Time is Money!

When I asked my hubby, a recovered gamer who used to carry his own Xbox controller wherever he went, why he stopped playing video games, he tells me, that he realized he was being robbed of his time.  Even after 10 hours of Halo, or Metal Gear (or whatever was out at the time) nothing in his life was being accomplished.  Plus, for every new game, it would cost him approximately 2 hours of phone answering/circuit checking/boss loathing at work.  So with that in mind, he pushed the game system to the back of the entertainment unit and let it gather dust.  Seeing time this way, it's become easier to recognize the real value of our time.

There are only 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 52 weeks a year.  A 40 hour work week takes up about 25% of that.  We pay for conveniences to get some of that time back, but it seems to never be enough of the other important stuff:  sleeping, eating, playing, relaxing and growing with yourself, your friends and your family.


A friend shared a story with me about an elderly woman who took 1 week to make 2 sacks to sell at her market to support her family.  Wanting to make a difference, a couple of American students decided to give her a sewing machine to improve her living condition.  A month or so later, the eager philanthropists wanted to see the impact of their generosity, and were surprised to find that the woman was still making and selling 2 sacks per week.  Confused the students asked if she used the machine at all.  The woman, explains that now that she has the sewing machine, she can make the 2 sacks faster and can spend more of her time doing the things that mattered to her the most.  The woman in the story did not wait for accumulated wealth to improve her life, instead, she prioritized her values and improved her quality of life immediately.


Last night, I saw In Time, a sci-fi, futuristic Bonnie and Clyde where time was the currency.  People exchanging minutes of their lives for a sandwich, two hours for a bus ride, a month for toll bridge, etc.  With that in mind, not only do things such as video games consume your day, but perhaps it also knocks off a few years off your life.

Fresh Faced Canvas

Last weekend, I was in Union to face paint at the Festival on the Green event.  When I say face paint, I mean SIX hours straight of not just squabbling siblings, or "don't touch that"s and "get that out of your mouth"s, but also seis horas of funny snippets of conversations, improved brush strokes and fresh faced canvas.


I recall being impressed with parents' creativity to convince their kid(s) that the taffy and cupcake display of bath products at the Lily and Eve booth right next to the line, was not for eating.  If ever they want to indulge their kids with a candy bath, however, then they should have picked up a pack or two.  I'm not sure how long the line was, but I got an idea from comments about waiting for an hour to get their turn.  But I wasn't worried, and continued to give each kid my focused attention.  I can also still visualize those priceless expressions from those kids when they saw their finished face. 

The entire day was such a blur, I liken it to running marathons.  Complete with bodiless arms handing over snacks and drinks as well as holding your pee for longer than you should. 

I cannot recall the last time I allowed myself the luxury of painting for that many hours.  Releasing the tension due to the lack of an artistic outlet, multiplied by the eagerness in children.  It's no wonder I was still energized at the after "party" dinner at Van Gogh's Ear, despite having only four hours of sleep the night before.  I'm sure it was the reason I felt a smile creep on my face as I went to bed that evening.  Possibly also the reason I was able to focus an entire day on writing papers and studying for exams the following day.  But, definitely the reason I put myself out there to provide face painting as a service  Wish me luck!

Help Wanted: Soda Drinker

Museo Pambata display

When diy projects are successful, we show off and take photos in all sorts of angles with varied backgrounds.  However, when a bowl made of magazine scraps result in what looks like a giant wad of chewed up gum, we toss the whole thing and forget it even happen.  And that's why you don't see any photos of that thing in this post.  Instead, here are photos of my new hanging "pot" made out of a soda bottle.  I got this idea visiting the Museo Pambata, (at right) a children's interactive museum in Manila, PI.  Since we don't drink soda, it took a while to acquire the one bottle.  I still have a few smaller plants outside enduring the temperature changes waiting for someone to come by and finish another bottle of soda.  In the meantime, the one strawberry plant is saved.


Materials:

• empty and rinsed soda bottle
• marker
• box cutter
• string
• drill

Procedure:

1. drill a hole through the center of the bottom of the bottle large enough to thread the string through
2. drill another hole through the bottle cap.   
3. thread the string through the holes.  cut the string to 2 pieces, and knot off each end to keep string from getting through the holes.
4. draw 2 large squares and cut out using the box cutter
5. fill the rounded end with soil and insert plant.
6. hang bottle up-side-down with bottle cap pointing down..

 I cut the string I'm holding and knotted it off to keep the string from falling through the holes.

bottom string allows the water to filter on to the next bottle (coming soon) or a planter.

Future Shock Absorbers

I went to Barnes and Noble the other day.  Walking in, I noticed a slew of Zombie books... an entire display of zombie books.  I'm not the one to shirk at zombie themed media, but has anyone else noticed an emergence of apocalyptic themes?  NOT post apocalyptic as they did with the Mad Max movies in the 80s, but in the process of....a present day realization that the ish hit the fan.  Even the Planet of the Apes took it back to present day to explain how primates took over the future with Rise of the Planet Apes released this year.

In a way Hollywood has given us an outlet to our current economic environmental problems.  Can't make your mortgage payment today?  Not to worry, bankers won't hound you anymore because they've been replaced by zombies.  The price of gas went up another couple of dollars due to limited oil resources?  Who cares! We are going to somehow figure out how to jump through a wormhole to live in another planet like in Fox's new show Nova Terra about a fugitive crossing planetary borders only to be hired as a sheriff - not much promise for this future society..

Of course zombies aren't walking around taking over our cities, but cannibalism has been a constant trend in wallstreet where executives are eating up people's livelihood.   And with our brainless, insatiable consumer habits, who's to say we aren't zombies ourselves already.

Scientific discoveries have also fueled our hope that things will be solved and the human race will prevail.  With the discovery of so many planets in the Goldilocks zone (not too hot and not too cold) eventually they'll find a planet we can designate as our new home.   Along with the discovery of a sub-atomic particle faster than the speed of light, it won't be long until we're booking our vacation to Risa (the pleasure planet in Star Trek).

I would say if art imitates life, this is one of those cases.  Except these stories resolve in a way that's comforting to allow us to continue on our destructive and wasteful ways.

Plastic In a New Light

I know this video has been buzzing around the net for the past month or so, but I thought it was worth reposting.  This is the future folks!  With depleting resources, combined with a disposable mentality, it won't be long until we're all rummaging through landfills and recycling centers to furnish our homes.  Frankly, I wish it would happen sooner rather than later - when there's nothing left to mine/cut-down/use up, etc!  I often wonder why we don't have more of those earth ships, which are homes made from recycled materials, around.  Instead, I see more and more new developments built from raw materials like wood and steel and such (another phenomenon I don't understand with so many forclosed homes).
While I appreciate the "green" movement, market media has us thinking we need to purchase our way in to it.  Not so folks.  Just look at these remarkable people who have taken something like a plastic bottle and made it useful...like a light bulb.  

The Pillow Pot

We've all done it:  lined up at checkout to realize we left our reusable shopping bags in the car/house.  It's really not that bad since I use the bags to line our bathroom trash, but I've done it so often that I have enough bags to line 50 trash cans for the next two years.. and yet the bags keep piling up.  I tried other uses for these dreaded plastic bags.  I use them as a lunch bag, gym bag, laundry bag, but it inevitably ends up in the trash (and we all know how I feel about that)...until today.  

With Fall right around the corner (2 days to be exact), it's time to move my plants indoors.  I have two particular plants in large clay pots.  They were once little house warming gifts that, over the years, have graduated to larger and larger containers.  The problem with house plants as big as these, is that once they're down on our hardwood floors, they don't move until it's time to take them out again - around late Spring.  Even then, they leave nicks and scratches on the floors, and ring marks for when the water filters down to the bottom of the pot.  Enter the Pillow Pot (made this name up).  It's a plastic bag filled with other plastic bags that allows me to move these clay pots around my living room without scratching the floors. 


Materials:
a bunch of plastic bags
1 fancy, thicker plastic bag
packing tape - preferably the clear ones

Procedures:
1.  fill thicker plastic bag with the smaller ones... the fluffier the better
2.  fold the bag to a size just slightly larger than the bottom of your pot.
3.  seal with tape, and tape in corners (or if you want to keep the square shape - do it up!)
4.  place pot on top
5.  PRESTO:  Pillow Pot

Hooray!!!  I am no longer that crazy woman who walks out the supermarket carrying 10 items to avoid using the plastic bags. 
 

Note:  ziplock bag is optional.  I happen to have one that wasn't quite ready to be thrown out...but didn't want to reuse for food either.

My rubber and aloe plant. These two gave me hope that I can be a gardener. 

Worth my Pepper.

When cooking, I opt,as much as I can afford, for fresh, organic ingredients with as little additivies as possible.  So when I read that most pre-crushed peppers have saw dust in them among other things, I started using the whole peppercorns.   Only problem is they need to be crushed.  

For the past year, I have been talking myself out of buying a salt/pepper mill.   Perhaps if they didn’t sell these whole peppers in flimsy grinders I wouldn’t have held off so long.  Because the semi-crushed seeds would slip through the grinders and in to my cooking, I'd end up taking an unexpected chomp on a peppercorn.  I warned dinner guests of these sneaky whole peppercorns all because I couldn’t get myself to shell out $15 for a good one, $30 for a salt and pepper set.  Well, fast forward to a recent visit to my mother-in-law.  I somehow mentioned to her about this dilemma and she says, "Oh is that all?” and takes out from her cabinet, a wooden pawn shaped salt/pepper grinder set.  The same kind I've been picking up and putting down at the supermarket.  ALAS!!!!  All that ridiculousness of frugality finally “paid” off!!!!