Recycled Laundry Soap

Have you seen this stuff?  I did not know it existed until I saw it on the store shelf.  Buffalo Recycled Laundry Soap is made out of of chips of soap left over from hotel rooms.  


Great recycling idea, or what? 

I'm so cheap thrifty that I always feel guilty throwing out soap ends so use up every last bit.  I shudder to think of all the waste that goes on in hotels, least of all the soap.


Another cool thing about this company is its local.  The soap is collected from Victoria hotels and made in Victoria, BC!  I hope they do well with it.  


The ironic thing is, just after buying this laundry soap I moved to a place with a front-end loader which is very specific on the type of soap it permits.  So, I "paid it forward" and gave my almost new bag of soap to a neighbour - she loves it.

a filter work-around

We have a wonderful aeropress coffee making gadget.

If you are a coffee drinker and haven't heard of one you must check it out as it makes some nice, smooth coffee one cup at a time.

Recently we went on a little mini vacation to a deserted island.

Well, ok, it wasn't deserted but we knew there wasn't going to be a grocery store so we'd have to pack as many supplies we could think of for the trip.

Have you ever gone on a trip and not forgotten something?

Neither have I.

Hubby was so good about remembering all the little details and even remembered to bring coffee, tea and our little aeropress maker. We were set!

Until we went to make the coffee. Missing those cute little round aeropress filters.

What to do?

Well, Hubby had a little brainwave. The tea bags we brought happened to be round. How about taking apart a tea bag and using one side as a filter?

First he gingerly separated the two sides (we did not have scissors but real men don't leave home without their Swiss army knife).

Unfortunately I didn't take a picture of him putting the tea bag filter in the aeropress but I did get a picture of him plunging the coffee.

I took his picture to show that the tea bag filter worked quite well and did not leave any grinds behind (I cannot figure out how to spin this picture left 90 degrees, sorry).

Great coffee maker - you should try one out! But don't forget the aeropress filters to save you some hassle.

well, that's one way to solve that problem, but seriously, I can't believe in this day & age we'd resort to banning bicycles to avoid traffic accidents.

Published on Friday, June 18, 2010 by The Guardian/UK

That's All, Spokes: Colorado Town Bans Cyclists
by Helen Pidd and Agencies

A town in the US has banned cyclists on most of its streets, punishing anyone who gets caught with a $68 fine. Black Hawk in Colorado, which has a population of just above 100, is thought to be the first town in the US to make cycling illegal after a change in civic law.

The curious decree has been introduced for "health and safety" reasons, said administrators of the former goldmining town, which in the 1990s decided to develop gambling to prevent the place vanishing altogether.

Michael Copp, Black Hawk's city manager, admitted there had not been any accidents to prompt the ban, just concern over potential collisions between motor vehicles and bicycles on 19th-century streets that were designed for horses and carriages.

The town started enforcing the ban on 5 June, five months after it passed the law requiring cyclists to dismount and wheel their bikes through the town. So far eight tickets have been issued, said Copp.

Copp, who does not cycle himself, said the council passed the ordinance after the town experienced a surge in traffic – buses, delivery trucks, and motorists – following a law that increased the maximum betting limits from $5 to $100 once it chose gambling as its raison d'etre.

The ban applies only to the narrow 19th century thoroughfares in a town that is lined with historic buildings and new casinos, not the few residential streets. Cyclists riding in on Colorado highway 279, a main route through the town, would have to dismount and walk about 400 metres, Copp said.

"This ordinance is necessary for the preservation of health and safety and for the protection of public convenience and welfare," says the law, which is set out on the Black Hawk website.

"The rules will allow bicycle traffic that originates locally to continue to operate with City Manager authorisation, while still assuring that such traffic can operate in a manner that is not incompatible with vehicular traffic," says another clause.

Cyclists' lobbies are gearing up to challenge the law, which they say is illegal.

"The danger here is the precedent," Dan Grunig of Bicycle Colorado, an advocacy group, said. "We don't believe it's right or legal and we want to make sure it's addressed before it's spread any further."

Grunig's group, which claims 7,000 members statewide, has appealed to national groups to help.

"An outright ban on being able to ride a bicycle through a community is unheard of in any other community in the country, said Charlie Zeeger, director of the Pedestrian and Bicycling Information Center at the University of North Carolina.

But Black Hawk seems proud to be first. "At this point the council has no intention of repealing the ban," Copp said. "They believe their actions are what's best for its citizens in Black Hawk, which are casinos and their patrons."

srsly?

52 minutes? That's the best you could do for a dollar?

Beware what lurks in the dairy case

I like to spend as little time as possible shopping but a weekly trip to the grocery store is unavoidable (online shopping isn't time-efficient enough for me either).


Unless I am getting special ingredients for a recipe I usually trod through the usual outside sections of the grocery store replenishing our produce, bread, meat & dairy. The odd time I'll throw in a treat for the teenboy like chocolate milk.


I don't tend to dilly-dally so once the chocolate milk caught my eye, it took me only a second to think "sure, he'll like that" and pop it into the shopping cart. I briefly noticed the dairy company had changed their carton design but that's as far as my noticing went.





The teenboy noticed the problem minute he opened the fridge.


"ORANGE CHOCOLATE MILK?!?!??!"


What? They can't possibly mean orange flavoured chocolate milk?


Sure enough, that's what they meant. We are both chocolate purists so putting fruit flavour with chocolate is just considered wrong. I had a taste and it reminds me of a "Terry's Chocolate Orange". If you like that then you'll probably like the milk.  This carton is good til June 6th if you'll take it off our hands.  heh


The orange strip on the package had caught my eye when I first saw it in the dairy case but the word "Orange" certainly had not (my fault for not paying enough attention - but they could have been a little more obvious about it).

I have no idea how popular this flavour will be but I'm thinking they'll sell maybe 1% of the of the amount they sell of the pure chocolate milk --- so why bother making it would be my question. Time will tell how long it survives on the dairy shelf....or if they decide to come out with other combined chocolate flavours.

docked marks

The teenboy came home with a near-perfect grade 8 math quiz.  19 out of 22  =  86% is nothing to sneeze at.

However, he was a little choked at the reason for the loss of 3 points and I can understand why.


He got one question wrong, the one shown below.  He got the math correct but he didn't specify the unit of measurement (cm2).   For this he drops from 100% to 86% which is a significant drop.  All of the questions were based in the same unit of measurement, so it somehow makes it even less significant.  argh

If I were the teacher I would have docked him a point for missing the unit of measure, two at the outside max. But this teacher gave him no points whatsoever for this question.


I do not agree but I'm not one of these parents to go running to the teacher to cry foul against my child on every single thing I hear about.



I'd love to hear your thoughts on this - especially if you are a teacher  :D

pay what it's worth...

Have you heard of this restaurant and its ground-breaking concept of "pay what you think it's worth"?  

I admit it does go right along with my socialistic tendencies but even I would be uncomfortable throwing in any old amount - I need to know the estimated value of the food so that I can contribute a fair amount.  

There are those who will abuse the concept and probably kill it before it really gets going.  But kudos to these guys for giving it a shot!  I hope we get an update a year down the road to see how well it's going.