Climate change has raised many new problems impacting everyday life. One challenge we recently wrestled with was the combined effects of smoke from surrounding forest fires and the stifling mugginess of a heat wave. Keeping the windows closed to keep the smoke out made it more difficult to control the temperature in the house, but beyond that, too long with the windows closed leads to a very stuffy environment.

Storage of electricity is expensive, because batteries are expensive, and lose power over time. Batteries are getting less expensive all the time, though, and are easy to add to existing systems. Batteries are a good way to shift excess power from peak generation time to peak load. This was never something anyone had to even consider doing in the past, because it has only been recently that peak generation has out-produced demand during the daytime. So, traditionally, people only think of long-term storage needs, which batteries are not good for.

Here is my UPDATED water plan.

Somewhere along the road in 2014, I read an article about Ugly Produce.  I had heard in the past that somewhere around 50% of our food goes to waste, but Ugly Produce brought home the idea in a whole new way.  I had always assumed the waste was the result of inefficiencies in the system—food that spoiled before it got to someone who wanted to eat it.  Ugly Produce was the first time I thought about perfectly good food being discarded because it didn’t meet some standard other than edibility. 

Today we made the sad discovery that our Queen had died, and our hive had passed away.  There were some signs that all was not right a couple of weeks ago when I looked in and saw that there were very few bees in the hive -- only two or three frames covered in the brood box, and none elsewhere.  Last week it seemed like things were looking up, as there were bees active up in the super, but when I came back today, there was no activity at all.

So we have been trying to figure out how to not burn gas to visit Santa Cruz from Brisbane (136 miles round trip) for a while.  Its a great trick considering that much longer than the range on the Leaf.

This weekend we were finally brave enough to take our Nissan Leaf over to Santa Cruz.  Actually, in the past the issue was not so much bravery as lack of time to charge back up to 100% for the drive home.  This trip we were able to do that, though, so we took the leaf.

Winter is coming and its going to be a long winter this time around.  How do I know?  I dont really know.  But in 2008 during the housing market & banking crash, the media said it was really really bad, but dont worry it will all be fixed right away.   I knew one of those two things was a lie because they cannot exist together.  I told everyone either it isnt really bad and it will get better immediately, or it is really bad and its going to take four to five years before it looks right again.  Many people chose to argue the media line with me, but

City of Brisbane Open Space and Ecology Committee presents

What lies beneath?  No Deposit, No Return.

Sunday May 5th at 3:30 pm

An interesting look at Brisbane's history, the future of the Baylands and the story of our garbage and its impact on our environment.

Please come.  Kid friendly, community oriented, and munchies. 

We decided to do another challenge this year.   Many of the Riot for Austerity folks agreed to do a month without groceries (many of them excepting 1-2 special items.  ie:  milk for the kids).  We couldn't agree on it as a family so instead we pulled our Red List concept out of the hat.

Basic idea is to write down everything purchased grocery wise for a month to give a seasonal snap shot of what we are buying and how much.  This is what we bought for the month of March.