The teacher at the dinner party

The dinner guests were sitting around the table discussing life. One
man, a CEO, decided to explain the problem with education.

He argued, 'What's a kid going to learn from someone who decided his
best option in life was to become a teacher?'

He reminded the other dinner guests what they say about teachers:
'Those who can, do. Those who can't, teach.'

To emphasize his point he said to another guest; 'You're a teacher,
Bonnie. Be honest. What do you make?'

Bonnie, who had a reputation for honesty and frankness replied, 'You
want to know what I make?'

(She paused for a second, then began...)

'Well, I make kids work harder than they ever thought they could.

I make a C+ feel like the Congressional Medal of Honor.

I make kids sit through 40 minutes of class time when their parents
can't make them sit for 5 without an I-Pod, Game Cube or movie rental.

You want to know what I make?' (She paused again and looked at each and
every person at the table.)

''I make kids wonder.

I make them question.

I make them apologize and mean it.

I make them have respect and take responsibility for their actions.

I teach them to write and then I make them write. Keyboarding isn't
everything.

I make them read, read, read.

I make them show all their work in math. They use their God-given
brain, not the man-made calculator.

I make my students from other countries learn everything they need to
know in English while preserving their unique cultural identity.

I make my classroom a place where all my students feel safe.

I make my students stand, placing their hand over their heart to say
the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag, One Nation Under God, because we
live in the United States of America .

I make them understand that if they use the gifts they were given, work
hard, and follow their hearts, they can succeed in life.'

(Bonnie paused one last time and then continued.)

'Then, when people try to judge me by what I make, with me knowing
money isn't everything, I can hold my head up high and pay no attention
because they are ignorant... You want to know what I make?

I MAKE A DIFFERENCE. What do you make Mr. CEO?'

His jaw dropped, he went silent.

Green Christmas

It was my goal last year to pursue a green Christmas....some of you may think this is easy since trees are green, garland can be made from that green sparkly stuff, and the recognized colors of the holiday season just happen to be red and GREEN. Well hold your hats because I am referring to the new pop culture definition of the word green.

Eco-friendly, Environmentally Friendly, tree-hugger--you know. So here are a list of websites that offer fair trade goods, green-friendly products, and some great gift ideas for those of you trying to do your part!

http://www.eco-artware.com/index.php
http://www.greenhome.com/
http://www.wedgeworldwide.coop/index.php
http://www.zanisa.com/
http://www.greenfeet.com/index.asp
http://www.earthinspire.com/
http://www.arenaturals.com/
http://www.giftswithhumanity.com/
www.thehungersite.com
http://nosweatapparel.com/index.html
www.ornamentalthings.com
http://www.taraluna.com/index.htm
http://www.worldwildlife.org/home.html

Love it!!
Happy Christmas

My Car happens to be Republican

I was listening to my favorite band of all time....The Dixie Chicks in my car today and one of the most controversial songs that they have ever written, and also one of my favorites, came on the player. "I'm Not Ready to Make Nice"

This song was, of course, written after the Chicks made a very bold political statement regarding their and the President of the United States, George W. Bush, place of shared permanent residency...The great state of Texas.

So I was getting ready to belt out the song in my best car Karaoke voice....almost as if I am an integral part of the very strong and united band.....and low and behold the song skipped. It teased me with the counter, numbers making their way up from .01 seconds on and as I sat waiting for the banjo to start strumming, the counter reached .08 and the song skipped.

Now I pushed the back button and all was good, the song came on and Martie, Natalie, Emily, and myself sang to our hearts content.

After our musical performance had concluded, I checked the cd twice over for scratches and couldn't find a one. Racking my brain for an answer I looked around....I was in a Ford. It was my car that did it. My car, the Ford Focus, is a member of the ford family of vehicles and I am pretty sure Henry Ford, creator of a certain Model-T was voting right wing red all the way......

I am going to have to have a talk with my Focus about the importance of sharing political opinions without letting it get out of control, and commanding the CD player to skip one of my favorite songs just because of its history of being right wing is way out of line!

The Gingham Dress

THE GINGHAM DRESS

A lady in a faded gingham dress and her husband, dressed in a homespun threadbare suit, stepped off the train in Boston and walked timidly without an appointment into the Harvard University President's outer office. The secretary could tell in a moment that such backwoods, country hicks had no business at Harvard & probably didn't even deserve to be in Cambridge .

"We'd like to see the president," the man said softly.

"He'll be busy all day," the secretary snapped.

"We'll wait," the lady replied.

For hours the secretary ignored them, hoping that the couple would finally become discouraged and go away.

They didn't, and the secretary grew frustrated and finally decided to disturb the president, even though it was a chore she always regretted.

"Maybe if you see them for a few minutes, they'll leave," she said to

him!

He sighed in exasperation and nodded. Someone of his importance obviously didn't have the time to spend with them, and he detested gingham dresses and homespun suits cluttering up his outer office. The president, stern faced and with dignity, strutted toward the couple.

The lady told him, "We had a son who attended Harvard for one year. He loved Harvard. He was happy here. But about a year ago, he was accidentally killed. My husband and I would like to erect a memorial to him, somewhere o campus."

The president wasn't touched. He was shocked.

"Madam," he said, gruffly, "we can't put up a statue for every person who attended Harvard and died. If we

did, this place would look like a cemetery."

"Oh, no," the lady explained quickly. "We don't want to erect a statue. We thought we would like to give a building to Harvard."

The president rolled his eyes. He glanced at the gingham dress and homespun suit, then exclaimed, "A building! Do you have any earthly idea how much a building costs? We have over seven and a half million dollars in the physical buildings here at Harvard."

For a moment the lady was silent. The president was pleased. Maybe he could get rid of them now. The lady turned to her husband and said quietly, "Is that all it cost to start a university? Why don't we just start our own? "

Her husband nodded. The president's face wilted in confusion and bewilderment.

Mr. and Mrs. Leland Stanford got up and walked away, traveling to Palo Alto, California where they established the university that bears their name, Stanford University, a memorial to a son that

Harvard no longer cared about.

You can easily judge the character of others by how they treat those who they think can do nothing for them.

---- A TRUE STORY by Malcolm Forbes

"People will forget what you said. People will forget what you did."
"But people will never forget how you made them feel."

Flushed Away

It was a normal day in the OC except my parents and little sister were in town from Oregon.  Matt and I had been having a text conversation about who knows what and I had to pee.   So I placed my perfect phone; one that has been dropped thousands of times and still worked amazingly well, one that had all 70 of my contacts, pictures of random fun stuff, etc into my pocket.  

Into the bano I went. I finished my business, flushed, and proceeded to pull up my blue plaid bermudas when suddenly and in what seemed like slow motion, my phone jumped out of my pocket and fell into the bowl of germs while the water was swirling counterclockwise. I gasped in disgust and went straight into phone survival mode as I stuck my hand into that water (which at this point was clean and clear BTW) and grasped for my phone.  It was just out of my reach every time I my fingers nearly clasped onto its antenna,  My hand and arm followed it as far up the pipes as they could but it was always just out of reach.

After I realized that my phone had entered the point of no return I grabbed the soap and scrubbed my arm and then after that I scrubbed it some more to get all of the toilet off of it.  I dried off and walked out of the room with a feeling of both embarrassment because I had my phone in the bathroom and hilarity due to what seems like a pretty unique situation.  I have heard many stories since i began sharing mine of phones that have fallen victim to the toilet, but there is one element of my story that makes it one for the history books, and that is the timing of my phones decent from my shorts to the bowl and then its subsequent journey up the pipes.

So in conclusion, I send out a plea.  Does anyone have an old but usable verizon phone that they would care to donate to a poor college student who is planning a wedding and needs a good working phone?  I am using Matt's right now, but it holds charge like an 80 year old man.

The day every little girl dreams of

since she was five. Let me move forward and rephrase. It is time to start actual planning of the day this little girl dreamt about since she was five. I could lie, like I have been for at least the last 4 years and say that I wasn't really ready to get married, but turns out I was. Or maybe up until life became more adultish, I was ready to plan the party, but not necessarily ready for the title of Wifey = Matt's number one.

Anyway so he asked me and I said yes and so starts a whirlwind of fancy planning with dresses (whoop whoop), decorations, flowers, up-dos, down-dos, half-up dos (so many choices), bridesmaids, parties, invites, etc etc etc. And the list went on.

Friends have sent me fun packages with magazines and books and cards with my new initials displayed proudly on the front of the envelope. Don't know why that is significant? Take a moment. Matt's last name is S...--My name is Amber SJR (traditionally the bride takes the grooms last name) please proceed with some brainwork as I continue on my rant. I am working really hard on not focusing on how f-ing incredibly expensive it is to get married in SoCal. Andrea sent me a very useful book titled "How to plan a church wedding for under $5,000. At first I was so optimistic about the usefulness of the book, and as it turns out there are some really great hints and tips for being a blissful yet budget conscious bride. Sadly enough the reception is already looking to cost twice what the wonderful woman budgeted for her entire wedding. And so the planning went on.

Prices and cost aside. This day is going to be incredible. I think I have decided on colors, yet they will probably change. Deep Purple and Kelly Green. Yet it will be happening in July in Pasadena so I might want to make the bridesmaid dresses a bit less dark so I do not end up being responsible for their premature deaths as a result of overheatedness (is that even a word).

So for those of you lovelies who read my little rants and raves....any suggestions and or words of encouragement would be greatly appreciated!

Dreamer

Perhaps I should be more of a dreamer. I live with someone who can be a dreamer. He dreams of trips to far off places, of houses, of a life full of big things.

Sometimes I can be too real, too far away from the possibilities floating about in my head.  I think about life in the now. I think about goals we have set (getting married and buying a house), and I think about how expensive those goals will be to follow through with.  Because my thoughts are centered around our bank accounts both now and future, I always end up being the dream squasher. The one who looks him right in the eye and says "well, what about this," or "what about that."  "How could we possibly do all of the things you keep talking about." 

I ask, why can't I be more of a dreamer.  I could say, "YESS, Let's do that!" Even if, in reality, there is no way that could happen along with all of the other goals we have for the future.  Could we go to South Africa in two years for the World Cup? Probably not, if we want to buy a house, but does that matter RIGHT NOW? No.  It doesn't.  Of course, we all know that I would be heading to a different part of Africa while my boy and his friends were watching Soccer.

Maybe I can learn a thing or two from the dreamer.  Dream big or go home.

How White am I? stolen and edited to my tastes

If you haven't checked out the hysterical site Stuff White People Like, I highly recommend that you do. If not for the things listed that call out many white people in this country, do it for the heated comments that people leave who have no sense of humor/wouldn't get it to save their lives.

It blows me away that the author started this site in JANUARY OF THIS YEAR, and already he has a book coming out in July in addition to the nearly 30 million hits to his site to date. If only we could all be so lucky.

I was going through the list and started to wonder how truly white I am. And if I don't fall into the category of "white," what exactly does that make me then? Let's analyze:

Very me:

5. Farmers markets

6. Organic foods

7. Diversity

12. Non-Profit Organizations

15. Yoga

18. Awareness

19. Traveling

22. Having two last names (HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA not by choice)

32. Vegan/Vegetarianism

41. Indie Music

42. Sushi

43. Plays (if I could afford to go)

48. Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops

49. Vintage

51. Living by the water

59. Natural medicine

60. Toyota Prius

61. Bicycles

64. Recycling

65. Co-ed Sports

84. and 86. Shorts and T-shirts

Things white people like that I definitely don't like

29. 80's night

33. Marijuana

52. Sarah Silverman

63. Expensive Sandwiches

66. Divorce

76. Bottles of water

55. Apologies (I laughed so hard at this one... I heard a lady in Kohl's the other day say, "I'm sorry, those are mine," to an employee who was trying to organize the area and I wondered why in the world she felt the need to apologize for that fact.)

56. Lawyers (Oops... did I say that out loud?)

62. Knowing what's best for poor people

Anyway, you do the math. But per the list, I am pretty damn white. And i'm ok with that. As long as I am an open-minded, vegetarian, who loves plays, hybrid vehicles, recycling, indie music, and wearing t-shirts and shorts while I live by the water.

Blu

Thinking back it seems like everything we have is pretty easy to take for granted. Please see below blog where I declare my open availability for anything this summer. Most people are out there right now working their bootys off to make money and live their lives. But most of them are "living to work" because of the economy right now, gas prices (holy F), and cost of living in the haven that is SoCal.

I am not. I am sitting here, in my house, when the sun shines outside my patio door, and still I can't help but feel a little down. As it turns out I had a different view of what my life would have been like when I reached 26. As an idealistic 19yr old sophomore at UNLV I thought for sure that I would be married by 26, living a successful life in CAL and loving it (accomplished part of that goal), have a house and a dog (at that point I didn't think children would be in my future). Let's run through that list as we look at my current life. Yes. I am 26. No I am not married. Yes I am living in CAL, liking it, but not loving it. No house and no dog. And no real job. And since I stopped going to the gym when I started grad school I have also become soft in the middle which isnt the end of the world, but also isn't where I want to be right now.

Part of me looks back on goals I set, accomplishments of those goals, and realizations that those were not the goals that would carry my into a happy long life. Since I love lists, lets make one.

It was a goal of mine to get away from home and move all over. Check (alaska, nevada, arizona, new york, CAL)

It was a goal of mine to go to college to be a Marine Biologist. Check (the math is over my head so plans changed)

It was a goal of mine to overcome a health issue that plagued my life for many years. Check, and proud of that check although the struggle is still daily.

It was a goal of mine to Move to CAL and work in the surf industry. Check and Check. Moved to CAL after school and worked at Rusty and O'neill.

It was a goal of mine to find the man of my dreams, marry him, get a house and a dog. Let's see. Check, no check, no check and no check. I found the man of my dreams, but have been patient and given him the time to be ready to ask the question I have been dying to be asked for a while now ;)

Who knew that life could make so many different twists and turns. Who knew that I would love working with kindergarteners so much. I mean with all of the love they ooze through their tiny little poors it isnt hard, but patience is a virtue and apparently I had some hidden deep inside of me.

Anyway, the point of this whole blog is that I have a lot to be thankful for but for some reason I find myself in a bit of a slump. I am looking for a way out of it and perhaps it is just a day to day journey. I have to find the inner smile what I know I possess. We do fun things all of the time and while I try and be happy, smile, and enjoy myself, I find that I have a hard time with this. So we will see what the summer brings. My life has always been better when I am busy and doing something. So hopefully there will be something really amazing to be planning for this summer.

Summer Time

Summer is approaching quickly with southern California temperatures hitting low to mid 90's. Last year at this same time I was nothing but busy. Matt and I had just moved into our apartment and we were still getting settled, in the midst of mental breakdowns I was having over lamp shopping, I was diligently studying for all three CSET's, working at the restaurant; just having left a full time job with a consistent paycheck, and taking three summer school classes. Nothing short of a busy little worker bee with little time to see the ocean and the sun.

This summer is different. No tests to study for. No lamp shopping to be done. No classes to be taken. Not even a full time job as tips from my 5 5hour shifts at the restaurant can pay the bills. So what do I do? Here are some different pseudo goals I have: (in no particular order)

1. Read a book every two weeks. My library needs to grow for this goal to be accomplished but I do have friends and family to borrow from and there is always the public library.

2. Hit the gym at least four times a week. With Matt working full time and me sitting around taking care of the house, reading, and doing whatever else I should have time to hit the gym for at least an hour. Plus! The gym is NEVER busy in the middle of the day!!

3. Make an effort to learn to cook.

4. Get my credential

5. Find a job!

So that is that. Wish me luck.

A red ladder helped me out of a black hole

Apparently I have been blessed and forgot to take notice. Things have been pretty hard the past couple of weeks for me personally and I am having a bitch of a time dealing with it. Finishing my student teaching put my into kind of a black hole, I loved being in the classroom and implementing strategies and interacting with the kids on a daily basis. Student teaching for me was basically a job that I loved that I was forced out of. It seemed that taking me out of that environment and back into the world of being jobless and out of money was like removing me from a dream where JakeG rides up to me on a white horse and steals me away to live on an island somewhere forever.

I've started to get a little funky, like not smelly, but in a funk. My heart sank more and more when people talked about the sinking job market and I focused on my declining bank account. I got pissed when the government didn't hand me all of the free money they didn't even really promise us, but for some reason I thought I was entitled to.

So yesterday when my heart was in a dark place I was sitting on the beach watching the waves crash in front of me. The ocean and the beach used to be my haven, the place I went to be with God, to find peace, to relax, but yesterday it was just another place to be. That is until my red-headed friend who I have been hanging out with for the past 5 1/2 years made me think again. He reminded me to open my eyes and look before me to what is happening. The ocean is God in liquid form and I am beyond lucky to be where I am. I am beyond lucky to have the things I have. I have forgotten that my life does not revolved around my band acct unless I create that mindset. He kindly noted that although I get on his case for being negative about getting into business school I do not practice what I preach when it comes to getting a job next fall.

It was then that I looked out in front of me and listened to his voice on my left. We live in paradise, a place where people pay thousands of dollars to visit. If we are tired or stressed out we can drive 5 miles and place our booties on the sand, close our eyes, and listen to the crash. We have a one bedroom apartment in Laguna beach which is leaps and bounds above living in a cardboard box on a street somewhere. Our cars not only get us from point A to point B but we also have keyless entry and working breaks. We have time to chill and live instead of having to work hours upon hours upon hours. We are not alone. We have family and most importantly we have each other. And then he said the thing that hit me the hardest. "Think about all of the things you have and remember that you cant take it all for granted because one day it could all be gone and then where would you be."

He was right, dont tell though, he wouldn't let me live it down.

I am going to try to turn over a new rock (cliche, I know). Pick up my chin and make things happen for myself instead of thinking it should be handed to me. So wish me luck friends, because here I go!

Home Work

I used to get pretty heated by people who thought it was a woman's duty to be in the kitchen and to stay at home rearing the children. The idea still seems pretty archaic to me, I really don't see this idea having any worth in today's world. It is not a woman's obligation or duty to be susie homemaker just because she has a set of knockers.

There are three different kind of woman I will touch on in this post. There is the woman who works 40-60hrs a week and does not have time to ALSO be the person responsible for everything that needs to be done in the home. There is the woman who is OC, what I mean by that is, she carries her dog in a bag with her, wears ginormous diamonds (most likely mined from conflict), lives for her giant fake boobs and the man who pays for her every need (and has a maid, mind you, so none of the cleaning really matters to her, but she is still at home 80% of the day being rich and fake and boring) and there is the woman who has chosen to stay at home and raise the children and be a an active member in the community and her children's lives.

That being said there is a sort of debacle I have been having in my personal life that relates to said subject. I kind of fall in between the first woman described and the third. I have been working full time the last three months in an unpaid student teaching position. It has been a crazy time with lots to do with school work, planning, and the dreaded TPA's (my personal assessments, not that you care). So life has been crazy even though I have been getting home early enough to take care of some stuff around the house.

For those of you who know me, you know I am both a terrible cook and a person who doesn't love cooking (if you need to know why, please see previous part of the sentence). I also do not love housework. I dont mind vacuuming, but our vacumn isn't working well. Dusting is annoying and dishes are not bad, but I get tired/lazy sometimes. Cleaning the toilet is gross and laundry is the worst. I sound so neggy right now. In reality I don't mind doing these things but have found myself rebelling against them. I am rebelling against the fact that I should be doing more housework as my man has been paying 80% our shared bills and he is amazing for doing so.

I do realize that because he is basically taking care of my financial needs it would be nice if I reciprocated by doing some crap around the house so he doesn't really have to worry about it. But my struggle lies in the vision I have of a woman, me, in a gingham jumper dress pulling a pot roast out of a steaming oven and placing that and the side dishes on a nice piece of china and then setting it directly in front of my bf/husband who happens to be seated in front of the table I set in the middle of all of the other "chores" to be done around the house. Oh and don't forget the napkin he has placed in his shirt collar to not dirty his nice, starched, work shirt.

The reality is that this is not the case at all. He helps with so much and at times even does more. Anyway, I guess at the end of the day my giving in to doing more housework does not ACTUALLY make me the next Doris Day, but just a contributor to the well being of our little pseudo family.

I am a Vegetarian--or am I?

There are so many different kinds of ways people classify vegetarianism.
Here are some of them:
I am a lacto-ovo veg, which means I eat eggs and do dairy products.
Some are lacto which means they do dairy but not eggs.
Some are ovo which means they do eggs but not dairy.
There are vegans which means they use nothing in their lives that has been derived from animal byproducts (i.e. honey, leather, foodstuffs, etc).

Then there are the ones I used to call the delusional ones, the ones who think they are vegetarian because they don't eat red meat, or they only eat fish. News flash: Fish are still animals--Fish is still a meat. Chicken is STILL a MEAT.

Not only are there several different classifications of vegetarianism, there are also many different reasons why people choose this lifestyle. There have been books written on all of the reasons why people become vegetarian or vegan so I wont really go into it in great depth.

Some are to be advocates for the animals (there are some gnarly practices going on in American/International slaughterhouses).
For some it is due to the health aspect: allergies, blood pressure, heart disease and so on.

I was one of those that did it for the animals. I read about everything that occurs in the slaughterhouses and none of it seemed right. It is my true and honest belief that animals are creatures of God meaning they have souls and feelings. Who are we to think we are so superior that it is ok to treat animals as if they are just there to feed us. Some may argue that God put animals on this earth to feed people, and that may be correct, but the way we have gone about persuing this right is unGodly.

Anyway the thing that prompted me to write this blog is my struggle with my ability to be a true to word vegetarian. I just really started to become more aware of some of the non-vegetarian processing practices and the instances of non-vegetarian food additives in products I would never have thought to look. Cheese and sugar for instance. I was always aware of gelatin and how it is made, but what about creating a more refined sugar by breaking it down with animal bones. Can it make me feel better to know that only 25% of sugar processors use this practice? No, because what about those times I am not at my home eating my 100% natural blah blah blah sugar, and I get some sort of food that has sugar in it and it happens to have been processed using this practice but I would never know and Lord knows my sweet 20yr old college student waitress wouldn't know either. So I eat it, doing my best pretending that there can be NO way this sugar was broken down and made that pretty white color by using animal bones.

So for someone like me who has chosen this lifestyle to be a spokes person for the animals what are we supposed to do. Do I hole myself up in my apartment for the rest of my life, going to work only to make money to spend at the whole-natural-organic (which also has several different classifications by the way)-food stores? In my current financial state it is almost like I cant really afford to be a true vegetarian, eating products bought at these stores just to ensure I am in no way contributing to slaughterhouse products or slaughterhouse by products. Here are some examples I found online:

• gelatin (from animal bone)
  

• avoid jello, starburst, skittles, sour cream, Extra Polar Ice gum, some gummy bears
  

• Skittles from the Czech Republic and Starburst from England do not contain gelatin.
  

• note: most camera film is made from gelatin.
  

• lipase (from calves, lambs, or kids—a enzyme used in food processing)
  

• A lot of wine and beer is not vegan - anyone know about hard alcohol?
  

• almost all cheap and imported beers and wines are filtered with isinglass (derived from fish) or bone char.
  

• White flour and white sugar- supposedly the calcium carbonate used to bleach these products can derive from animal bones. Can anyone provide a primary source to confirm or deny this claim?
  

• Chocolate - yes its true. apparently the refined sugar in it is made using a process involving animal bone charcoal.
  

• Sugar - some brands of refined cane sugar is made with a process using animal bone charcoal to "scrub" it clean of impurities, color, flavors, and minerals. C&H used to be vegan (as of 2001), but not Imperial. All sugar derived from sugar beets is vegan (not filtered with bone char). This is also true of common "Brown sugar" which is white sugar before the brown is added back in

And these are just a few. So the question is, is what I am doing or trying to stand for even worth it? Do I just give it all up and start eating meat, like in its solid form, almost as if the last 9 years don't even matter. The food industry is making it very hard for me to be solid in my belief and they way I choose to act on those beliefs.

I am having a vegetarian identity crisis.

DOGA

I heard about this craze on the news this evening. DOGA. Can you figure it out? If you are smart and on top of it, you have already concluded that this acronym stands for Dog Yoga. Apparently, there are DOGA classes across the globe in places ranging from New York to Japan and everywhere in between.

This should definitely be added to the blog, Stuff White People Like. When was the last time there had been a fad so off the wall....let's revisit the past. Barrettes that looked like little hats, shabby chic furniture, ponchos, hammer pants, snap bracelets (loved em), wearing clothes backward (think CrissCross), garbage pail kids, etc.

I don't think that even I could jump on the DOGA bandwagon, regardless of the fact that I have no dog. There is a reason in yoga we have downward facing dog, because they already do it. Yoga is about listening to the Earth and finding peace and I don't think that having your (insert appropriate breed of dog here) running around your mat and your body as you are trying to contort or perfect your headstand would be provide for a very productive yoga practice.

In the dark

Well, I have to admit, Earth hour has come and gone and we embraced it whole heartedly. By we, I mean myself and my nephew THOR, he is a cavachon, a big fluffy white dog. We turned out the lights at 8pm, although I did enjoy some sudoku under the dim glow of a flashlight (hopefully that is allowed).

It was harder than I thought, at first I thought maybe because THOR was coming over we wouldn't be able to do it, but it seemed that wasn't the case. In fact, I think THOR liked Earth Hour. It was a time where there were no loud bangs or screeches or people talking on the tv. This little pup is a scaredy cat, he jumps at everything. THOR and his mom and dad (Andrea and Cody) are visiting their friends who live in San Clemente. The friends have a one-year old, so their home all is hustle and bustle, too much excitement for my man THOR. If I were THOR I would like Earth Hour too, the room all nice and quiet.

EH was also hard because it was a time where I could not turn to the internet or my IPOD or my friends on TV for entertainment. It was old skool like Oregon trail times when people wrote stories and read them alod by firelight.

All in all I was glad to have taken part in this environmental movement, and pleased to hear that people all over the world were taking part in it during 8pm their time. Thank goodness for the fact that people are finally coming to the realization that something has to be done.

Here, Here to the World Wildlife Foundation for creating this movement, and for getting the word out so effectively. I know I will mark this day for years to come!

Earth Hour

Well, I never thought I would see the day that blogging on here would be part of my life, but I have been inspired by friends. The main reason I wanted to start this was just to share a passion I have, green living. Sometimes I slack, but I try to practice what I preach.

Anyway, today is the day I started this thing because it is a special day. It is Earth Hour and this is something I was just introduced to the past couple of days, but found super interesting. Here is some info, enjoy......

On March 29, 2008 at 8 p.m., join millions of people around the world in making a statement about climate change by turning off your lights for Earth Hour, an event created by the World Wildlife Fund.


Earth Hour was created by WWF in Sydney, Australia in 2007, and in one year has grown from an event in one city to a global movement. In 2008, millions of people, businesses, governments and civic organizations in nearly 200 cities around the globe will turn out for Earth Hour. More than 100 cities across North America will participate, including the US flagships–Atlanta, Chicago, Phoenix and San Francisco and Ottawa, Montreal, Toronto and Vancouver. View cities involved around the world.


We invite everyone throughout North America and around the world to turn off the lights for an hour starting at 8 p.m. (your own local time)–whether at home or at work, with friends and family or solo, in a big city or a small town.


What will you do when the lights are off? Get creative, think Old Skool.


Join people all around the world in showing that you care about our planet and want to play a part in helping to fight climate change. Don’t forget to sign up and let the world know you want to join Earth Hour.


http://www10. earthhourus. org/

One hour, America. Earth Hour.
Turn out for Earth Hour!