Saturday, May 29, 2010

Its my surfer birthday!

I just realized it was three years ago TODAY that I bought my $12 surfboard from Saver's Daly City! I remembered that I bought it the Saturday before Memorial Day because it was a memorial day sale. Somehow though, even though I'd been looking forward to it, and even considered having a party to celebrate, but it somehow slipped my mind today and even though it was a beautiful day, and the surf was good, I didn't even make it out to surf today. I keep having to remind myself I don't have to surf EVERY day to be a surfer. I feel like I wasted the day- although that's crazy talk because I went to the Farmer's Market and a surf swap, which is certainly NOT a waste of a sunny Saturday. I wish I had headed right out to surf right after putting my groceries away instead of going on the internet. That was dumb. It was beautiful and now it's windy and all blown out. How I managed to kill probably over an hour screwing around on the internet and at home I'll never know, although I did take out the compost and have to gerry rig a leaky toilet, both fairly urgent things. Its ok, probably giving my knee another day to heal won't hurt.

Going Plastic Free in the shower!

Friday, May 21, 2010

I get to wash my hair again!

I haven't washed my hair in... a really long time. Its disgusting. like a month, not kidding. I've been looking at ways to reduce my plastic consumption and got the idea from Fake Plastic Fish to use a shampoo bar from Lush. I also entertained the idea of buying shampoo in bulk, but someone neatened up the bathroom and got rid of my empty shampoo and conditioner bottles. And when I happened by the local co op I didn't have my bag on me so I didn't want to buy anything. That's something I've just started doing. I almost always have my bag, but if for whatever reason I don't, I end up with a plastic one. Its always something impulsive I probably didn't need anyway, so I've just stopped buying anything if I don't have a bag.

*I should note that the plastic bags I usually use for my beach clean ups aren't usually mine. If I do find myself accidentally ending up with a single use plastic bag, my penance is to fill it with litter. I steal a lot of them from my room mates (who will never notice) The bulk of them though, I actually find as litter

Beth Terry does have instructions on "Fake Plastic Fish" for washing one's hair without shampoo, but especially trying to consume less, I could not resist an excuse to treat myself to something from Lush. I almost never buy myself nice girly shampoo and stuff, not that I don't want to, I just want to be practical since I don't make a lot of money. But an ecological reason to pamper myself? Sign me up!

The problem: Lush is Downtown. Which is like on the other side of the country from The Sunset. My commute home takes me around it, not through it, and I hate parking downtown. Who doesn't? Now normally this would not be a big deal and I would either take transit or stop after work, park in SOMA and run a bunch of errands at once, but the ACL complicated the matter.

Well, yesterday my friend was spinning at SupperClub so I was downtown and got my shampoo and conditioner! My hair will no longer have more oil in it than the gulf of mexico.


Sunday, May 9, 2010

More bags than I started with

So since I've been trying to cut down on plastic I've been annoyed that I've had to put my vegetables in plastic bags to weigh them at the farmer's market, don't know why it didn't occur to me to bring my own mesh bags, but when I saw that idea I wanted to jump on it.

I made a little bit of an error with the bags I ended up with. While I intended to make my own, I realized I wasn't going to get around to it, with so I bought some re-usable (but plastic) ones. I thought if I bought those green bags that are supposed to keep things fresh I could kill two birds with one stone, but it turns out they don't really work that well because moisture builds up inside them and you have to be really vigilant about wiping them out. But still I was bringing my own bags to the Farmer's market, which was still an improvement.

Unfortunately, as I was leaving the farmer's market I encountered a tornado of plastic. It was windy and there was this spot where all these plastic bags that had gotten away were collecting. After being traumatized by having the great pacific garbage patch wash up in my back yard, I couldn't bring myself to just do nothing, so I went to the spot and collected an obscene number of bags. I'm not even sure how many I came home with, but it was a lot. enough to fill two of them, anyway.

Well, since I've been laid up with a sprained ACL its been hard for me to sit in one place and stay off my leg and as soon as I felt well enough to walk on it, I did, and I way over did it. So I've decided to spend the day re-acquainting myself with plastic bag crochet. Right now I'm making the yarn, and hopefully I will have enough to go outside pretty soon and sit in the sun and do it. Making the yarn is boring considering I have to do it inside so it won't blow away.