remember ed begley jr.? the guy with the blond hair and geeky glasses from st. elsewhere, a 80's tv show about a hospital. remember how people labeled him eccentric for being eco conscious in the 80's/90's? ed is certainly a man ahead of his time because now no one thinks he's weird anymore (ok, i don't). i try to catch his show on the planet green, living with ed, and i enjoy watching it. i can see how exasperated his wife gets. :)
one of the episodes, ed visits pitzer college which is a liberal arts college up in the san fernando valley. it is building eco friendly dorms and one of the things that caught my eye was a dual flush toilet! the toilet has two button dual flush (0.8/ 1.6 gallon). if you go #1, you can do the 0.8 flush. if you go #2, you can use the 1.6 flush. wow! i am very tempted to get this one:
our city is offering a $250+ rebate for such toilets! i am going to call city hall to confirm if they're still offering this rebate but regardless, i love to get one.
for now we bought a low flow showerhead below from delta to help with california's drought. every bit counts, right?
we're always looking for ways to be greener. we recycle items beyond cans and bottles. 90% of our household is using cfl bulbs. YES, we're starting to use our britta filter rather than drink bottled water. we're thinking about getting a pirus or civic hybrid. all the used ones are so expensive so we're buying new. i can wait for a brand new one for a cheaper price -- oh, the price gouging! :P
can hybrid owners chime in on their cars? we would LOVE to hear your experiences, pro's and con's.
Show us your key chain. How many keys are on there?
Submitted by Strive2Be.
Just two - one for the house and one for the car. Not sure what happened to the PO box key. I ahare this car and these keys with my husband. It is for the non-preferred car which I always seem to end up with. I think I will have to start putting embarrassing ornaments (eg, pink fluffly animals etc) on the other set so my husband is too embarrassed to carry them and I end up with the preferred car more often.
Walkscore.com recently ranked America's most walkable neighborhoods and cities. Where does your hometown land in the rankings? And how much do you actually find yourself walking instead of driving?
I don't think this was very accurate for my neighbourhood as it doesn't include proximity to public transport. It came up with a score of 38 or "car dependent" just by measuring distances to various facilities such as a 7-11 (who needs one of these when the corner stores are so good?). We have tenants in the flat behind our house who get by quite well without a car. We probably could too except for the need to (or should I say added ease of?) ferry the kids around in one. Even then we could probably manage if we sent them to the school closest to our house rather than to the one across the highway from where we live. Our only extra curricular activity at the moment Kung Fu which is a five minute walk away or a train ride into the city (the kids attend classes at two locations). Will be more difficult when the kids start swimming again as there is no public pool within our neighbourhood (a travesty in my view).
Who needs a 7-11 when you can get everything you need (including fresh and cheap fruit and vegetables) here? Photo from Sydney Daily Photo blog.
the new messiah book was delivered today and i was excited until reading the blurb on its back cover:
"about three things i was absolutely positive. (btw, while this is grammatically correct, i find the sentence structure slightly awkward... just my opinion).
first, edward was a vampire.
second, there was a part of him -- and i didn't know how dominiate that part might be --- that thirsted for my blood
and third, i was unconditionally and irrevocably in love with him."
ugh--- do i yawn of barf? ... um... YARF!
(yeah, that was incredibly juvenile and dorky of me to combine yawn and barf but in time, it'll make it into the urban dictionary..)
i started thinking about my vows today and a quick google search for ideas turned up this little gem:
LOL! totally cracked me up.
Do you ever read the "Acknowledgments" at the beginning or end of a book? Why or why not? Bonus points: What book contains your favorite acknowledgments?
Submitted by Strive2Be.
I do but then my husband jokes that I am such a compulsive reader that I would even read the phone book (or, Heaven forbid, the Sports pages!) if I was stuck with nothing else to read (and yes, I must admit that I have done both these things). I don't normally remember them though so wouldn't be able to pick a favourite (not that tragic!).
more man bags
I had Monday off this past week so thk and I headed to the county office in Montebello to pick up our marriage certificate. We applied for it online a few days prior so everything was filled out and ready to go upon our arrival. a short wait in line and $70 later, we walked out of the office excited and with license in hand.
I turned to a random lady in line and asked her to take our photo with the certificate.
me: excuse me, can you take our photo for us?
her: sure, what's it for?
me: we just got our marriage license!!!
her: oh, that's nice. My husband died two weeks ago and I'm here to pick up his death certificate.
me and thk: :O
seriously, WTF!!? of the 234234 people outside of the building! ughh. she took our photo and then we thanked her and walked away. thk gave me the GDI WOMAN! WTF ARE YOU DOING!! look. I felt horrible.
and to make sure it wasn't bad juju, we asked another guy to take our photo. he was all excited for us and happy to take a couple of pics. still... :T
later that day, thk and i met up with the uber-talented and awesome SARAH! at Lacma for some ephotos.
1. she is possibly the cutest pregger ever.
2. thk doesn't smile. like, he smiles, but only with his mouth because it's totally a fake smile. at one point during the shoot, sarah gets fed up with thk's fake smiles and from behind the camera, i hear
"steve?"
...followed by...
!!!!!! LOL!
so.awesome. Sarah is one of those girls that other girls stalk online, hoping she'll be their friend because she's just THAT awesome. lucky for me, we belong to the highly exclusive FFAB group together and I already get to call her a friend. yay!
23 days and counting! i'm so excited. I feel that most of the wedding is planned.. and if things dont go the way they're supposed to go on the day, who cares? I mean, at the end of it all, i'll still be married to the most awesome guy ever. everything else is just icing on top.
!! AND!! my dad was generous enough (on top of all the saturday and sunday wedding costs!) to pay for our honeymoon! where should we go!? we have 3 weeks to plan!
I want to say THANKS for all of your support and comfort on my grandma's death, God I hate that word. I have been calling Jakarta and talked to my family especially my mom coz she was really close to my grandma and has been taking care of her when she was ill, My grandma was buried in the same ground as my granddad. I will miss her terribly, she was 92 years old, she was a very tough lady who brought up 9 children all by herself after her husband died when I was probably 3 years old. I miss talking to her in the morning with her usual cheerful way when she's talking in Javanese which I never understand, I always think that she did it on purpose coz she talks in Indonesian language with other people but not to her children and grandchildren or great grandchildren, mom always told me to learn our traditional Javanese language so I could understand her but I guess me and my cousins who were brought up in the city wouldn't bother that much in learning the traditional language. I think it's my grandma's way in teaching us coz yes I did understand a word or two, but that's all. Sorry Grandma.
Anyway, the other day before I heard the bad news, I was at my MIL's house, she took me to cut my hair and I decided to just trim it a little and then we spent the whole day making Muffins, my FIL went to his relative's funeral in Nottingham so I accompanied her until my husband came off from work and picked me up. It was lovely to taste the muffin straight off the oven.
My husband has been so kind as well to take the day off today and took me out to town, he thought it might cheer me up , he bought me a sundress and a mug that says "Her Ladyship", we are still arguing about the mug he wanted to get me which is "Cheeky Monkey" which I don't like and I wanted the mugh with my name on it in the other shop but he doesn't want to get that for me, I think it's been 2 months now that we were arguing about mugs, oh well I have to settle for this one he bought me though.
I had a nice day, a nice walk with my husband, we also collected my wedding ring that they resized it. Thank You again.
So my mom called me this morning to remind me the lock the doors and make sure to turn the alarm on when I leave the house. She also did this yesterday morning. This is not unusual, because she will typically call to tell me this whenever she leaves the house earlier than I do, but after she had given me the usual instructions she said, "I was at Yosemite last night!"
.........WHAT?
Ok, I didn't even think my mom knew what Yosemite WAS. I was highly confused, especially since I had no idea she had even left Orange County. However, when I questioned her on her current whereabouts, she informed me that she was now passing Modesto and was on her way to San Francisco and had been gone since yesterday. I had to hang up because I was getting ready for work, but when I went into the hallway Dan, my sister's husband was in the hall getting ready for work too (yeah, we all live under the same roof for now) and I was like, "Hey - did you know mom is in Yosemite?" And he looked really confused and said, "What?? No she's not." And I was like, whew....at least I am not the only person in my house that wasn't told that my mom was going away for three days. Until he said, "I thought she was going to San Francisco. She's going to be back tomorrow night."
WTF.
Why does EVERYONE KNOW ABOUT MY MOM'S WHEREABOUTS EXCEPT FOR ME?? This is just like the time my dad left on a business trip for Georgia for a week and I didn't find about he was gone until the day before he was due to come back (my dad is a really quiet guy). Even my sister, who wasn't even living with us at the time, knew that he was in Georgia and I didn't!!! ugh, I am always getting left out of things, I am such the middle child. One instance that really rankles in my soul/chaffs my ass is when my Canadian cousins came to visit and my mom took EVERYONE to the Nixon Library except for ME because I was working that day, when she could have waited until a day when I wasn't working! I REALLY WANTED TO GO TO THE NIXON LIBRARY!!!!!!!!!!! I was probably the ONLY one who wanted to go! I still haven't been to the Nixon Library to this day. Life is so hard. It's a good thing I was so goddamn cute as a child and thus got a lot of attention from other people, otherwise I would probably be so messed up right now.
