My good intentions OR The road to Hell is paved with leaky faucets

Creative Commons Image by Droidicus

So my kitchen faucet has been dripping for a long time.  I'm not exactly sure how long, but it would be safe to say that it has certainly been dripping for months.  My usual technique for dealing with malfunctioning plumbing or appliances is to wait and see if they heal themselves.  (Don't laugh!  It has worked more than you would imagine.  Certainly at least once!)  Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case with this faucet, whose drip is even more constant than before.  I did a little measurement today and it looks like it is dripping at the rate of about 1 and 1/3 cups of water per hour.  That's about 32 cups of water per day (or 7 1/2 liters) per day.  Yikes! 

So even though I think that water conservation is important, why hasn't this been fixed?  I even bought the rubber washers that should do the job.  It is at this point, gentle readers, that I should let you in on a secret.  I have virtually no spatial skills.  I'm one of those people that have to turn a map in the direction I'm facing before I can read it.  So the idea of taking apart  a faucet is a little intimidating to me.  This is especially the case when I start researching the solution and get diagrams like this one:

Image used by Creative Commons License

I even tried looking at the This Old House website for advice.  Those folks seem so friendly!  And they even wear the common folks' plaid shirt and jeans uniform.  But I couldn't even tell which faucet we have so I could get started.  I understand the instructions were theoretically in English, but it might as well have looked like this:  τον καθορισμό ενός βρύση.  But obviously, losing nearly 8 liters of water per day is unacceptable.  So I'm going to enlist my much more handy husband and hopefully this problem will be solved over the weekend.  I will do my best to document the process in such a way that even technologically challenged folks like myself will feel able to take on the job of their own leaky faucets.

There are no concrete flowers OR That asphalt jungle is metaphorical!

Honestly, I've never seen the point of watering lawns in the first place.  When it gets hot and dry enough for the grass to turn yellow or brown, that means you don't have to mow it.  But IF you feel compelled to water a plant that gives no sustenance and scant beauty, please don't do this.  Watering the pavement is worse than a waste of water.  Spraying water on to roads and parking lots is a good way to shunt toxic runoff down the storm drains.  It's also a good way to encourage an accident as people happen upon puddles and slick spots that shouldn't be there. 

If you can't manage to go a week without fighting the lawn wars, please consider investing in a drip irrigation system.  It uses less water.  It doesn't soak the sidewalk.

Photo by jellyluna via Creative Commons license.

Tote your own bucket.

Even though water is one of our most precious resources, it is also one of the most squandered.  Why is this so?  I contend that it is because with modern wells and modern plumbing our water doesn't seem so valuable.  It is cheap.  It is plentiful.  It is safe.  It is easily obtained.  Unfortunately, our brains are wired to see things that don't require significant effort and resources as valueless.  I think that my background (almost unknown in modern America) is part of the reason that I value water so much.  Between the ages of 6 and 13, my family had no running water.  Every bit of water we used either came from a hand drawn well or out of the nearby creek.  When you have to carry a bucket with all the water that you drink, cook with, or wash with, you start to look at water differently.  You see it as a precious thing. 

While I don't advocate everyone disconnecting from their well or city water supply, everyone should have some experience supplying their own water.  Try camping at a site that is distant from water.  Or, if you aren't ready to "rough it" yet, at least try this experiment:  Limit water usage to a single tap in the house for a few days.  Carry water for your bath, for your dishes, your laundry and so on.  Not only will this give you a much better idea of the huge volume of water used in most homes, it will teach you the value of every drop.

Try carrying your own water, and share the results of your experiment here.

Photo by Ganesh K through a creative commons license.

Water, water, not everywhere...

Like most of the Midwest, St. Louis is currently suffering from an extreme drought.  This lends to thinking about one of our most precious (and most squandered) resources...fresh water.  In the coming days, I will be spending a lot of time talking about how water is wasted and ways that we can reduce that waste.  I'll be spending some time on my water wasting pet peeves (golf courses, I'm looking at you) and also 'fessing up to some of my own water sins.  (Yes, the kitchen sink is still dripping.)  Return to this spot soon for more on water issues.

Image by D. Sharon Pruitt via a creative commons license.

Social Media: Time Waster or Social Enhancer?

In the past couple of years, social media has exploded.  There was some movement in this direction with things like easily accessible blogs, LiveJournal and others.  But with platforms like Facebook, G+, Twitter, Pinterest and others, social media is much more important in the lives of every day folks than it was even 5 years ago.  The impulse for many folks is to denounce these platforms as taking away from the “real” world and wasting everyone’s time.  Other folks argue that people were pretty adept at wasting time before Facebook was ever invented and that it is a great way to share and interact with other people. 

I’m torn.  I suspect that both camps are correct in some respect.  I’ve been trying to find ways to maximize the gain from these platforms, especially Facebook, while reducing the amount of time and energy wasted.  A few things I have done that seem to help: 

1) I stopped playing any of the games.  Most of the games (especially from Xynga) are only games in the loosest sense of the word…sort of like “War” is a card game.  They don’t require any real skill, nor even luck, but instead constantly sitting in front of the computer sending out requests and pestering all your friends.  I’m sure I annoyed some people before I stopped playing them.  I AM SORRY.  As an aside, another reason to stop playing is that these games and apps are notoriously full of viruses. 

2) While I do post a lot (probably more than I should) I typically try to repost bits that I think are truly informative or interesting.  I (mostly) avoid music videos, memes and the like.  I also don’t have my Spotify or Pinterest accounts linked to share my moves on other sites.  I also don’t link FB to my moves in other places.  I will admit that this is as much to protect my privacy and to avoid annoying others as it is to keep from wasting more time than is absolutely necessary.  But it’s a start.

I will admit that I spend much more time on social networking than I should.  I can’t imagine that on my deathbed I will regret reading to my kids instead of updating my status.  But I also very much enjoy the things I learn from social media.  I just need to keep finding a way of striking the best balance between finding and sharing useful information, and piddling away my time.  I’m not there yet.

Birth of this Blog

This blog was inspired by a photo posted by my friend Kathy.  It was from a collection of posters from the World Wars that discouraged food waste.  It looked like this:

I loved it immediately, for the font, for historical aspect, but mostly for the message.  People worry about how we can possibly feed all the people that are scheduled to show up on the planet in the coming decades.  We could currently comfortably feed all the folks that are currently on the planet, plus a good chunk more with the farmland currently in production if we didn't waste so much food.  Feeding the starving isn't that complicated, we just need to stop wasting food and distribute it more appropriately.  I tracked down the source of the poster and found this great website:

http://www.good-potato.com/beans_are_bullets/index.html

Reading over all the posters made me turn the thoughts over in my mind and realized that there are a lot of things that are important to me, but that many of them are tied to the idea of not wasting things.  In some cases this includes tangible items, like food or water.  In others, this is more ephemeral, like time or effort.  I figured that I couldn't be the only person with such concerns and so I decided to start a blog.  I look forward to sharing ideas and getting your input.