How to Make Seed Bombs

Via Instructables.

Got the cool picture (taken in CA, natch) from Sideshow By the Seashore blog

Bike to work week, y'all!

I totally just biked in to work today. Pro-tip: have moist wipes on hand because your body will be sweaty and your face covered on fine particulates of dirt (you're gonna get dusty, is what I'm trying to say).

Fixing clothes

The underwire in my bra tore through the fabric casing and I was just about to toss it when I decided to give fixing it a try. You might not be able to see in this picture but I did a little weaving with needle and thread, making the closure stronger (hopefully).

If it works I saved roughly 50 dollars on a new bra.

What we can learn from preppers

There's a growing awareness of a sector of the citizenry who believes the country/world is about to go belly-up and be ready for the coming food riots and what-not.  This involves things like canning tons of food and buying toilet paper in bulk, but it also involves things like arming oneself heavily and being ready to fight off home invasions by food rioters or whatever.  I'm sure there are lots of grays in there, but when you prepare yourself in such a way for any catastrophic event, economically or otherwise, you have a pretty fucked-up worldview.

I don't consider myself a commie for saying that the "I got mine" mentality doesn't fit the American ideal of working together as a nation for the common good, and I believe, fundamentally, that most people will work together if faced with a disaster.  The most recent example of this is that, right after the explosions at the Boston Marathon, the runners went right to the blood donation tents to help out.  That's not a small thing.  That's a small fraction of our country's population engaging in civic ideals that we invite all Americans to participate in.

But, back to the preppers, the reason why I've become aware of them is actually through my curiosity with low-tech/no-tech ways of doing things, like just today I was wondering if it would be possible to get a washing tub with a wringer attachment, like my paternal grandmother had (hers was electric, though, so extra fancy), and I found this YouTube video by LDS Prepper on the setup they made from a washtub, an agitating tool (The blue plunger-looking thing) and a wringer they purchased from an automotive shop.  It looks like it would all work, but the video itself is kind of boring.

Watch this video at your own peril:

Preppers, in all their misguided attempts to prepare for cataclysmic events, are going to show the rest of us that we can live more simply and with less electricity by using more primitive power.  I can get behind this - why do I ride a bicycle?  It's people-powered and I'm independent of the gas and oil industry when I ride my bike.  It's also pretty fun.   My work with the 1870's Living History Farm showed me that it's a lot of people-energy, but cooking and cleaning without electricity is possible.  So, we can take a lesson out of the playbook of the rapture-ready preppers in that living without electricity is not the end of the world.  Oh, wait.

Grist experiment: Vegan for a month

Just finished Elizabeth Kwak-Hefferan's insightful piece, "What I learned from a month of eating vegan."  Her analysis can be summed up as, "I didn't transform into a vegan at the end of one month, but I am more vegan than I was to begin with."  I think that astutely vibes my own experience with veganism, which me and the Old Man tried back in the wild and wacky Aughts, when our son, Dude Junior (DJ), was about 6 months old.  I was all caught up in a frenzy of ethical eating and thought it would help me and the OM improve our health and possibly drop some pounds.  There was one problem; my father-in-law, God love him, doesn't cotton to hippy-dippy stuff like veganism and neither of us had the reproductive organs to tell the g-rents we were keeping vegan.  So, we ended up being weekend carnivores, where we would be vegan during the week and then eat delicious, delicious meat at Sunday dinners at their house.  Not really a recipe for conscious eating (haha, I made a food joke).

I'm glad we tried it and now I know the basics of cooking and baking for vegans (although, some vegans will not even eat "vegan" food at potlucks because they are very strict, and need to make sure all of the ingredients are ethically made).  I also have a problem with cheese, like, I cannot stop eating it.

Ideologically, I also have problems with the wool/leather conundrum.  If you do not want to wear leather and wool because it exploits animals for their pelts, that's fine, but I think it's okay to wear leather and wool purchased second-hand.  And, as Ms. Kwak-Hefferan pointed out (and I will point out that I have not made fun of her name ONCE), is getting eggs from your neighbor's yard-cooped chickens such an exploitation?  If you decide not to try veganism for a month like the author of the Grist piece, or five minutes like I did, at least think about where your meat is coming from.

Got the photo from Sandra, "Vegetable Monster."

The Repurpose Project

 The Repurpose Project hasn't been around for very long, but it's apparently a very popular place, and it's getting ready to move because the fire station needs to expand.  I need to find out how long they've been around and where they are going to move.