Plastic free on a budget

We use too much plastic, ingest to many plastic toxins. I want to reduce my use for my sake as well as the people around me and the planet. (Watch the whole Documentary!) Some useful links: Beth Terry's Plastic Free Guide Beth's list of Product Suppliers

[blakesoldtempblog]

Glass refrigerator container conundrum? Guess what, you probably already have something glass you can use for tonight's leftovers! How about a bowl with a saucer on top? They stack! They go in the microwave to reheat (if there is no gold paint, that is)! The only issue is if they are all the same you have to check to see what they are... So you want clear? How about a clear drinking glass with saran over it? (yes, saran is plastic, but it's your last roll right? when it's gone no more? good) Or, look around your kitchen, do you have canning jars lying around? Or maybe a pasta sauce one? Pickles still come in glass! So do some BBQ sauces and La Victoria green salsa ha ha). Check the fridge, are any of your bottles glass?When those items are used up wash and reuse them for now! (You can do this with the plastic ones too for now, reusing them until you get glass is still better than chucking them) OK, so you really were a plastic person and NONE of your dishes are glass ( yes corelle is glass, so are ceramic dishes). Most cooking pots are stainless steel! Put a dinner plate on them and viola! Instant leftover dish! Corningware and Pyrex casseroles are glass, bread pans, pie plates are glass or metal! Have a Christmas cookie tin? Use it for tonight but if you must, but they rust and are better for dry things like pasta, cookies, bread... You might even have an old flower vase, of course wash it well first. WAIT, what about the cans I got dinner out of, can't I just reuse them? Sorry, almost all canned goods have a PLASTIC lining, so you might as well just use your tupperware :/ So you found something for tonight, but have a few dollars you can spend tomorrow. Check the thrift stores! Most have canning jars really cheap, some save old glass food jars of varying shapes and sizes, and they might have some old metal canisters. The next time you buy something at the grocery store see if it comes in glass and buy that to reuse, you are already spending the money on the food product, the container is a "free" glass leftover container!

[callmeblake]

It’s morning, and after a cup of coffee (that you made at home to skip the disposable plastic lined cup at starbucks), you go to pack your lunch in your re-useable plastic container…which up to this point you felt great about using because it created no paper or single use plastic baggie waste.

So what do you put your lunch in?

Did you find any canning jars yesterday? Jars with screw on lids (with a seal)? Find two or three roughly the same size for your wet stuff (soup, pudding, cottage cheese, etc.). Fill them and then find a thick sock (yes a CLEAN sock) and stack them in it - this will make them easy to carry and give them a bit of cushioning.

“What about my sandwich?”…Well, remember that cookie tin? (second photo)That will work for today.

“I take a green salad sometimes”. This one will be fine in a glass jar if you don’t put the croutons or dressing in it, keep them separate until you want to eat it.

Fresh hard veggies, potato chips, croutons, or crackers will also survive in the tin for today*. I’m using a dish towel to give it a bit of cushioning (the tin is larger than the sandwich) but a clean hand towel would work as well.

No jars or a tin? You could tape a lid to a bowl I suppose, but be warned it will leak if not kept level. OR you could wrap the sandwich in wax paper**(if you have any) or a towel and tape it. It may be a bit dryer than you’re used to , but I’m sure it will still be edible.

If co-workers notice, you can say something like “just trying to reduce my carbon footprint” or “I’m a plastic diet”. I’ve had nothing but positive responses with my “sock lunch” , I even got called “pretty smart”. You know your coworkers and what will work with them :)

*You don’t want wet things in a tin like this very often, they are not stainless steel and will eventually rust - and no one wants to eat anything out of a rusty tin.

**biodegradeable/compostable - but only in the elements- you put that in your trash bag it might as well be plastic.

[blakesoldtempblog]

Posted to personal on accident....

[blakesoldtempblog]

How much is that container!?

So, you watched "Bag It", or another documentary and want to live more in harmony with our planet. Or found Beth Terry's "myplasticfreelife" blog and got inspired. GOOD for you! Glad to have you in the family. and then you went online looking to see how much stainless steel lunch containers, or a kleen canteen were and thought "I can't afford this!". Never fear there are much cheaper ways until you can! (or just as an alternative). This blog is going to address this issue, along with plastic free news tidbits I think are interesting as well!

[blakesoldtempblog]

Alright, here we go again...

Moving back over to http://www.callmeblake.com as my original blog. I know, I know, you just got used to me over here, but this will be less confusing and easier, the whole reason I had to move blogs didn't really work out. I missed having access to all the posts I had on my old blog. I appreciate every single on of you that moved over, and will keep this up for a little while I'm sure. Blake

[blakesoldtempblog]

Ed replied to me a couple times

and I had a fleeting thought about screencapping then and submitting them to Planthouse. That was a fun project.

[blakesoldtempblog]

How many of you would follow me if I moved back over to the old blog?

it's not doing what I wanted it to with the RSS feeds anyway...

[calidae]

[blakesoldtempblog]

I worked this festival (Sasquatch) , in a beer stand. This is The Gorge Ampitheatre in Washington State. Unless I miss my guess this is taken from right in front of the main food concessions ( A Stand).

[blakesoldtempblog]

I told twitter I am watching "Teeth"

But I neglected to tell you, and so far this movie is really bad, but yet I want to find out what happens.

[togetherforjacksoncountykids]

One teachers approach to preventing gender bullying in a classroom

“It’s Okay to be Neither,” By Melissa Bollow Tempel

Alie arrived at our 1st-grade classroom wearing a sweatshirt with a hood. I asked her to take off her hood, and she refused. I thought she was just being difficult and ignored it. After breakfast we got in line for art, and I noticed that she still had not removed her hood. When we arrived at the art room, I said: “Allie, I’m not playing. It’s time for art. The rule is no hoods or hats in school.”

She looked up with tears in her eyes and I realized there was something wrong. Her classmates went into the art room and we moved to the art storage area so her classmates wouldn’t hear our conversation. I softened my tone and asked her if she’d like to tell me what was wrong.

“My ponytail,” she cried.

“Can I see?” I asked.

She nodded and pulled down her hood. Allie’s braids had come undone overnight and there hadn’t been time to redo them in the morning, so they had to be put back in a ponytail. It was high up on the back of her head like those of many girls in our class, but I could see that to Allie it just felt wrong. With Allie’s permission, I took the elastic out and re-braided her hair so it could hang down.

“How’s that?” I asked.

She smiled. “Good,” she said and skipped off to join her friends in art.

‘Why Do You Look Like a Boy?’

Read More

[itsvondell-deactivated20180104]

wow wow wow

fantastic

A+

[eddplant-deactivated20130821]

A brilliant brilliant teacher and person

[blakesoldtempblog]

I've seen this all over my dash, which is great, but hadn't actually read the article until just now, I wish my teacher had done this.

[blakesoldtempblog]

Sometimes, Old People and computers do not mix.

Mt gram is trying to write something on her computer, she keeps hitting the wrong keys and mousing over and having the start menu pop up and didn't know how to get back. *sigh* She also had it in all caps and I asked mom if that's the way she wanted it and she said "yes". Turns out gram didn't know about, and that she had, hit caps lock. so she seems to be doing alright for awhile, mom tells her to save it and jumps in the shower, about five minutes later she comes to get me because it "disappeared". So go in there, and turns out she had never saved it, and had closed it , apparently trying to delete a word in the document. She also asked me how to get a question mark, and I explained it, then tried to type one not have a word processor Open, so I had to show her how to open it again. Then I told her to save as she went (because hers doesn't have auto save apparently), and she's "I don't know how!" Then how come she didn't tell mom that!? UGH.

[blakesoldtempblog]

Baack oon mom's mom's computer

and OMG this mouse is super sensitive, I keep losing it off the screen LOL

[blakesoldtempblog]

"Hard disk failure is imminent"

Message on my computer. Just what I need right now, I'm on mom's computer, not going to touch mine until she comes home. But usually, that isn't something you "fix" is it? *sigh*

[ichthyologist-2]

The lures of the female deep sea anglerfish (male anglerfish have no luminous organs) is much more elaborate than the lure of the shallow water species and in addition bioluminescence is used to attract the prey in the dark. The lures are modified dorsal fins and contain luminous bacteria which produce a bluish, greenish light. The light and movement of the lure attract the prey to within reach of the gaping jaws. The anglerfish Cryptopsaras can slide the rod part of the apparatus back into a groove, drawing the lure and prey closer to the mouth. It can rotate the lure tip and produce a flash from it as well as a glow. All this is controlled by enzymes and the contraction of chromatophores.

Theodore W. Pietsch and Christopher P. Kenaley

[blakesoldtempblog]

The deep sea angler fish has no reason to be happy, but she has no frikin' idea, what else to be!

[blakesoldtempblog]

LONG, stressful day.

Listening to Tom's link for "Oneohtrix Point Never - Replica", which he tweeted while I was gone (as well as on tumblr awhile back). It's helping me mellow out nicely.

[blakesoldtempblog]

Win some, lose some

have you ever had two lines to run and get your mitts to cover your hands for the last scene because you forgot them? well I have LOL That's just one of many mistakes tonight - people clapped in a place they'd never clapped before so it screwed up the tech booth for music, and after intermission they didn't have the recorded voice loud enough so they had to start it over. Nana is supposed to go back onstage with her "shawl' and I saw it and then it as gone, and the lights went out! ( scene opened), found it AFTER the scene, some idiot had set it on a "prop" staircase we have and it had fallen behind. I KNEW I'd seen it, it didn't go far, but of course couldn't find it in time for her scene, she has it for tomorrow at least. In MY scene I accidentally stole one of the other rabbits lines, but they both just kept going, and then during our song I'm supposed to "push her" well I pushed her too hard and tripped her and said, out loud "I'm sorry!" it made her laugh and made me embarrassed so the next line of the song was very weak. But, it's done. Until tomorrow anyway.

[blakesoldtempblog]

Oh, this Elefant song (Make Up) Tom posted to his twitter sounds like Inspiral Carpets a bit, I'm liking it. I look them up, Genre: Post-punk revival Indie rock I like when I'm right haha. Just late like always, apparently they've already broken up :/

[blakesoldtempblog]

WELL, first performance is over with.

We did do much better than I thought we would. Only three missed lines that I heard, and two prop malfunctions. BUT, costumes still weren't done when we got there, and Patty lost a box somewhere between the theatre and home so we had to SCRAMBLE and pull together whatever we could to try and make something work for the missing pieces. Poor Skin Horse ended up in a cowboy hat with a "mane" that looked more like a mullet and a braided fabric tail and black gloves for his hands , and he was in his tennis shoes. :( We found Velveteen's ears in a sack that never made it to Patty's to be worked on, or we probably wouldn't have had it either, it was only half done too, we used it that way. At least her's isn't in her eyes! She used some winter boots she had because her foot covers weren't done either. Rocket improvised her pointy top with a painted party hat because she didn't have one either. Poor Flo's (rabbit) ears were just that - ears, no way to position them on her head. We ended up tucking them under a visor. She looked like a dog :/ and her shoe covers weren't done so we had to pin those all around the ankle of her costume. We folded some batting up and pinned it on for her missing tail. Mack ( mechanical man) had nothing, and she went to paint her face and then immediately washed it off because "it itched", her mom came back after looking for the box she'd lost ( without finding it) with mack's shirt and pants and my STILL UNfinished helmet with my ears. The ears flop into my face horridly, and we tried pinning them for my first scene and they still did, we pinned it even tighter for the finale and it was slightly better. The damn thing is just TOO BIG> I asked her to cut the top back, and if she doesn't get to it , /I/ am going to do it before we go on tomorrow! I had two audience members comment on my hat being in my way, nicely, but still. They also started too early, before Mack was ready, and so skin horse ended up reading Mack, "man" and "woman"'s lines in the first scene ( they are off stage voices) , it's a good thing the audience didn't know they were supposed to be separate LOL We did get laughs and claps and all that throughout. That part was nice. It will be better tomorrow night, right?