To do list...still
It's 11:24 pm Sunday night, and sad to say the part of the list with fewest check marks is "School." I'm as bad as my students about leaving things until the last minute. I'll be working tonight and all day tomorrow, right up to the time I leave for school.
I always intend to get school things done on Friday, maybe Saturday, but it almost never happens until about this time. I did get a draft finished of a letter to schools about the Click! High School Web Competition, but I'm running late on that too.
At least the Edgewater panorama is done, and I added a link to this site from my 44113 site, which gets a decent number of visitors.
Greening the world—or our little piece of it, at least
Our friend Chuck Ackerman decided to invite a small group of people over to talk about how we could become a "green support group." The idea was to talk about what we're doing and/or would like to be doing to reduce, reuse, recycle and generally live in a more sustainable way.
As a general rule I hate meetings, but went anyway because the topic is important. About 25 people were there, many of them strangers to me and each other. But we went around the room twice, once to introduce ourselves and say why we were there, and again to say one thing we are doing now and one thing we'd like to do or learn about.
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Tips on saving energy in your office and home
I did a quick web search before the meeting to find out how much energy is saved when you replace regular light bulbs with compact fluorescents and came across a helpful, fun website done by the U.S. government (link above). Finally, a use for my tax dollars that I can support!
In our relatively small group there was a wealth of ideas and experience. People talked about riding public transit, riding bikes, composting, using green cleaners, recycling, growing native plants in their yards, and more. Comments sparked suggestions, questions, and conversation. Although it was very low-key by design, there was lots of energy and camaraderie in the room. It was more like a big dinner-table conversation than a meeting.
A number of possible activities were suggested for the future, with next month's meeting being focused on recycling: how, where, and what happens to it all, anyway?
Here's a list of ideas generated during the meeting.