my footprint

Ok, so I briefly mentioned that everyone needed to go and rent "an inconvenient truth" the other day.

Let me say it again... go rent it, watch it with a few people, eat food together, discuss.

With the topic of climate change and environmental issues as a whole being front and centre this "non-winter" (meh, I guess it's winter now) I totally recommend it, if only to bring people up to speed on what we've been ignoring or, just passively watching for a number of years. If by chance you decide to do something after watching it.... even better. There are so many small things that we can be doing that as a whole, are going to help to make a difference. There's a bunch of really neat ones listed in the credits, and there is a copy of the 10 easy steps you can take on the site.... ooooOOOoohhh... there's also a quiz to figure out your "carbon footprint" (what your personal impact is) which I found really interesting... sadly, they don't have it set up for Canada, but if you choose California as your State, they are pretty much the closest to us in terms of emissions... as far as I can figure out... Anyone know better?

yesterday I got a car wash. After chipping away at some ice stuck to my car... and discovering it wasn't ice, it was salt, I figured for the life-sake of my little Morgan (yeah, his name) I should get that off before he melted to a pile of rust before my eyes.
I drove to Sunoco, the new place out by the Hospital, on my way out of town. I'd heard they were pretty good there and decided to give it a try. As I was waiting in the line, I read a sign that said something to the effect of "good quality because we take our time". I took that as a hint I was going to be in that line up for awhile (with 8 cars ahead of me) and shut my engine off and read a few chapters of my book. Once in a while, I turned the car on and crept forward, where there was enough hill, I took off the brake and coasted. Back to my book... I got a good chunk read... more on the book later.
In total I waited 30 minutes to get my car washed... in horror I sat and looked at the cars around me... in front, two huge SUVs, behind me, a late 70's early 80's gas guzzling-beaster car... all with their engines running.

of the 12 total cars in line with me only 3 turned off their engines during their half hour wait.

Tonight after work, I'm going to head over to the Sunoco and ask them to place a "no idling" sign in their line up, hopefully I'll have their phone number by tomorrow or tonight, I'll post it, please, take the 2 minutes needed and ask them to put one up, if enough of us are asking, maybe it'll help.

(hee hee... random info... the spell checker wants me to change the word "Sunoco" to "smog")