Dome home!

I live in a wacky place in North Central Florida which has a diverse community and a long and rich history of freaky-deaks. If the 1970's contributed nothing to our overall enjoyment of life in the new millenium (other than a seemingly endless retro parade of its fashions [please end already, it's been 15 years]), it has given us the dome home. I drive by one on the days I'm driving DJ to or from his preschool. I find it fascinating and hope to do a short video or photo entry about it very soon.

In the meantime, this was an ebay listing called "Unique Triple Dome Home" that ended in July 2006, just about the time I was starting AE.

I contacted the seller and asked for the photos. We'll see if he or she returns my email or thinks I'm just a wacko, which is probably a wise assumption.

I've been fascinated with dome homes for a long time. There is the Monolthic Dome Institute in Italy, Texas (the last bastion of hippiedome if you ask me) where they can make your dome home aspirations a reality. Their forums have things other than dome homes that Texans and Floridians would find interesting, such as The 'things crashing into stick houses' thread which I encourage you to view at your leisure.

Here is the original AE posting on alternative housing. I will be getting back to this subject very soon!

Update:
I just emailed Monolithic Dome Institute to let them know I blogged about them -- I think that's the first time I've ever done that. Oh, yeah, I also hit them up for one of their Monolithic Dome 2007 calendars. I don't think that's payola, is it? Nah!

My shamps is making me fat!

Okay, this really sucks. I know I made the resolution to be nicer to Ideal Bite in my entries about them, but now I'm actually reading it and taking stuff away from it to use in real life. This time I read something about how the parabens in things like shampoo can make you fat, not to mention dead from cancer (okay, there is a link but not direct evidence of the last). Even though the Ideal Biters have a dead link to studies on their entry about parabens I found a website which discusses the whole issue and an article on Medweb which also speaks all cool and science-y about it (you may have to sign up with Medweb in order to access the article, though, like I did).

Dish Guy

So close! The Old Man and I came so close to getting a portable dishwasher for our walk-in closet-sized kitchen. It was small, energy efficient, and water efficient. And, guess what? THEY DON'T MAKE IT ANYMORE! We attempted to buy it from Beast Buy and was initially able to get the order through online and then got an email a few days later regretting that they had to dash our hopes. Big-box bastards.
I'm stuck with my thread-bare joke "Do I have a dishwasher? I married him!" and the Old Man, well, he's stuck with some dirty dishes. He refers to being the only person in the household to do the dishes as "the dish guy." It stems from having all those lazy roommates (or being one yourself) who refuse to do the dishes, and the one person who finally gets fed up enough to dump the dishes in the bathtub (and I had a roommate who actually did that) gets promptly dubbed "dish guy" and is forever relegated to the ignominious household chore for the rest of the time they are in that particular living situation.
Anyway, I got this Ideal Bite tip the other day and by golly, it is actually something that I could use and did not turn lip up in sneer mode. And, quite confidentially, it has been a burning question for a long time -- how do you do dishes the old fashioned way? I mean, this sounds really dumb, but I have never washed dishes in a washtub or in a water-filled sink. I'm sure I waste gallons upon gallons of water doing a sinkful (canceling out any benefit from not bathing every day, I'm sure). But dang it, if those gals at Ideal Bite didn't give me the 4-1-1 on how do them like grandma. Here's the link to that tip.

Slingshot 2007 Organizer

Go out, quickly, to the independent bookseller/rekid shop/meeting hall in your neighborhood and get the new Slingshot organizer. I waited and got stuck with the small, saddle bound version -- not a bad thing in itself, but the larger, spiral-bound version allows for laying flat your life and spreading out.
I use it primarily as a little diary, to record milestones ("DJ burped loud and long today") or to make sure I'm on board with class assignments. Besides being pleasingly original to the eye, it also has little factoids to help you. For instance, Sunday, January 28th has 3 entries:
1945 the Naples Congress, first congress of the united trade union movement in liberated Italy
1961 Committee for Nonviolent Action demonstrates against nuclear-armed ships, Connecticut
1998 France: 200 members of the Farmers Confederation destroyed a warehouse of GE corn
Yay! Just like me and the Old Man tell DJ every day the 3 things to live a good life:

1. Stick it to the Man
2. Smash the syndicate
3. Bring down Mr. Big

I can't tell if I got Many Bricks, Many Windows red, Red Emma red, or Blood on Our Hands red. It's red and I promptly covered it with packing tape to keep it from shredding in the bowels of my slingpack. It's too awesome! Here's the website of the organization what produces this lovely addition to my backpack.

Convenient Truths: a green video contest

A one-two minute video about how you are padding lightly on the earth could win you some serious money for that super-duper composter you've been slavering over. Check it out on the Treehugger website. Thanks to "B" once again for the cool tip!

Can you be in love with a deodorant?

Problem solved! Oh joy!
I finally got sick of smelling of B.O. all day -- that's right, after almost TWO MONTHS of not wearing deodorant I still had not had the magical disappearance of my underarm stank. But, it did open lines of communication with the old man that I never thought would be reached, such as...did you know that my husband's left armpit often smells worse than his right? And I said, mine too! Yeesh.
So, I broke down and bought one of those ammonium alum crystal deodorants. It ran me about 7 or 8 dollars, but it says it's going to last me all year. And do you know what? It really works, honestly and truly. You heard it here first, gang. Those crystal deodorant rocks you've seen in the granola stores all these years really do, totally work. I have been using it daily for 4 days and have not had a peep from the stank in my duties as a busy mom, student, and library assistant.
Here is an article on natural deodorants (wish I had seen this in my first explorations), and here is the Wikipedia article on alum which has a good run-down on its uses (and where I also swiped the photo for this post).

Happy New Year!

To all my friends and family and some friends that haven't been made yet, I wish everyone all the best for 2007. We just got back from a trip to Fort Wayne, Indiana, home of the ubiquitous bread wheel (long may it churn out a never-ending cascade of bread slices). The thing that I learned on my trip was to love all your friends with your heart and soul for as long as you can, because the time comes to say goodbye way too soon.

Here are some of my unofficial New Year's resolutions:

• Keep family and friends closer to my heart
• Continue buying books from my local bookseller over the quasi-instant satisfaction of buying from the conglorporations or Amazon.com.
• Not be so mean in my entries about Ideal Bite
• Use less water and less energy
• Lose weight and get back in shape
  

2007 is totally going to rock.