postings of a professional redhead » sustainability

Florida Famcation

Sidney — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:32:33 +0000

I’ve been away…on Famcation. Famcation to Orlando, the ultimate tourist destination for families worldwide, for a whirlwind week away with some of my mother’s side of the family. Specificially, my parents, myself, my mother’s sister, her wife, and their two boys my favorite cousins.

We had five day park hopper passes. FIVE DAY. So vacation went a little like this…TL;DR!

Fly into Orlando, 7pm. Pick up rental car. Again I was not put in charge of rental car, so this process takes a good hour. They try to sell my mother and father on insurance and I have to repeatedly tell them, “we have it covered on both our car insurance AND your AmEx card, so DON’T PAY AN EXTRA $500 FOR THEIR OVER-PRICED SCAM INSURANCE!”
Pick up keys to rental house. I was under the [wrong] impression we would be at rental house for entire week of vacation. Later on, I am corrected to this incorrect assumption.
Go grocery shopping. My aunt had sent a grocery list for our (apparently only five day stay) at the rental. I have attached it to the bottom of this post for your amusement. Grocery shopping takes approximately two hours too long.
Show up to rental house, 11pm. There was no actual keys, there is a code we punch into the front door. Which doesn’t work. Despite warnings “if you punch this in incorrectly three times you will be locked out of the house for ten minutes,” my mother punched the code in three times. Cue her calling rental place, me pulling out my much-anticipated Publix sandwich, cracking open a warm beer on the wall of the house, and having a picnic in the driveway while waiting for some kind of handy-person to let us in the house. Did I mention it was 40 degrees in Florida? I’ve never known it to be so cold down there!
Finally get into rental house. My mom leaves immediately to go pick up the rest of our happy vacationers from the airport. My father and I settle in for some “House,” and I log into WoW on my laptop. Ahh…vacation.
1am. Rest of the family shows up. Yay! Ok, goodnight!
7am the next morning. Woken up by screaming. Oh right, I forgot my cousins are never told to be quiet when they wake up in the morning. Insert earplugs, go back to sleep.
8am. Despite multiple warnings that I am NEVER to be woken up by cute little boys, someone thinks it is funny to send them into my room to wake me up. I am not amused. If I wanted to be woken up by little kids, I would have one of my own right now. Incidentally, waking me is akin to poking a hibernating bear with a thorny stick mid-winter. My nickname senior year in college was either “Grumpy Bear” or “Mama Bear” depending on the day.
9am, head to Epcot. Bond with Aunt’s wife over need for caffeine. Offer to buy family coffee. While waiting in coffee line, am badgered by youngest cousin that he needs a chocolate muffin. Aunt’s wife tells him if he’s hungry, he can eat his sandwich. We leave line and head back to group, where aunt demands, “did you buy him a muffin? No? I’ll go do it.” Find out later from my dad that youngest cousin stomped his feet, crossed his arms, made a super angry face and said, “if I don’t get a chocolate muffin, I’m going to be a cranky boy all day long!” Emotional blackmail at its finest, people. At six, he’s already better at it than I will ever be. This starts a trend, he needs a chocolate muffin every day for the rest of vacation. When I attempted to steal a bite of said muffin, he slapped my hand away and screamed at me “NO! that’s MINE!” I don’t blame the six year old…
Whoever packed lunch for us forgot my sandwich. I end up getting shitty vegetarian plate from shitty fast food service.
Finally, the day is over! We go home, and on the way…pick up PIZZA! Pizza happens to be one of the very few things my cousins will eat (the other foods they eat include and are limited to, mac&cheese, chicken nuggets with tons of ketchup, peanut butter & honey, eggo waffles, dry oatmeal, or bread with butter). It’s also one of my least favorite foods, unless I make it at home and it’s A) cheeseless, or B) has vegan cheese. My younger cousin, who I shall call Muffin Boy from now on, eats over half of a 14″ pizza by himself. I’m sure if they ever did a CT scan of him they would find his arms and legs are hollow.
After pizza, I log onto my laptop in front of “House.” Ahh, vacation…did I mention I had my own room at the rental? So awesome. I was amazed I didn’t have to share with my cousins!
The following day we went to the Magic Kingdom. Yo, ho, yo, ho a pirate’s life for me! It was still a weekday so the place was empty, we managed to do the following all in one day: Thunder Mountain, Splash Mountain, Tom Sawyer’s Island, Pirates of the Carribean (which is much changed from when I was last on that ride, it now includes Captain Jack Sparrow), Swiss Family Robinson, Jungle Cruise, It’s a Small World, Haunted Mansion, Tomorrowland Speedway, Buzz LIghtyear’s Something (my father and I skipped this in order to do), Space Mountain. It was a busy day, and we stayed until the park closed. I was my older cousin’s “roller coaster buddy,” and my father was Muffin Boy’s roller coaster buddy. This meant we were hanging with them all day long, and I got to know my older cousin pretty well. He’s a pretty cool kid, for a 7 year old.
Next day? Animal Farm, or House, or maybe it was Kingdom. Anyway, we started off with the Safari, which was AWESOME and I wished I could walk it with my super big camera. That didn’t happen, they can’t even bring the safari bus to a complete stop, which was very frustrating to me and seemed to defeat the purpose of a “photo safari.” If there are actual animals to be seen, stop the damn bus and let us actually get a shot or two off. After that we went to the petting zoo for a really long time, during which I took a nap on a bench. The boys were then off to the Dinosaur park (which probably would have fascinated me…fifteen years ago) and my father and I went on the one roller coaster they have at AK, some sort of Mt. Everest ride. It was the best Disney roller coaster I’ve been on, and we bought our photos, so now I have two roller coaster pics of my father and I. He’s my roller coaster buddy. After that they wanted to do some kind of Lion King video, so my father and I went to Asia, where we saw some tigers, drank some tea, and generally chilled out for a little while.
After dinner, I log onto my laptop in front of “House.” Ahh, vacation…oh fuck, did I mention my laptop DIED? Yeah, total sadness, though it IS a five year old laptop.
The following day everyone was going to go to the Cape (Canaveral) but my mother had some sort stomach plague that involved holding a bucket while sitting on the toilet. I felt like I was getting it too, but it just turned out to be bad eggnog (reason #28934723987 to be vegan, people). I stayed home, and my father, cousins, and aunt went out and did stuff, possibly put-put, and shopping. Aunt’s wife watched tv and knitted all day. I always try to knit, and have a scarf I’ve been working on for awhile, but tend to be too OCD when I knit, trying to make every stich even, which defeats the purpose of it being an activity to reduce stress.
A good friend of mine from high school drove from Tampa to visit me that night. We went to a vegan Chinese restaurant, and then to a pool hall, where much beer and billiards were enjoyed.
It’s now Sunday. We have to pack up and move to….(cue drumroll please)…ANIMAL HOUSE LODGE!!! That’s right, we leave the sanctity of our wonderful rental house (where I have my own room, a first on family vacations) to go brave staying with 983432890840329 other tourists on Disney property. My father and I were both surprised by this development, as no one had told us we would be going there.
Checking in at the Lodge; they needed one person from each room to be there at check in so I was standing with my aunt when the woman tells her that the rooms she specifically requested aren’t available, which is just the beginning of a 10-minute conversation about making sure we get rooms with “a good view of the animals” (I should note, there are not many rooms WITHOUT a good view of the animals, IMO). Then the woman checking us in tells us she has our rooms – one with 2 queen beds (for my parents and me) and one with a queen and bunk bed (for my aunts and cousins) and my aunt says, “no, that’s not what we want. We need two bunk beds.” Well folks, the only way to get two bunk beds there is to have A) non-adjoining rooms, B) 1 queen bed + 1 bunk bed…in each room. I complain about B. I’m not happy about B. B means that me – 27 year old homeowner, hoo-ha engineer and general ADULT, will be sharing a bunk bed with a little boy. When I dared to complain about this fact, and the woman checking us in asked my aunt, again, “are you sure you wish this reservation? She does not seem happy with the arrangements,” my aunt waved her question away and told her to “ignore her, she’s not awake yet.”
Go to room; sit on bunk bed; reasoning for me to have bottom is so BOTH of my cousins can sleep on top bunk BOTH nights (instead of, I dunno…TRADING OFF?). Immediately hit head, hard, on bunk bed. Imagine that – it was made for much shorter people than myself. Proceed to hit head about 25 more times before putting down foot and refusing to sleep on bottom bunk. It didn’t matter anyway; my cousins were too scared to sleep away from their moms, so they didn’t end up crashing in our room with us, anyway.

The rest of vacation was kind of a blur – my dad and I spent a day at Epcot by ourselves and had a blast, and then went out for BBQ just the two of us that night. My father and I have a love/hate relationship; we get along really well becasue we are basically the same person – unfortunately that means we butt heads quite often as well.

I have some really cool photos I need to post, but I’ll have to get around to that later. I’ll be amazed if anyone other than my mother reads this entire post.

EDIT: I forgot to post the grocery list. Here it is, in all its glory:

this is just for us – add what you will eat in 4-5 days

If possible, milk and meat(ckn nuggets) organic, if not don’t worry about it
1 gallon orange juice-natural with pulp if possible
1 gallon whole milk
2-3 gallon skim milk
1 package plain flour tortillas (burrito size)
4 loaves whole wheat bread – not too whole grainy/healthy looking
16 gala apples
12 pack diet coke
1/2 pound Sumatra or Gold Coast coffee, Starbucks if in supermkt
Eggo Mini-Waffles 2 packs, “Lego” kind if possible
Quaker Maple and Brown Sugar Oatmeal
2 packs bagels
butter
1big-2 small jars organic smooth peanut butter
jar honey
hard salami/sliced provolone sandwiches for lunch E & L
1 package club crackers
1 package wheat thins
Dinner stuff for boys:
4 cans Campbell’s tomato soup
Chicken nuggets, organic if possible
Digorno’s frozen pizza, 1/2 cheese, 1/2 pepperoni or 1 each
Cheddar cheese
Vanilla-flavored fat free half-and-half small container
ketchup for ckn nuggets
mustard for sandwiches
?ingredients for easy dinners: grill cheese sandwiches/tacos or
burritos/fettucini alfredo/salad etc/grilled chkn/hamburgers (there is a bbq
at the house)
?Costco dinners: frozen pizza/frozen manicotti/lasagna/frozen whole cod
fishsticks, etc.
laundry det/trash bags/tp, etc

Academia just isn’t my bag, baby

Sidney — Thu, 06 Nov 2008 12:06:33 +0000

You’ll notice in my blogroll that I have a few medical-type blogs that I read (they’re great reads, check them out). I’m actually fascinated by medicine, and my family is full of medical-type people; my mother and aunt (father’s little sis) are RNs, my aunt (mother’s little sis) is a pediatric intensivist (her 2nd career after she was a hot-shot lawyer in L.A.), and her partner is an APRN (ob/gyn). To this day my family regularly asks me if I would please-please-please consider going to medical school – despite having a very successful career in engineering, and a just-starting career in wedding photography. Their reason for asking me still, even though I already have a career? “Because if some of these idiots I work with can be doctors, you could do it blindfolded and with your hands tied behind your back” – attribute this to all four medical field relatives, as they have all said this to me at one point or another. It’s not just medical school though; regularly from everyone in my family, some friends, and even old teachers, people are always suggesting some form of further education I should be seeking.

My father is the only person who is truly psyched about my chosen career – maybe because ohhh…we happen to work at the same place, and he gets to introduce me to his work friends all the time. “This is my daughter, Sidney! She’s the [blahblahblah] that they’re always talking about in the 8:30 meeting!” and of course, his chest puffs out with pride when he brags about me to people at work. (How I feel about being introduced to people first as his daughter and second with my title is probably fodder for an entire other post, actually…)

I wonder about this dichotomy, and why people seem so passionate about me going back to school. My mother is especially guilty of this; when I tell her “violence in movies makes my legs get weak and my stomach flip-flop, how the hell am I going to handle someone whose guts are spilling out of their body?” she switches tactics, reminding me of my stellar LSAT scores. “You could go to law school! They have a part-time program at UCONN! And those LSATs could easily get you into Yale!” Nevermind that I do not want to pay for either UCONN or Yale law school, not that my N.mumble GPA in undergrad would get me acceptance to either, anyway. My p.i. aunt is the same way; “you know, you really should at least go back and get an M.B.A. if you’re going to stay in the engineering field. You already hit the glass ceiling, you said so yourself.” My elementary school gifted teacher, who is now 89-years old and has recently converted to some sort of monkhood cult in the catholic church (the regular church was just “too liberal” for her) also brings this up during our bi-weekly phone conversations. “When are you going to medical school? You have the brains for it, you know. Your mother always wanted you to be a doctor.”

You can imagine my disgust when I caught my mother and her sister talking on the phone about my baby cousins (future, hypothetical seeing as they are 6 and 7 years old) SAT scores, and how they would affect into which colleges they would gain admission.

“I see now why my cousin Erin always told everyone she wanted to drive a dump truck! You guys put too much pressure on everyone! You know not everyone wants to be an over-achieving school nerd!*”

* My mother went to college for about 20 years, and has over four degrees framed and hanging on the wall. My father has double undergraduate and double masters degrees as well as an M.B.A. I managed to finish one major in college, and I haven’t seen my Smyff degree since graduation. I bet it’s framed on the wall with her and my fathers degrees, actually…

I really have minimal desire to go back to school; I barely finished college alive, to be honest. The only thing that kept me sane during my time there was my participation on the tennis team, a few amazing professors, and my ex-girlfriend (who is now happily married and expecting a baby in February, but we’re still friends, and she reads this site, so hi Katja!). An M.B.A. would probably be the quickest and dirtiest degree to get – but to what end? I once told my academic adviser in college that my career goal was “lower-middle management.” Well baby, I’m there now! Who else can say they reached their lifetime carrer goal by the tender age of 27? Between that and working to make money for my hobby (photography, specifically wedding), what else could I possibly ask for, career-wise?

Does anyone else have this constant academic pressure from their family? Is this a normal “I just want my baby to be all they can be and be the best and be successful and happy” wish, or is this indicative of a bigger problem? I think that everyone else in my family got the overacheiving striver gene, whereas I got the laid-back surfer gene. No offense to surfers, of course. They just tend to be the most laid-back people I know.

SolarFest!

Sidney — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:43:04 +0000

As I had written last week, I did indeed to to SolarFest – despite having pneumonia. Propped up by 40mg of prednisone a day, 1,000mg of clarithromycin daily, and a whole lot of Musinex-D, Jordan, Laura and I packed up my CR-V and headed to Vermont.

SolarFest was…amazing. I went to some great workshops (Catherine, there was one on food preservation you would have loved), met some lovely people, and enjoyed my time tromping around a horse farm in 95 degree weather. Laura and I volunteered at the “Kids’ Korner” (the name did make me gag a little) where Laura showed off her amazing skills dealing with little munchkins, while I taught the slightly older girls how to make friendship bracelets.

I learned so much, and had such an amazing time, I can’t wait to go back next year. Next year, however, I will NOT be letting Jordan talk me into leaving my solar shower at home, because by the end of that trip, we smelled as ripe as the composting toilets. In the car on the way home we were just about gagging on our own stank, I don’t think I have ever been so dirty in my life! And I’ve been camping in the Florida Everglades, and still…not that dirty. When I got back into town, the first thing I did was take a nice, long, cold shower – I think three pounds of salty sediment went down the drain, it was so lovely, I really have more appreciation for showering now than I did before.

Saturday night there was a bonfire, complete with crazy bongo drum dancing, clouds of suspicious smoke, and lots of handsiness from everyone. Other friends of mine who we had met up with in VT were dancing around the fire, and it was totally crazy. I’ll have to get photos off my camera at some point, though I’m sure some of them will be highly incriminating…

Honda’s hydrogen-powered car: I want one.

Sidney — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 04:22:37 +0000

I currently drive a 2007 Honda CR-V. Her name is Stella and she’s a lovely car, bigger than I need most days but great when we go camping or kayaking etc. Stella gets between 18-22MPG in the city, and between 28-43 on the highway (depending on how fast – or slow – I am driving). Considering my recent move to be less than 5 miles to work, most of my driving now is city driving. I just made up my mind to trade in my trusty Honda for the Toyota Prius when…

The car of the future has arrived.

Meet the 2008 Honda FCX Clarity, the first consumer-available fuel cell-powered vehicle. Of course they’re only making a couple dozen available for the lucky folks in SoCal to lease for $600/mo – but considering the price of gas! What a deal! Next year they will offer 200 on a three-year lease, to collect data before making the car available for purchase (I hope). And I want one, look at that car, it’s shit hot red and you’ll never have to stop to put gas in your tank again!

Speaking of gas prices, are they not outrageous? The following was published by CNN on the 11th, the prices have increased a bit since then, but the top three states in terms of gas prices at that time were:

California
Connecticut
Alaska

That’s right, go Connecticut, we have the 2nd highest gas in the country! More expensive than Alaska! And still no reprieve from the $0.35/gallon state gas tax, which is why I fill my tank up in Northampton, MA once a week.

WalkScore.com

Sidney — Thu, 22 May 2008 14:50:20 +0000

Inspired by Catherine, I decided to check the walk score of my new neighborhood.

I’m disappointed that my new neighborhood only has a Walk Score of 42 – especially since Catherine has managed to move to a neighborhood with a 95/100 score. Amazingly, my parents’ house – in the middle of a tiny town with only three stoplights (all off by 9pm) received a 40. Then again, we walked around quite a bit in the summertime when we lived there. Personally, I wish they would add a Bike Score application to the site, easily enough if they just expand the parameters a few miles. I think anything within 5 miles is very bike-able, and even if it were just 3 miles my score would be closer to the 90s. My old house in Northampton, MA got an 83/100 – how I miss living in Northampton, and never having to get into my car to run errands.

In addition to riding my bike to work, recently I have stopped speeding. This may have soemthing to do with the $100 speeding ticket I received in Springfield two weeks ago, but after driving around at or below the speed limit, I realized that my truck went from getting 21MPG to 31MPG. Imagine that! Just by dropping my speed 15MPH, I increased the range of my gas tank by 140 miles. I challenge everyone to drop down to at least the legal speed limit, if not 5MPH less than – not only will you be helping to slightly reduce our dependence on foreign oil, you will be saving yourself serious money.

For example, last year I put 28,000 miles on my truck. At 21MPG, I purchased 1,333 gallons of gas over the course of the year. Had I been driving slower and making 31MPG, I would have only needed to purchase 903 gallons of gas. At current prices, that would have saved me $1,741.

Continuing on in this vein, I now live only 4 miles from my place of employment (5 miles by bike). I used to live 25 miles from my place of employment – forsaken out in suburbia! Most people I work with live in suburbia, one person in my group actually lives in Rhode Island and has been commuting to Hartford for over ten years is now paying over $1,000/month in gas! Just think, if you moved closer to where you worked, how much money you would save in gas. Last year, I drove 12,500 miles to and from work (not counting visits to our other plants). At $4.05/gallon, at 21MPG, that means I spent $2,410 on gas – just getting to and from work! Now, if I actually drove my car to work every day from where I currently live, that would be 2,000 miles of driving, which at the same gas mileage would cost me $385 in gas for the year. So now I’ll have (at least) $2,025 extra money in my bank account, just by virtue of living closer to work.

Now just think, if you ride your bike or walk to work, you’ll get about a billion miles to the gallon, plus maybe save some gym time.