Archive for October, 2007

Happy Halloween!

Running a little late this year, we carved our jack-o-lantern on October 30. Lillian requested a combination of happy and scary (so it got two pointy fangs), and she also chose the mismatched eye shapes. Very cute overall!

2007 Jack-O-Lantern and LillianSpooky!

For trick-or-treating, Lillian reused her witch costume from last year, and we added a new accessory: Black Cat familiar!

Reuven with whiskersReuven Cat
Lillian and Reuven in costume togetherLillian and Reuven in costume togetherSo, I caught this cat…

Total sewing time for the cat costume was maybe 8-12 hours. I think he outgrew it while wearing it, it was definitely not something to grow into! But I designed it from scratch (using existing clothes as a basis), so I’m pretty proud of it overall. There were little black mittens (paws) that went along with it, but he lost one while we were out so he’s not wearing them in the pictures.

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My Bike Log

I decided to try to track my non-gasoline-fueled transportation, and do a few calculations to see how much money (and gasoline!) I’ve saved.

Basically, I will only count trips that I would have had to make anyway, and typically would have uesd the car for. This includes trips to the grocery store (2.1 miles), picking up Lillian from daycare (5.8 miles), the library, the ice cream store, the good hamburger place, the good pizza place… lucky a lot of these are just over a mile from the house, which means I’m not saving a whole lot of gas, but it is an easy trip and therefore a much bigger incentive to bike instead of drive!

It also includes trips made by Brett borrowing my bike. Maybe he’ll get his own eventually — this would be particularly nice because then I can include trips like the burger place which currently he has to drive to while I bike… and therefore I can’t count it.

Anyway, here’s the page — just over a dollar saved so far. I think I will buy myself something nice once I “save” enough money up!

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You can fit a LOT in those bags…

I bought a bunch of string bags from ReuseableBags.com and they are really great to shop with. They hold tons of groceries, at least three times as much as a plastic bag, and are easy to carry even when completely full.

You can even fit a whole toddler in one. *

Lillian in a bag

* Please note, this was entirely her idea. I don’t go about storing my children in bags normally. Even reuseable organic cotton string bags.

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So true…

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She’ll be in good shape in the morning…

Lillian got freaked out twice last night.

First, her ceiling fan exploded.  Well, not literally, but it blew a bunch of sparks (while running with the fan on and light off), which then blew the circuit breaker and turned off half the upstairs lights.  It took us a while to troubleshoot and find out what the problem was, but it was definitely something wrong with the fan.  Obviously it’s now turned off, but she didn’t want to sleep in her room any more.  So we set her up with blankies and pillows in Reuven’s room (which is mostly unused).

After a bit, she moved her pillows and blankets down to the stairs to camp out there instead.  Then she was traumatized by a cockroach wandering by on the step above her.  Currently she’s bunked in OUR room, with lots of assurances that there will be no more exploding fans, no more scary bugs…  at this rate, though, I expect our alarm clock to catch fire or something.

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Another ealtschul…

There’s an E. Altschul in Pennsylvania who accidentally put in the wrong email address when signing up for a wind-power service (left out the letter “b” in her address), so I got her signup information instead of her.  So (me being me) I logged into the profile, found her phone number, and called her to let her know the mixup and to get her correct address so I could forward it on 🙂

Bizarrely, I’m also going to be in the Philadelphia area (near where she lives) for a wedding this weekend.  Small world.

In any case, I felt like I did my five minutes’ worth of good deed for the day, and it’s neat to find another E. Altschul interested in the environment…

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