Slept in a tent this weekend

So we crossed off number four from our pre-baby bucket list this weekend: Go camping, sleep in a tent, and build our own fire.  We went with three of my best friends and their husbands to Two Rivers campground in Waterloo, Nebraska (about 30 minutes away on 277th and F street).  Neither Kevin or I have been camping in years, and I've definitely never been camping as an "adult" where I was responsible for helping set up the tent and cooking the food.  We pulled up to the campsite and I was shocked by the sheer number of huge RV's crowded around our campground.  We were one of two people actually camping in tents... only in America do we "get back to nature" by bringing out our huge pick up trucks and ginormous RVs and parking them so close together you can't really see nature.

Aside from the surprise of the RVs, the camping was great.  We were right by the Platte river, which was actually really nice and there were a ton of trees.  Despite Kevin and I's obvious lack of outdoors skills we managed to get the tent assembled before it started raining.  After about ten minutes of drizzle I was beginning to think that all those people with the RV's might have had the right idea...  luckily, it cleared up after about 20 minutes and was beautiful for the rest of the weekend.

Saturday afternoon we spent about an hour trying to teach our friend to play Pitch, but after getting about halfway through the game, she declared that it was boring.  Ha!  Gotta love Steph.  We moved on to another game that Steph taught us called Golf, which turned out to be a lot of fun.  And of course it turned into a drinking game.  I won!

All in all, a great weekend.  There's talk of making this an annual trip.  We were glad that we got to experience of tent camping, but agreed that a cabin might be better for next year.  Anybody have any cabins within 2 hours of Omaha that they'd recommend?

60,000 chickens dead...

This week a large North Carolina chicken coop temporarily lost power.  Because this was like so many other concentrated animal feeding operations where the animals were packed in extremely tight conditions, the coop required large constantly running fans to keep the temperatures in the coop in a liveable range.  Well when the fans stopped running, the air stopped flowing.  Like many large chicken operations this chicken coop wasn't under close supervion by any people, and nobody realized the power had gone out in the chicken coop until almost a week later... 60,000 dead chickens.  Just another insight into our broken food industry.  Some people that have asked why the chicken coops were not equipped with better back up generators to keep the fans running in a situation like this.  I think a better question is why the heck do we have 60,000 chickens packed so tightlty together in one enclosed building? 

This is just another reason I'm so happy that ethical local farmer's like Lucy and Adam in business - check out their family-run farm Thistles and Clover.  The pictures below are actual pictures of their little boy (I've met him) and their farm.  If everyone starts looking a little deeper into where they get their food comes from, Lucy and Adam will be so wildely successful and it will encourage more farmers to do business this way verses the type of farming that needlesly killed 60,000 chickens. 

I'm FINALLY jumping on the recycling bandwagon

My friend Steph was in town for our friends Stacie's wedding this weekend, and while she was here we got to talking about waste.  Somehow we trick ourselves into thinking that when we throw something away, it actually goes away.  I've long said I need to start recycling... well today I have finally decided to stop talking about it and start doing it.  Thanks for the kick in the butt Steph - you didn't even know you were doing it!

Unfortunately, we don't have a recycling option in our building (you'd think all of us urban condo dwellers would be screaming for recycling... oddly not).  Luckily my parents recycle at their house so we'll just plan on bringing over our recyclables when we come over for Sunday dinners.  Here are the signs I made today.  They're just PowerPoint slides so I can email them to anyone that's interested in using them. 

 

I'd say on average we go through 4-5 bags of trash a week....kind of sad when you consider we're only two people.  My goal is to get down to one.  We don't have our own recycling can yet, but I figure a paper bag will due for now.  I can't give myself another reason to procrastinate :)



Biodiesel?

On September 8th Kevin and I moved from being a two car family to a one car family when I turned my Mazda 3 in at the end of its 3-year lease.  We both walk to work, and hardly drive anywhere on the weekends seperately (or in taxis), so why not move to one car?  Kevin has a 2008 Altima that works great, but once it dies I would love to move to a Volkswagan fueled by biodiesel!  Here's our current family car but how cool would it be to own a car fueled totally by leftover cooking oil? 

Here's the documentary that inspired me today:

 I've been on a documentary binge ever since I figured out how to watch documentaries on our Playstation 2 using our instant Netflix queue.  I've watched an embarrasing number of documentaries lately, but this one is definitely worth watching.  It's well done and has a lot of practical things you can do to make a difference (make sure to watch the credits!).  Maybe even one day we'll power trains using biodiesel?