MrsBrown's philosophy of life and stuff

It turns out I'm cleverer than a travel agent at working out flights at a reasonable price.  I have flights on a premium airline, with multiple stops around the US, for the same price as the travel agent wanted to sell me a flight with United.

I just had to get clever about dates and stops and their order.

We're off to Boston, Washington and San Francisco.  I'll book internal flights to get to Pittsburgh from Boston(or maybe New York) and to Washington. 

The dates co-incide with Pennsic, but we don't plan to be there for more than 7 days - there are so many other things to see and so little time!

I still need to arrange: 
Accomodation in Boston (I need this for the visa)
The US Visa waiver (if you have to apply, and there's a fee, why don't they just call it a visa?)
Flights to and from Pennsic
Pennsic bookings
Connection with the Lochac contingent to sort accom at Pennsic
The other stuff we want to look at/visit
How we get to the other stuff.
Frequent flyer membership for mr-bassman

the tabs I currently have open.

Researching plastic free flour storage options, as suggested by sjkasabi and the dying of my (plastic) flour containers:
http://www.google.com.au/search?hl=en&q=stainless+steel+food+storage
www.shopnaturally.com.au/food-storage-safe-non-toxic-bpa-free.html
http://www.foodstoragecontainers.com.au/glass.html
https://www.ashnjuls.com.au/kb_results.asp?ID=65 (my favourite so far)
http://www.ashnjuls.com.au/Stainless-Steel-Food-Storage-Container-Leak-Proof-p/taihsinfoodstorage.htm
http://www.greenurlife.com.au/online-shop/stainless-steel/storage-containers/airtight-stainless-steel-food-storage-containers-set
http://lifewithoutplastic.com/boutique/food-storage-c-66.html
http://mightynest.com/shop/reusable-lunch-gear/food-containers/uno-stainless-steel-food-container
http://mightynest.com/shop/kitchenware/food-storage/stackable-glass-jar-with-lid-multiple-sizes (too heavy)
http://mightynest.com/shop/reusable-lunch-gear/food-containers/round-stainless-steel-food-containers-leakproof
http://mightynest.com/shop/reusable-lunch-gear/snack-sandwich-bags/reusable-sandwich-wrap-hemp-stripes (why would people pay for these?)

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/that-weasley-girl

http://mrsbrown.livejournal.com/friends
http://splodgenoodles.livejournal.com/977189.html?nc=2#comments
http://mrsbrown.dreamwidth.org/read#entry-289188

Awesome chocolate cake recipe - with (one of) the monster succhini from my garden
http://catescates.wordpress.com/2011/12/27/recipe-spicy-chocolate-and-zucchini-cake/

http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/TV/static/MelbourneNight.html?

http://www.bom.gov.au/forecasts/graphical/public/vic/

Didn't like this pizza enough to buy it again - although ordering online with a credit card was cool
http://crust.com.au/pizzas#!product_categories/vegetarian-pizzas/products

http://yourmovies.com.au/movie/42055/puss-in-boots/review
http://www.hoyts.com.au/Times_and_Tickets.aspx?visSearchBy=mov&hcState=VIC

http://www.gtdtimes.com/2011/10/18/gtd-best-practices-collect-part-1-of-5/
http://www.gtdtimes.com/2011/10/25/gtd-best-practices-process-part-2-of-5/
http://www.gtdtimes.com/2011/11/01/gtd-best-practices-organize-part-3-of-5/
http://www.gtdtimes.com/2011/11/21/gtd-best-practices-review-part-4-of-5/
http://www.gtdtimes.com/2011/12/12/gtd-best-practices-doing-part-5-of-5/

http://archiveofourown.org/media/Books%20*a*%20Literature/fandoms
http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Little%20House%20on%20the%20Prairie%20-%20Laura%20Ingalls%20Wilder/works
http://archiveofourown.org/tags/MONTGOMERY%20L*d*%20M*d*%20-%20Works/works?page=2
http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Phryne%20Fisher%20-%20Kerry%20Greenwood/works
http://archiveofourown.org/tags/Pride%20and%20Prejudice%20-%20Jane%20Austen/works?page=2

http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/easy-childs-hoodie
http://www.redheart.com/free-patterns/easy-childs-hoodie-0
http://www.redheart.com/files/patterns/pdf/LW1843.pdf
http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/0-577-pot-holders-with-christmas-pattern-in-paris
http://www.garnstudio.com/lang/en/pattern.php?id=4355&lang=en

http://www.flexicar.com.au/modules/news2/article.php?id=215
http://www.facebook.com/
https://mail.google.com/mail/?ui=2&shva=1#inbox
http://www.asana.com/

Awesome!  now my window is clearer, my computer will run faster and I can work out how to do the neckline of Rose's jumper.(easy child's hoodie above)

In March I get to stand up in front of 300 or so of my professional peers and talk about shit. The brief is to make people think. They're after"a sincere but engaging delivery – minimal text, mostly images, humour encouraged. "

And what can be funnier than taking 15 minutes to talk about poo?

Here's the abstract I submitted:

 

Composting of both food and human waste. As an ESD consultant it seems to be the final frontier. We have lots of conversations about energy, water and indoor environments, but not much about minimising or dealing with our waste outputs. It’s often seen as too yucky, or something that polite people don’t talk about but it’s a fundamental of civilised life. Great civilisations in history didn’t get great until they had dealt with large scale sanitation issues.

The topic would be introduced by a review of city wide sanitation through history: Romans, Medieval, Tudors, Victorians, Edwardians and developing countries today. Then, using these examples from the past, combined with the technology of the present, I would review the opportunities and alternative design solutions to examine how we could realistically transport and process human waste within the constraints of the modern apartment or office building

Brain dump of stuff I want to talk about/check the facts on/find pictures to illustrate:

History: prehistoric people don't shit in their own cave, romans used water to transport poo, people in castles poo'd out the window and got other people to clean up their mess, uses for poo and wee, Lonsdale St and other cesspits, how it worked when I was a kid - the dunnyman, the impact of sewage systems on city design, 3 hole privies,  fertilising fields with poo,

Health: how people dealt with poo and then got sick, miasma, cholera, worms,

Modern: 1930's instructions on how to use a flush toilet, african country that's buying urine off people to encourage them to use state built composting toilets, Chrischurch and disasters in modern countries that are worse than they need to be because we rely on electricity to pump our poo, Indian women who have to walk for 10min to find somewhere safe to poo, Natural Event and their work at festivals and Haiti, My composting toilet setup, pics of poo compost after 12 months,

Biological process stuff: wee is almost always hygienic, poo doesn't smell bad if it's dry, Leave poo on its own/with a carbon source for 12 months and its pathogens are gone. How much poo does a human make in a year? Can you mix poo and vegetable composting? Don't mix wee and water.

Imagining buildings and cities without a water based sewage system; How much poo storage do you need for an apartment building to process its own waste? What about an office building? What can you do with the urine? What about collection systems - bring back the dunnyman? What does a modern bathroom with composting/collection look like? Do you need a service corridor like the laneways of old? What about cleaning? urine separating toilet pedestals. Can you use a compost tumbler in the basement to reduce the volume for transport - how big does it need to be? what to do about urine salts.  Using historical methods in a modern city. Resilience.

Whew!  I'll probably think of more.  I'll add that later.  For now I can console myself that I've started.

I bought a new bike.  It has internal hub gears and hydraulic disk brakes.  The brakes work really well.

To get to work I ride up a long hill and then have the pleasure of zooming down again.  The zoom is in quite busy traffic, but there's a lane I can share with buses so I usually feel quite safe.  Lately, I've been enjoying the zooming so much that I've been changing lanes in to the main traffic stream to go around the buses.  A couple of times I've thought, "I'm probably going too fast here, it's really a bit dangerous", but then I enjoy the zooming again and off I go.

On Thursday morning, I had just changed lanes to go around a bus and was just about to move back into the bus lane when the car in front of me stopped sooner than I expected.  I put on my brakes, wobbled a bit and then felt myself lose control and hit the road over the handlebars.  I've decided since that if I hadn't had a backpack on and instead had some nice heavy panniers I might have caught the bike.

That was scary!  I crawled off the road to the footpath and noticed the blood from my nose dripping as I went.  I was feeling a bit dazed and I knew I'd hit my face so I immediately asked someone to call an ambulance.  I just sat quietly, feeling awful and holding a tissue to my nose.  I did contradict the woman who gave it to me and wanted me to tip my head back.  I cursed the fact that I had left my phone at home the day before.  I was sitting right outside sjkasabi's workplace and I really wanted to call her but I couldn't work out how.

The ambulance arrived really quickly and I walked in and sat in a seat.  The officer tested me for broken bones and any neck injuries.  Then she told me that I could choose to be taken to hospital or make my own way home.  I hesitated, and then burst into tears.  I really didn't want to decide.  So we went to hospital.  

At the hospital they checked me out again, although another 20min of sitting quietly had nearly gotten me enough equilibrium to know that myself.  It's bad to rush me when I'm hurt.  The best thing I got from the hospital was a cleanup of the grazes, dressings for the two worst elbow ones, a packet of panadiene forte and the advice that I would feel even worse the next day.  They were sort of right.

I spent Thursday in bed watching doco's.  I was really shocky and just wanted to stay warm and cosy. Although our first stop from the hospital was a local cafe for a carbohydrate and sugar laden second breakfast.  On Thursday night I ventured from the bedroom to sit at the dinner table and after about 30minutes of very convivial chatting with all of my children I started feeling that I could no longer stay upright.  When I lay on the couch Sneetch took a look at me and declared that he wasn't very happy with how I was looking.  I certainly didn't move for a while and felt quite faint, but I quickly got better enough to head back to bed and some more streaming tv.  I couldn't sleep until I took some panadiene forte, which I'd been taking regularly all day.

On Friday I could tell that my brain was better, but moving was harder.  I had stiffened up and walking was hard.  I still managed to get Rose ready for school and walked her across there, but I had a rest before coming home.  I spent the day on the couch, reading the internet and doing a bit of work and then I walked to Victoria St for dinner. I can't stand for very long without needing to sit down, but I think walking helps me to move more and gets rid of some of the stiffness.  Sometime during Friday I stopped needing regular painkillers.  I guess now it's just a matter of moving as much as possible while taking it easy.

Here's the catalogue of injuries;

bruised right cheek and nose cartilage hurts when I wiggle it.
neck is stiff and turning to the left is hard.  turning right is almost normal
left arm; large weepy graze near elbow, minor graze on forearm, 2 grazed knuckles, minor graze on little finger, graze and smashed fingernail on ring finger.
right arm; large, less weepy graze near elbow, 2cm graze on wrist and another on base of hand, grazes on back of hand, 3 knuckles and little finger
muscles around ribs are sore and it's hard to sit up
right thigh muscle has a deep bruise (interestingly that hurt the most on Thursday morning but is really pretty minor)

My helmet is unmarked so I'll probably keep using it.  I'm also going to make sure my new bake has panniers as soon as possible.  I guess I'll also be a bit more careful about the zooming.

I'm enjoying not making lists of stuff to do.  I feel more of a sense of achievement for just having a nice weekend.  OTOH, there's some stuff I would like to have addressed by the end of today;

pad my new helmet
finish that report I was supposed to finish at work on Friday
sort out a list of stuff to do with the buying of that new house
plant the zucchini plants I bought yesterday
participate as much as necessary (as little as possible) in the painting of the front room
clean up all the things

and, to make it easy for myself;

lie in bed reading the internet and drinking tea - done

I haven't been bike shopping
I haven't finished my gambeson (not for lack of trying)
I haven't hit the pell
I haven't picked up the clothes off my bedroom floor so mr-bassman can vacuum
I didn't buy cat food or milk
I didn't have a nap.

I also didn't
leave the kitchen a filthy mess
make mr-peacock work alone on his gambeson
fail to make progress on the sleeves of my gambeson
insist that mr-bassman catch a taxi to his gig
allow Rose to create havoc or watch TV all day
leave Rose dirty
or fail to support her education

I'm only writing in here because its a way to avoid getting out of my warm bed.

I've been avoiding writing lists on here lately.  I have to write list at work all the time, and they've become associated with stress.  When you're on holidays you just do whatever takes your fancy and that's more relaxing.  I'm trying to capture that feel on my weekends.  Except.

there are always things you leave the weekend regretting that you haven't done.  Or should I say, that haven't been done.  Mostly I don't care how they happen, just that they're done.  If someone else wanted to do the things on my list I would mostly be happy with that.  Perhaps I should start paying people to do stuff for me?

So... this isn't a to do list.  This is a list of the things I would like to see complete by the end of the weekend - however that happens.

Plant the strawberry crowns I bought at Aldi yesterday.  I might even buy more once I work out where they're going.
Finish moving my clothes into the new bedroom, including culling some work tops.
Packup the books in my old bedroom, culling some of them.
Finish my new gambeson, in time for Bash tomorrow.
Clean the kitchen (necessary if sewing is to happen)

I'm stopping there - I'm overwhelmed already.

I was at a work function last night, and I was asked that question.  It's really hard to come up with the list when you're on the spot like that and I've been haunted by all the things I left out, so I've written them down here.  I've used the headings I use at work to make it easier to remember everything.

Indoor environment quality
I only use low VOC indoor house paint
I don't use commercial cleaning chemicals
I wear mostly natural fibres
Our kitchen cabinets are reused and don't emit VOC's

Energy
The energy audit and management plan I worked out a few years ago reduced our electricity consumption by about 7kWh a day (the same as we would generate from solar panels)
I installed a low flow shower head, which reduces our hot water consumption
We heat only the lounge room and kitchen
We have a temperature display in the loungeroom which helps us to turn down the heater more often
We often go to bed  early to read our laptops at night, and turn off the heater.
My dishwasher and washing machine were chosen for their energy performance.
I turn off lights all the time and encourage my housemates to do the same.
We have almost only compact fluorescent lighting
I have tracked our electricity consumption for the past 3 years
I have installed draft stoppers on many doors between the heated and unheated zones.

Water
My dishwasher and washing machine were chosen for their water performance.
I installed a low flow shower head
Dishes are scraped before putting in the dishwasher, no rinsing.
I have a rainwater tank
I only water the vegies, without a hose.

Transport
We don't own a car
We use bicycles or our feet to go shopping
I travel to work by public transport or bicycle
We shop locally
I have trained my children to use bicycles for transport
I encourage others to carpool where possible
I catch public transport for most work meetings
I encourage my work mates to catch public transport to meetings
We buy food in season (aka cheap and local)

Waste
Our food waste is composted
We avoid buying food with packaging
We recycle plastics, steel, glass etc
We don't use plastic bags as bin liners
we haven't bought a new tv 'cos the old one still works
we recycle our e-waste
I take home food waste from SCA feasts and compost it
We minimise our plastic bag intake - I always carry a shopping bag, we have reusable vegie bags and some of our shopping bags are 10 years old.
We repair stuff

Emissions
I designed, made and maintained (with help) composting toilets for Surveying Expedition.
We make our own laundry soap (without borax)
We don't use chlorine based cleaners


Yes, I'm indulging in some conspicuous conservation.

A while ago splodgenoodles gave me a present.  and today I planted all the winter suitable salad leaf seeds that were left. 

I've had this empty patch burning a hole in my gardening subconscious, so today I marked up some rows and sprinkled one of each variety in each row.  That's about 8 different types of leaves.  They were useby Dec 2010 so it seemed the only sensible thing to do with them.   "When" they all come up I'll thin them and eat the thinnings.  And hopefully, I'll  get sick of the sight of green leaves and give some away.

For the record, I also planted some broccoli seedlings and peas and I need to find a spot for the seakale and perpetual spinach.

Last summer I borrowed The Kitchen Garden Companion from sjkasabi's mum and held onto for a little longer than was socially acceptable. 

Today I changed my firefox options so I can search google australia from the search bar, and while I was at it I found out that I can add keywords and, with my new add-on, searches for site.  I added booko.

While I was at it I noticed The Kitchen Garden Companion and clicked for a closer look.  There are two different editions and the most recent edition had a price of $23 instead of $65.  by clicking through, I discovered it's the Northern Hemisphere edition.  If I want the local edition I have to pay $40 more!  That's outrageous!

Adding to the wishlist as I surf: Kitchen Garden Cooking for Kids