delicious hetch hetchy water and a shower scene

From a friend of a friend... (I watched the six finalists and was impressed. They're ~ 1 min each, so you've got time for it. Really.)

 

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Recently, some friends and I entered a 60 second water conservation video contest with the San Francisco Public Utilities Commission and we are among the top 6 finalists! The winner will be determined by votes and will be announced at City Hall on December 8th. The winning video will also get some air time on a local TV station.

We need your help! Please take a second to vote. I won't say which one to vote for but ours is called "Shower Your Garden." Also if you could pass this on to your network of friends, that would be greatly appreciated.

Here is the link:
http://sfwater.org/detail.cfm/MC_ID/18/MSC_ID/429/MTO_ID/733/C_ID/4787

Healthiness of food vs. cost of food

Stolen from my ninja training gym's Facebook page, who stole it from GraphJam.

Save $500 a month on transportation costs

By living in San Francisco vs the burbs.
I buy this if you live & work in the city. I'd like to take a look at the data - like, what if you live and work in Pacifica (monthly transportation estimated at $1246). Wouldn't that bring you closer to the Bay Area Burden's San Francisco figure of $792? I don't know. Check it out later on today when that site goes live with a calculator!


Since getting rid of my car, what are my transportation costs? I'm going to shoot for the high side of my potential cost...
Take the bus six times. $12
BART to Berkeley & back, twice. $16
Get two flats, need new tubes. $8
Plus my own time to fix the flats. Estimate 15 min per flat. Say I'm a $60/ hour kinda gal. $30
General bike maintenance, let's call it 30 min. $30
Cab fare. Estimate $10 a trip, three trips. $30
Get a ride from a friend, pay the bridge toll/help with gas. $15
= $141
Sweet.
It'll go up when/if I do ZipCar. A $50/year fee and then whatever trips I take in the ZipCar. And then longer trips where I spend more on gas money, or even renting a car. Let's say $200/month, on average. Still, pretty great. Of course, that does NOT include the $400 I just dropped on a plane ticket to go to Illinois this weekend. Or what I'll spend on my Christmas airfare. Or what I'd have to spend to get a new bike, or the $150-250 I expect to drop on getting my ride set up with some new panniers and rack. Regardless, I'm really friggin lucky to be able to be car free.

The text or call debate, nicely laid out in this article

We've got a woman who says that first dates should be arranged via phone and a guy who thinks that texting can be appropriate. All in a very cute iPhone text-ish format, for your reading pleasure.

Nerve article

I agree that I like a phone call. It does, as the woman argues, seem to show a bit of courage on the guy's part. They did leave out the making plans via email method, which seems to work well for me. I'm not too much of a phone person, but I am online pretty often.

I definitely blew off a guy that I met this spring who only sent texts. Last minute, hey are you around now?, sort of texts. That definitely didn't work for me and I would always respond that I was busy (which, I probably was, but I'm sure could have made myself free if I really wanted) and finally suggested that he call me, or make plans in advance. And he texted back, asking if it was ok to call me, or when he could call - something like that. Yeah, I never responded to that one.

improper invitation timing

southern comfort just invited me to an event at a winery for DECEMBER 12.

dude, that is more than a month away. i said that i'd be in town then and that it sounded fun (because i'm way too polite sometiems). srsly?!? december 12?

not to mention the fact that i can't even commit to buying a ticket to go home for christmas yet (i mean, i'm going, it's just a matter of *when*) and now i apparently have plans with a dude i've gone out with a few times... for DECEMBER 12?

this is whack.

ok. i just sent a follow-up alerting him to the fact that it's a little far in the future. with humor. hopefully he is not offended, but picks up on my concern.

Pets and sustainable living

A recent study has estimated that owning a dog is, from a global warming standpoint, equivalent to owning and using two SUVs, and a cat is about the same as a VW.

I'm not going to argue with the numbers - it all depends on where you draw your box when doing a life cycle analysis, and carbon footprint calculations can be argued all day long. However, what about the improved health of pet owners over non-pet owners? Surely a healthier human is less of an environmental tax than a sick person. What about those pets that are shelter, or rescue animals, compared to those that come from breeders?

I do have a bit of guilt around my (newish to me, as of April 09, but adopted at age 11) cat. I don't feel guilt about her food, for some reason, even though she's a total carnivore and her food isn't organic. Her litter is Swheat Scoop, which is made from non-food grade wheat, grown domestically (yay!). However, every time I clean out her litter box, I am adding a plastic bag (reused!) of feces to the landfill, which sucks. And I'm not springing for biodegradable litter bags. Nope.

Ba-ay Bridge is fal-ling down. Fal-ling down. Fal-ling down.

An AlertSF email:

The Bay Bridge remains closed indefinitely with no estimate for re-opening by Caltrans. Please avoid impacted areas and utilize alternate forms of transportation. No further AlertSF notifications will be made unless there is new information about the expected opening.

(Ok, I made one little edit. The email came with indefinitely spelled indefinately and so I fixed it.)

Oh, and "a lot of people" = 280,000 cars. Dayum. I am happy to not be one of them as part of my daily (all in-town) commute.
Background and informative article here.

down to one, definitely time for a new crop

Ze boy status.
Got my camera back from Cutie. He dropped it off at my house on Friday evening.
(AB - he had it b/c we were taking pictures at a friend's party and then I forgot to get it back from him.)
And I'm done with that one.

I owe Spork a conversation along the lines of, "You're married, that is not really appropriate to me. Call me in six months."

And I'm going to see Southern Comfort tomorrow evening. He's making me dinner. I called him while I was on my way home after a wedding on Saturday night and he was highly amused. I'm not totally done with him yet and he seems to be picking up on my need for a little more, uh, autonomy.

Potentials at the wedding? Eh, a few. One guy from San Diego who seemed very chill, in a good way...but then when he and I started talking, he was way too nervous. I'm very scary, I know. I think got me a drink at the after party, but didn't really hold my interest...especially since there were non-nervous, chatty cute guys around. Being the stupid drunk girl that I was, I probably set that drink down and went to talk to someone else. Or handed the drink to another friend. Who knows? I didn't expect to find anyone at the wedding.

I have had one random hook-up at a wedding reception... Few years ago a coworker of the groom (my cousin-in-law). My cousin loved that the last picture in the online photo album from the photographer was a shot of the two of us slow dancing and definitely not looking like we just met.

Anyway, time for a new group... perhaps at Halloween?

Belated weekend dating update

Wow. Thanks for all the advice about SST.

Amanda pointed out that I failed to update on Cutie. He's cute. And a little too "fresh out of college" still for me, just in the way he talks about his friends and drinking, etc. Also, a huge turn-off (Ugh. Please, there must be a better way to say that. Not my favorite phrase.) for me is listening to a guy complain about things being expensive. *I'm* not rich. I know that shit is expensive sometimes. But I don't want to hear about how you don't go to the movies because you just can't justify the $12 ticket. That's something my mom (love her, really) would say. Why are we out to dinner? I can't help but think about that when you say, "I've got it" about the check. I feel like an ass then.

Caveat - bitching about something like how expensive it is to buy a house, or tuition or something like that. Totally fine. But normal stuff? Don't tell me about how you save so much money by drinking at home instead of out at a bar - especially if we are in one.

Anyway... he still has my camera so I'll either have to see him again, or maybe he can drop it off for me.

Onward.

SST, or "Southern Comfort," as coined by CP.
We had made tentative plans for Saturday night towards the end of coffee, but then I said I needed to think about it, due to the whole age thing. You all are fantastic with your comments. Really, I loved hearing from you. So, I did email him back...after making him wait/suffer a few hours ;) and told him that I'd like to see him again. We emailed back and forth that afternoon and at some point I found out that my Friday evening plans fell through... and took him up on his offer to go to dinner. Why not? It's not every day that I meet someone and have fabulous, comfortable conversation and flirting, right? And let's not forget the kissable part.

Without going into tons of details... we ended up having dinner on Friday night, kind of last minute and then Saturday, as planned. And then he brought take out over to my place yesterday. Yes, this is a lot in a short period of time. But, whatever. Fun. SST/SC is charming and outgoing. The kind of guy who has a conversation with the bartender and knows people at various restaurants and could get dropped into a party and have a great time. He is generous with compliments and invitations - such as to join him and a friend at brunch on Sunday. But...

He has two (WTF?) cars. Neither is particularly great on the gas mileage.
He drinks bottled water sometimes (but then asked if it was okay to just use a filter, so there's potential for conversion there).
He does not seem sold on municipal composting.
I'm not sure if he's into outdoorsy stuff at all, but he does have a commuter bike and a surfboard.
He is, at least, acting, like he's really, really into me. It's kind of overwhelming. I don't want an insta-boyfriend.

Said that my cat is fat and made fun of her. Poor thing. Otherwise, got along with her quite well.
Oh, and there are the previously discussed issues. The 42 and short&slim.

Spork and I haven't gone out again. He called about going out on Sunday, but I was exhausted. I may try going out with him again, but with the potential to have the "you're still technically married, let's be friends (cuz he really does seem cool)" conversation.

And those are all the updates I have for now. I may email a few new guys tonight. We'll see.

Guilt. Guilt. Guilt.

Articles like this make me feel like such a hypocrite.

We've long said that cutting meat and dairy out of your diet, or at minimum cutting back deeply on their consumption, is one of the most powerful personal steps you can take towards mitigating climate change. But new analysis from Worldwatch Institute shows that the impact of raising livestock and poultry is much greater than previously thought and actually amounts to approximately 51% of global greenhouse gas emissions:

(Treehugger article, by Matthew McDermott)

I don't drive, buy mostly organic food, local when possible. I also try to purchase other locally made products - luckily, there are a few Northern CA organic personal care manufacturers (Alba Organics, for one). I generally remember to buy carbon offsets for my flights. But really... I eat meat. And dairy. And eggs. (you know, except when I'm vegan once a week) And switching to vegetarian (well, actually vegan) eating would potentially be the most impactful change I could make in my life, wrt global warming.

Augh. The guilt.

It gets worse, people. I don't always buy organic meats. Eggs are probably, eh 60/40 (organic/not). Why? It's not generally an accessibility issue. Totally a $ thing. Organic, free-range, grazing... easily double the price of conventional.

Whine.Why is this so haaaaaard? End whine.

I may smell a vegetarian week/month/planned out X days a week coming up. With my current ninja training 2x a week, half marathon training and trying to lose weight... I don't think that full-time veg is the way to go for me. But could I do vegan 1x a week and planned vegetarian 2x a week? Probably. I mean, I'm on my way towards an unplanned vegetarian day right now...