for your stubbornness.

Have you ever read Backpacker Magazine?  It's really great.  We got a subscription through one of those "Your airline miles are going to expire soon" things, and it's one of the only magazines I actually like enough to pay for it when our free year runs out.  Every time I read it, I feel like going outside and hiking somewhere.  (And I don't even like backpacking!  I like sleeping in my own bed.)

Their most recent issue is the 2008 Gear Guide, and they have a special section in it for "Green Gear".  But it's not like most 'Green Product' lists.  Instead of pointing you to all the fanciest bamboo-underwear and recycled-vinyl bags, they actually give you information! Backpacker has done research and compiled a report card of what exactly each 'green' company does.  FiveTen, for example, uses all kinds of scrap and recycled rubber in their shoes. Chaco buys wind credits to offset their energy use, and pays employees to bike to work.

I think it's extra-cool to know exactly what companies are doing to earn the Green label.  Not only does it allow you to support programs you particularly like (hmmm... should I buy from the company that recycles fleece, or the one that is powered by reclaimed methane*?), but it also puts companies on the spot.  If the best a supposedly-green company can come up with is "Our brochures and packaging are 50% post-consumer content", it's not very impressive compared to a company like GoLite (carbon-neutral!  Product recycling!  Alternative transport!). 

Way to go, Backpacker!  It's nice to learn more about these green companies, and decide for ourselves which ones to support.

* CowPower is a supremely great name for a methane program.

If you plan on visiting Franconia Notch State Park, you might read in every guidebook available (even "Snowshoe Hikes in the White Mountains") that the trail up to Lonesome Lake is "easy".  Internet, I am here to let you in on a secret:  the people who write guidebooks are mountain goats. 

 

We have now done this trail in both the summer and the winter, and let me tell you:  it is not easy.  It is far from easy.  I think the mountain goats call it "easy" because it is a smooth dirt trail in summer and has good footing.  But here is the truth:  a good portion of that trail goes about 75° straight up the side of the mountain.  It is so steep that you have to lean on trees when you stop to rest (every 37 steps, on average) so you don't fall backwards down the hill.

And!  When we got to the top, to the Lonesome Lake, the fog was so thick that it seemed like we were standing at the edge of the world.  It was a total white-out, with about 5 feet of visibility across the lake. 

On the plus side, there was alot of new snow, and the Lonesome Lake Hut (way at the top of the trail) is staffed even in the winter, so we got to meet a nice caretaker who offered us hot tea.   The hut is solar-powered, so we chatted about batteries and sunny days and down-filled slippers (the caretaker is pro, and I think he'd know). 

We have gotten a solid 18" of snow in the last 48 hours, and it's still falling.  We are buried.  We'll post a message here if we need canned goods. 

Kids, it's time for a fun story! 

Once upon a time, back in the year 2-ought-ought-2,  Aaron and I decided to go to the Riccarton Market in Christchurch, NZ.  What you do is, you take the bus into The Exchange (the fancypants name for 'the downtown bus terminal'), and then you take the #82 to Hei Hei, and get off when you see the racetrack.  The market is big (300+ stalls in the summer), and we were pretty excited to wander around the whole thing.

Here is one of the first things we found (and bought, post-haste): 

It's a rocket; it's a mirror.  What more could you (reasonably) ask?

We were less excited when it started raining.  And then way less excited when it started winding (that's "being windy", not "being twisty-turvy").  But... wait a minute... it's a MARKET!  So we searched around until we found a stall selling warm-n-wooly hats, and bought one to keep my wee head warm and dry.

It was not an ideal hat -- it was a bit too big, and made of some mad-scratchy wool.  And so after that one drizzly cold morning, it never got worn.  I found it the other day while looking for some gloves in our giant-box-o-warms (doesn't everyone who lives in a cold climate have one of those boxes, full of single-mittens and too-big hats?).  And I realized:  it's perfect!  It's exactly what I've been looking for!

I cut some holes in it, whipstitched the edges (to keep things from coming unravelled) and voila!   

My new fancy tea cozy!  It keeps the tea hot, and the pompom makes me laugh every time I see it.  So go take a look in your big-box-o-warms (or, if you don't have one:  that pile of clothes you never wear stuffed down into the corner of your closet) and see if you can't find a better use for some of it.   That oops-I-shrunk-it sweater may have a wonderful future as a set of placemats!