Bobble-Head Generation.

Unplugged for 24 hours? For kids these days, they say impossible. I say Improbable! I laugh in the face of danger! But I don't think this is really dangerous... It's actually far less dangerous, the chances of whip-lash are far less. One of my teachers calls the new generation "bobble-head-gen" because they're (we're) constantly going from our phone to reality, phone-reality, phonereality, phone.... What happened to reality? Oh, yeh, it's in the palm of our hand apparently.

So, the challenge was to unplug. Everything. No phones. No laptops. As little electricity as possible. Minimal driving. Status: Challenge Accepted.

Granted, I had to cheat a little. I drove to and from work & to and from school (and use the computers there for production purposes). Alas. But I didn't go anywhere else, which was kind of nice because I got to spend the day at home. Relaxing yet productive. The phone was off, so plans had to be made in advanced. Tuesday, 12:30, be on time, not "Hey girl, what are you doing? let's grab lunch, in like 15?" But when you run on your own time, 15 really means 45 and text when you're on the way and blah blah blahhhh. It gets complicated. But it was nice to have a set of defined plans. Usually if I'm not home by a certain time, my dad will worriedly text me or call me to inquire my where-abouts (just because I have spontaneous plans created via text and forget to check in), so I was more inclined to go home when I got off of work. Also nice.

I unplugged all of my phantom electronics, made sure all the lights that weren't being used were off and grabbed a book. Easy. I don't watch too much TV to begin with, but I'm a total internet junkie, so it required a little bit of will power, but it was grand.

The challenge was fun, I'm far more conscious about those sneaky electronics that syphen power all the time. Maybe it's time to leave the bobble-head-gen behind. :]

Tapped Out.

Here's the link that belongs to this picture:

 http://www.damnlol.com/the-truth-behind-bottled-water-2050.html 

I thought it was a pretty good break down of how ridiculous we are sometimes. 

I love leeched chemicals in my water. Honestly, whenever I drink out of plastic now, I feel disgusting.

When I first discovered the attached comic, I attached it to my Facebook, cuz that's the cool thing to do these days. And honestly, there's enough people on there that if you post something enough times, word gets spread, so kudos for that, Mr. Zuckerberg. Anyways, I posted such, and Response Number One was from a friend and he said that Riverside county had one of the third highest chemical counts in their water. COOL. But then again, with the amount of chemicals you're getting from the plastic bottles, you're kind of in a lose-lose situation. But when you get plastic bottles you're paying for the chemicals. I think I'd rather risk it, get a filter and drink the tap water. 

Better = Butter.

Butter. Yes, the chubby little baker inside me decided that this week, our favourite food is butter. And not just to eat straight from the stick, but to bake with! Why? Because everything is better with butter. <3 


Specifically, I bake with Unsalted Sweet Cream Butter. But I do use salted butter to cook with. 

Yes, this is the amount of butter I have on hand in my house.

I bake... a lot.

Ingredients: Milk. 
Holy moley. If you want to get technical with your butter, here are some terms you might want to know... (PS, I totally stole the following italicized information from http://www.foodsci.uoguelph.ca/dairyedu/butter.html)



Milkfat
- the lipid components of milk, as produced by the cow, and found in commercial milk and milk-derived products, mostly comprised of triglyceride.
Butterfat
- almost synonymous with milkfat; all of the fat components in milk that are separable by churning.
Anhydrous Milkfat (AMF)
- the commercially- prepared extraction of cow's milkfat, found in bulk or concentrated form (comprised of 100% fat, but not necessarily all of the lipid components of milk).
Butteroil
- synonomous with anhydrous milkfat; (conventional terminology in the fats and oils field differentiates an oil from a fat based on whether it is liquid at room temp. or solid, but very arbitrary).
Butter 
- a water-in-oil emulsion, comprised of >80% milkfat, but also containing water in the form of tiny droplets, perhaps some milk solids-not-fat, with or without salt (sweet butter); texture is a result of working/kneading during processing at appropriate temperatures, to establish fat crystalline network that results in desired smoothness (compare butter with melted and recrystallized butter); used as a spread, a cooking fat, or a baking ingredient.

My butter came from Target, but really you can get butter anywhere!

Where did my butter come from before I got it from Target? Well, what I gathered is that they have a food distribution center in Phoenix, Arizona. Unfortunately my buttery goodness had to travel to get to it's nice little location into the Menifee Super Target. Where did it come from before that? Where was the cattle raised to get the milk that got churned to make this amazing-ness that we call butter? -___- I have no idea. I feel like I rephrased the question about 600 times before Google gave up on me. I did find an email address to contact Target (specifically if you had a health concern with their food products) and this is what I said:

Hello! I just had a couple of questions about where you butter is manufactured.

Is it made here in the US, any state in particular? Where are the cattle raised? You use rBST free cattle? Do you use any other anti-biotics or pesticides on them? 

Thanks for the help, I'm doing a project on butter, and since I generally use MP Butter for my baking, I figure I'd do the research specifically on it. 

When they get back to me, I'll attach their email into another post. :]

If I had to make a general assumption, I'd say that this butter is made here in the US - I might even be bold enough to say that it came from California (cuz you know, happy cows come from California...) I did discover that SuperValu/ PFresh handle Target's foods, and those are big name companies - So they run big farms, so they're benefiting from high turnover. I did look to see if they were sustainable (I couldn't find anything on them making butter specifically) and you can find that info right here. http://www.supervalu.com/sv-webapp/about/envstewardship.jsp

Switching gears: Health affects... I know this says SALTED and I use UNsalted for my baking, but for all intents and purposes, I thought this was a pretty sweet little break down.

http://www.livestrong.com/thedailyplate/nutrition-calories/food/market-pantry/butter-salted-sweet-cream/

This was a breakdown from Livestrong.com as to how to burn off your butter calories (based on the average weight of 150). It changed when I refreshed the page.
It assumed because I'm a woman, I like laundry and mopping ahahaha.

Butter is terrible for you, terrible and delicious. But you can do all sorts of things with it besides baking. You can cook (saute, fry, brown, glaze, thicken, ect.) with it, you can sculpt it, you can just straight eat it, if you're  really feeling that bold. Just watch Julia Child... She'll inspire you to use butter.  And don't get me wrong, you can use alternative forms of fats to cook/bake with that might be healthier and debatable as delicious (olive oil, shortening, coconut oil), but that's not really as much fun. I figure if something unhealthy is gonna take me down, I'll gladly go down with butter. 

Campus Re-Vamp

I suppose if you were to "break down" Riverside Community College (Riverside Campus, to be specific), one would need to analyze the follow;

1. Are the Recycling Stations actually being utilized?

-Bottles & Can stations

-Paper Recycling

2. Waste consumption

-Plastics and Styrofoam containers in the cafeteria.

I'm sure on the grand scheme of sustainability, one would need to investigate into more detail other practices to ensure a "greener" campus, but for the sake of this blog, we're gonna stick to those two.

A few other campuses have already started focusing on Waste Management & Recycling.

For example, Florida State has kicked their recycling efforts up a notch. They've created more events to encourage re-using items instead of just trashing them. You can find all the information and ideas here: http://www.facilities.fsu.edu/sustainability/?q=node/23

If you look on the left column and hover over the links, there will be a side pop-up that shows the different ideas on sustainability. It's kinda neat the ideas they had.

Now, this website argues that a sustainable campus is more cost effective - you can find that exciting information right hurr: http://www.climateneutralcampus.com/landing.php?whitepaper=creating-a-sustainable-campus-can-be-cost-effective

On that same note, here's their article about reducing waste and increasing value. Holla. http://www.climateneutralcampus.com/landing.php?whitepaper=creating-a-sustainable-campus-can-be-cost-effective

Arizona State and the Uni of New Hampshire followed up with Waste Management (You know, the dudes with the big green trucks with the yellow WM logo plastered all over it) and they invested in solar-powered trash compactors, Recycle compactors (which, they noted were strategically & convienently placed, so the lazy college kids had no excuse to not recycle their leftover beer cans/bottles. ;] ) By doing all of this, they've reduced their trash pick up by an insane amount - I believe they said around 80%! How rad is that?

Intrigued by all this managing of waste, I decided to look in to WM's sustainable ideas. I filled out their little questionnaire, and left my information down for them to contact me with ideas on how to make our campus greener step by step. I'm actually really excited about it, because once we're able to implement a program at RCC Main Campus, we'll not only be able to expand to the other campuses, but perhaps other students will take the ideas with them when they transfer and implement it at other universities. I know for sure once I have an idea of what to do, I'm gonna proposition the MSJC council to do the same. We'll all be little green-world-saving students. Sweet. :D

(Oh, you can find the WM information here: http://www.wmsustainabilityservices.com/strategic-offerings/zero-waste.asp)

Now, if I were to take this head-on all by my tiny lonesome, where the heck would I start? Well, I'd hope Paul Pistono (VP of Public Sector Solution at WM) would get back to me, but that's besides the point. Say he was a dirty liar and I had to start from square one, without them. Eek.

Firstly: Talk to the directors of the school. Seeing as they run this whole show, they'll probably be the guys to talk to. If I can convince them that going green would actually save them some green, this could have a shot. Doing so, this will require some serious research and/or figures. Word on the street is that big wigs like charts & numbers & saving money. (Note to self, attain all these things)

In order to get said charts and numbers and savins money figures, I'm gonna need some permission to troll around the campus and inquire on the garbage situation. See how much waste the campus as a whole is going through on a weekly basis. How would I do that? I have no idea. Maybe I can talk some janitors into letting me tag along when they take out the trash, and I can weigh each bag before they throw it out. Then perhaps once I get an idea on how to measure, we can see how frequently the trash man picks up, and how often that costs us in student fees. -__-

However, I do know that Sustainabilty Club does their own recycling, so perhaps I could see how much recycling they get per week/how often they go to drop of the recycling/ how much monies they get from the recycling, ect. to throw in to my figures.

Now, I believe it's time for a random student/teacher poll. Hang out in the cafeteria, and politely harrass some 100+ students and/or teachers.

Some things to ask? And hope they're being honest... :

- How often do you eat at RCC?

- Do you throw your trash away around campus or do you take it home (Who knows, maybe they have a lunch box or something and keep the trash inside?)

- Are you really gonna recycle that plastic bottle you're drinking out of?

- Do your teachers give you assignments online or do they print them out? And is it double sided/single sided?

- Do you keep your assignments after they're passed back to you at the end of the semester? Do you junk them immediately? Recycle the paper at all?

Perhaps I can bribe some friends with cookies into helping me do this. :] I think the beginnings of this project would be primarily based on volunteer work and cookies. On the upside, if we were able to convince the big wigs with some amazing research and the warmheartedness that it took to do all this background work (based on cookie payments) we could use some if the money that the campus would be saving and invest it into actual workers or technology to keep the program up. Hopefully WM does follow up with me soon, so I can get the numbers on how much the technology cost, and things like that. I think it would be pretty rad and relatively feasible to do this. :] Fingers crossed.

Wow, that's in our food??

Instead of doing my networking homework this evening, I wasted my time on StumbleUpon.com. Nothing out of the ordinary, and then this article popped up on the screen...

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/1CGcfq/www.cracked.com/article_19433_the-6-most-horrifying-lies-food-industry-feeding-you.html

Seriously, some of the things we intake make me not want to eat, and I love food more than anybody. Time to pay closer attention to what we're eating and do some research on local, organic products!

-___- I have humans. And it's terminal.

Okay, so I stumbled on this comic last night, and I thought it was humorous.

>>>>WARNING: There is explicit dialog from The Moon<<<<

This isn't my comic, if I could change the language I would. Once you click on the link, it'll take you to the site to see it. Maybe you'll get a kick out of it like Ryan & I did. :]

http://www.stumbleupon.com/su/2ttMY4/9gag.com/gag/268265

Circle Timeee

I decided to do this project later in the evening, and I did so on the lower level of my backyard; Many of the things I observed were not necessarily discovered by sight, but more so by the sense of hearing. As I sat on our deck beneath the stars, overhead I heard a few owls, what I am assuming to be bats, and other night birds on their daily hunt. In the "forest" behind the yard, I heard lots of crickets playing their evening symphony. I'm sure had I gone into the forest, I would have discovered a few more animals scurrying about, but quite frankly, I'm way to big of a sis to go in there alone at night. Haha.

I checked my pool, there were no ducks in it tonight. I did see a couple of our big, orange dragonflies swooping about. They're such neat insects.

As I sat down there, my cat came and kept me some company. I'm sure he saw more things than I did, as he was running around chasing anything that moved (bugs, field mice, leaves). I discovered that there were a number of spider webs delicately placed between the trees, and in between chair legs. I searched with my flashlight, but I couldn't seem to locate any owners for a photo op. ;/ I did however walk through one on accident on my way back up the stairs to the house, and thankfully there was no spider attached to it. As I approached the house, I found some moths dancing in the light, but that was about it.

Night Sky :]

Tuskani being Nosey

The web with no owner. He caught some leaves for dinner.