apple juice

It’s jeans day at work today.

We don’t have jeans day just for nothing, though, we have it for cancer research. You pay five dollars, wear a sticker, and you get to wear jeans today and feel oh so casual. Its funny to see a bunch of people who you associate with nice clothing wearing jeans on a casual day. Everyone looks so uncomfortable.

But of course, I forgot my jeans! I paid five dollars, and I forgot to wear the jeans. Ah well, I’m still young enough that I wear jeans regularily outside of work. 🙂

In a working environment, people get accustomed to things. The way you dress, the way you talk. People expect things to be a certain way. It’s just part of the culture. Maybe not every company. But a company such as this one.

So when its jeans day… by golly, you’d better wear jeans! Everyone is wearing jeans, why aren’t you wearing jeans? Jeans, jeans everywhere jeans, where are your jeans?

Knowing what I know about the culture around here, I knew I would be asked this question early and often. “Why aren’t you wearing jeans?”

“Well, that’s because I don’t support cancer research.”

(blink , blink) “You what?”

I revel in the stunned look on their faces.

Unfortunately, I’m not much of a con artist, so I can’t hold a straight face for too long… but oh man, those few moments are priceless.

Of course I “support” cancer research. Who doesn’t support cancer reserach? It’s like those damn yellow Lance Armstrong bracelets. Or the Support Your Troops ribbons… Who doesn’t “Support the Troops”? Clearly you support them more than I do though, because you have a Ribbon Magnet!

I think the terrorists are going to be their own demise.

I don’t think they realize that these attacks unite the civilized world, and do not divde it as I assume they hope.

Sure, it creates impassioned discussions, and differences of opinion on how to deal with their threats, but that is the beauty of a democracy. If one administration goes to far (Patriot Act), or pursues the wrong goals (Iraq), they are checked. In the end, through freedom of expression, the press, and our governmental process, the better solutions are found. This is true of all of the democracies of the world.

My thoughts and prayers are over there.

I’ve never done a retaurant review here, but I thought I’d direct people in the direction of Cafe Lurcat.

It’s in the D’Amico family of restaurants, so I won’t bother with dazzling you with my sweet food-related vocabulary. The food is good. We’ll leave it at that.

No, what I want to talk about is where we sat. The whole excursion started as a quest for somewhere outside. It was suggested that Lurcat had it, so off we went. When we arrived, we spied the seating out in front, and our hostess offered us “outside” by the bar, or the “secret outside”.
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It looks like I’m not the only one that gets Lost in Eden Prairie

Even the Eden Prairie mayor admits it took her years to confidently find her way around town. “You’d almost think,” sighed Williams, “they didn’t know that people were coming.”

Seriously, it’s like the Bermuda Triangle over there. Once you go in, you may never find your way out again.

The city has hired experts in the new discipline of “wayfinding” to help folks make their way through a network of roads that consultants say is neither “linear nor logical.”

How is this not littering?

(All those white things are cigarettes.)

From Dome houses to biodiesel, fair trade coffee to compost bins, we saw it all at the Living Green Expo today.

There were quite a few people there, and less hippies than you would expect! Lots of normal looking folks just seeing what they could do in their homes and lives for the environment.

Unfortunately, I didn’t find any new sources of biodiesel, and the person staffing the biodiesel desk didn’t seem to know too much about it.

But we had one major find… a compost bin. Yes! Straight from Canada no less!

We came into the exhibitor area and started around to our left. The very first booth had a compost bin, just like the one that is barely standing, broken, in our back yard! We learned from the helpful person at the desk that they could be purchased across Como Ave., just follow the signs! “Okay!”, we said, and we were off to check out the rest of the exhibits.

There were a few booths dedicated to Wind-Energy, and I was proudly telling them that I had called Xcel to purchase the wind-blocks. They were universally unimpressed. It will be a while before I am accepted by the enviro-geek community.

We also bought a few more CF lights for the house. In my forthcoming book, “Environmentalism for Everyone!”, I will extol the virtues of replacing all your household lighting with compact fluorescent lights.

Okay, so I’m not actually writing a book, but I will geek out on the lighting for a second:

Most of the lights in your house are probably 60-75 Watts. CFLs that put out the same amount of light are 15-20 Watts. So you can save a lot of energy (~75%) by switching your bulbs over. Lighting is about 20% of your total electrical bill, so if you switched all of your lights to CFLs, and your monthly electrical bill was $100, you’d save about $15/month. Not bad. Pays for itself in just a couple months!

Okay, enough of the sales pitch.

Anyway, good times. Carrot juice and all.

Oh, and the canadian compost bins. This was a funny scene. So you leave the fairgrounds, and go into the field across the street. About 600 meters (yes we use the metric system around here now) away, there was a semi-truck trailer, 4 porta-potties, and 5 canadians. One guy took the money, one guy stood around in a mustache, trench coat, suit, tie and hat. The remaining 3 guys were loading the boxes into cars.

I guess they drove all the way from ontario to sell compost bins to the environmentally conscious people of minnesota. If only i had know about this, I could’ve saved all the trauma last week with the Talking Deer!