The Architecture of Home - Part II

Yesterday I began this post about visualizing your ideal home.  The previous post is here.

Room configuration that supports lifestyle 

Main living area: Kitchen-den open floor plan or country kitchen…separate formal dining room…island work area or stove top or sink…window over the sink? My ideal is an open kitchen-breakfast area-den as one large continuous room. An island in the kitchen provides plenty of work area and I’d prefer to have enough room for some bar stools to turn it into an eating area too. I don’t need a formal dining room at all; if the house has one, I’ll use it for something besides a dining room.

Bedrooms: Master bedroom with bathroom…or do all the bedrooms need it. My ideal would be to have all bedrooms have their own bathroom. My second choice would be for two bedrooms that shared a bathroom between them.

Stairs or no stairs - I prefer houses without stairs…primarily because I am thinking about not wanting to deal with stairs 20 years from now. I’ve never liked to carry groceries or laundry up or down stairs.

Garage - How many cars? Easy to get groceries carried from car to kitchen? My ideal is probably 2…with garage door opener; I don’t want more than a step up or down (preferably no step) to get into the house from the garage.

Laundry room/space - Space to hang clothes as they come from the washer or dryer? How easily can the dirty clothes get to the laundry room?

Electrical outlets - Are they conveniently located and are there enough of them?

Connectivity - Is internet connectivity/internal network easy to achieve?

Storage - Unfinished area of basement for storage or is it somewhere else in the house?

Light 

Windows 

• Number, Size, and Type - My ideal home includes lots of windows. I particularly like transom windows over French doors. In the late 1800s, small conservatories were popular. Now, garden rooms are more common. Either one or both would be part of my ideal home. I also like skylights.
• Direction (will the sun shine directly in?) - My ideal house has at least some windows where the sun shines in - for me and the cats to enjoy on a cold sunny day.
• Double paned? - This is a resounding 'yes' for my ideal house since just about every place has very hot or very cold weather for part of the year.
• Clear or colored or etched glass - My ideal house would have mostly clear glass windows but I like bevelled and etched front doors - perhaps stained glass for the transom windows.
• Easily opened and types of screens - A house needs to be aired out on breezy spring and fall days...and other days that the temperature and air outside is pleasant.

Overhead lights or outlet on switch - My ideal house would have lights on ceiling fans in almost every room.

Task lighting (particularly in kitchen) - If the overhead cabinents shade the countertop in the kitchen, there needs to be lighting under them. 

Bathroom - The round clear bulbs mounted on a bar above a mirror are my favorites for bathroom lighting.

Features for the home of the future 

Water - There are a few houses that have gray water systems now but as water becomes scarcer, there will be even more. In the interim, catching water from wasing veggies to water plants is a start (supported by your effort rather than the architecture of your home). There may also be a trend to add filtration/purification of drinking water into homes; this is something that can be added after the home as built as well.

Power generation - It is becoming increasingly possible to generate power from just about all external surfaces of the home. As energy costs increase and the production costs of the materials comes down, they will gain rapidly in popularity. They are included in my vision of my ideal home 10 years from now.

Appliances  

• Appliances should take 0 power when not in use. I don't need clocks on my microwave, oven, and coffee maker! The only appliance that should be using power all the time in the kitchen is the refrigerator.
• Heating and cooling systems should make use of underground temperature gradients whenever possible to reduce the power required for that purpose.

 Materials 

• Locally produced
• Non-toxic (both in the way they are produced, the outgassing when they are first installed, and recyclable)
• Appropriate durability - Maybe the durability of granite countertops is out of step with the other materials used for the house.

 Flexible 

• Rooms that can change functionality are a plus. Changing a dining room to a 'cave' or a bedroom should be anticipated and even supported by the architecture.
• Different kinds of walls or even screens should be used to subdivide larger areas - making it easy to reconfigure as the needs of the household change over time.

 Back to the beginning - 

If you could have any house to make your home, what would it be like? 

It's a wonderful vision. Right? Now - what tweak can you make to where you are right now to implement a piece of your ideal home architecture.

Quote of the Day - 2/10/2012

Of social life, I had, and still have, almost none. I have never had a talent for acquaintance, only an enjoyment of intimacy. People who have more than 3 or 4 friends whom they wish to see often, who come and go to dinner parties and so on with a wide circle of acquaintances whose company they enjoy although they do not know them very well, fill me with envious admiration. - Diana Athill in Instead of a Letter: A Memoir

~~~~~

Are you naturally an introvert or extrovert?

Diana Athill’s words describe someone more on the introvert side - someone who values depth in relationships over numbers of relationships. There may be more natural introverts out there than seems obvious since introverts are often quite intent on what it takes to enable professional success; ‘networking’ is a kind of prescription to apply as needed to make contacts to advance a career. But - always - people retain their natural inclination.

The publicity around the emergence of social media implies that everyone should want lots of connections. A good portion of the population may be OK with that idea for professional acquaintances but their optimum for the number of connections for truly social reasons - the deeper relationships - is quite small.

The Architecture of Home - Part I

If you could have any house to make your home, what would it be like?

This is a very good question to answer just prior to beginning a search for a new home. It also turns out to be productive for anyone trying to hone the way space is utilized in their current home since many of the things that may be not quite right can be remediated without moving to a new house.

This is not so much an exercise in preparation for ‘building your own’ as it is about making choices that utilize or adjust the architecture to make wherever you dwell into your home. It should be unique to you not someone else’s ideal. To clearly visualize your ideal - become familiar with your needs and preferences (and those of the people that share your home).

The list below (and continued in tomorrow’s post) is intended to help you develop a deeper understanding of your

Ideal Home Architecture.

Enough space - Think about what you really need from many perspectives

‘Caves’ for each person in the household - A ‘cave’ is the place for each person to have as their individual space to do things on their own; it could be a place with computer and comfy chair or simply surface area for projects. The key is to acknowledge the space each person needs for just themselves. My 'cave' looks most like an office - with a pleasant view from the window and good lighting.

Shared areas - every home needs spaces where people do things together. Maybe it is a large kitchen/breakfast area or a den or an outdoor patio.

Kitchen 

• Counter top space - For kitchen equipment and/or multiple cooks. Cooking and eating together is an important part of the interactions in my home so the kitchen has to accommodate multiple people cooking in it at the same time.
• Counter top material - Granite is popular now…but is the durability of granite may be over the top for what you really need. There are some beautiful counters made from recycled color glass that I’ve been looking at.
• Cabinets (or other storage) - For at least the frequently used kitchen items. The challenge for me to is to get everything I use frequently onto the shelves I can reach without needing a step stool (if what I need is out of reach I tend to avoid using it).
• Cabinet material - Color/type of wood. Light is important to me so like light colored wood cabinets the best. I like the kitchen to be one of the brightest rooms in the house.
• If there were extra storage in the kitchen - what would you use it for? The area where the phone is in our current kitchen is never used for food. It holds mail and projects and purses. I’m spoiled enough by the extra space that now it is part of my ‘ideal.’
• Pantry - storage for non-refrigerated food. Do you buy such food in bulk? I prefer a long pantry that is not very deep so that I can easily see and retrieve things on the shelves. The bulk items (like paper towels and cat food) go on the top shelf or under the bottom shelf.
• What layout fits the way you cook? I like a big U with an island counter in the center. I do most of my mixing on that island. My salad preparation is done next to the sink although I put most of my parings in the compost rather than garbage disposal. The refrigerator, oven, and dishwasher can all open all the way with some room to spare although there is barely enough to walk by; at first, I thought my ideal would be to have a bit more space to walk but I’ve gotten used to them now.
• Space for Appliances - what appliances do you need: microwave, oven/range, refrigerator, dishwasher, etc. We have a large side by side and were pleased that the house was built with a water connection for the ice maker. The microwave is built-in over the oven/range; the configuration is ideal but the reliability of the unit has been abysmal. We are getting ready to replace it again.

 Bedrooms 

• Number and size- Keep in mind not only the people that normally live in the home but if you need to handle guests. I like a guest room that has another purpose (such as for special projects) or is small enough that it does not take a sizable chunk out of the space that used every day.
• Double as 'caves'? - This can be quite easy if the bedroom is for one person…more complex if it is a shared room.
• Closet space - Do you like walk in…sliding doors…builtins…shoe racks…other closet features? Will all clothes be kept in the closet or will out of season clothes be moved elsewhere? There are a lot of solutions for closet limitations. A quick and easy one I’ve done several times it to raise the bar a few inches then create a double decked section with Hanging Rod from the top bar. 

Bathrooms 

• Number and size - How many people have to get ready concurrently? Is there one on each floor of the house? We have full baths in the basement and bedroom floors but only a half bath on the ground floor. My ideal would have a full bath on each floor to add flexibility to the ground floor rooms.
• Shower/tub - both, together, separate. I definitely prefer a shower rather than a shower tub.
• Towel and toiletry storage. I find that I don’t care as much about a full linen closet as I do about storage in the bathroom itself. My idea would be to have adequate enclosed space in each bathroom for everything that would be needed there.

Minimize these types of spaces: Every home has some of these---if they are significant enough, think of ways to improve the spaces for your family. I’ve listed some ideas below.

• Hallways - Make it into a picture gallery or add hooks for car keys and purses or build in narrow shelves for paperbacks/pictures/display items. Improve lighting if it is too dark.
• Small rooms with lots of doorways - Close off one or more of the doors and put furniture in front of it or consider repurposing the room to have a table and chairs in the center with minimal furniture against the walls.
• Awkwardly shaped corner cabinet spaces - Get a rotating spice rack to put in the space, store special occasion dishes or platters only used once or twice a year in the space.
• Garage without shelving - Add free standing metal shelving or cabinets along part of the back wall and on the sides if the garage is wide enough or add higher wall attached shelving along the whole length of the back wall.

Tomorrow I'll continue this post with sections on room configuration, lighting, and features that have potential for the future.

Quote of the Day - 2/6/2012

Mothered by the same earth, dust and dirt have different fathers.  Dust – finer and more discrete – belongs as much to air as to earth. Dirt – bigger and clumsier – is identified with soil. - Joseph A. Amato in Dust: A History of the Small and the Invisible

~~~~~

I like Amato’s distinction between dust and dirt. In addition, they both can be transformed by human activity; we may still categorize them as dust or dirt but they are potentially quite different. Will the new nanotechnologies produce a new kind of dust? Is an oil puddle leaked from a car in a parking lot a kind of dirt?

In our homes, the battle with dust is constant although there have only been gradual improvements over the past 50 years. Filters on heating/cooling, vacuums, and dust clothes are still our primary tools. There are many more kinds of filters now and vacuums come in all shapes and sizes. Dust clothes can be rags or coated fiber fluffs (like Swiffers). Endust and Pledge products have come and gone over the years. Our houses are sealed from the outdoor air more frequently now than ever before. The battle continues. Maybe I’m noticing it more at the moment because I am cleaning out boxes that are almost 30 years old and the cardboard is breaking down; it is producing and holding dust at the same time.

There are very few times that I actually have dirt in the house. Occasionally we track it in from outside or a potted plant gets spilled. Doormats and leaving shoes at the door reduces the first type. The second is just part of having plants indoors.

What are your dusty challenges today?

February Sunrise

I’ve been watching all week for a great sunrise…and it happened yesterday. The clouds were just right to reflect the colors. The pictures below were taken from the front of my house in Howard County Maryland. This is about as easy as it gets for a sunrise photography project: simply walking out the front door at about 7 in the morning, taking pictures from two vantage points with a hand held camera. The first series was taken over a 3 minute period; the second over 4 minutes. Catching a great sunrise does not take a lot of time; being in the right place for those few short minutes is the challenge. Next time I’ll add a bit more location/setting control (i.e. use a tripod and just take one vantage point).

Trees still in silhouette

The red - pink - orange light

Reflected on the clouds

Begins a new day

The color sequence always the same

Red - pink - orange until

It all washes into yellow light

That bleaches away

To the dazzling brightness

Of a sunny day.

10 Years Ago – In February 2002

Many years ago I started collecting headlines/news blurbs as a way of honing my reading of news. Over the years, the headline collection has been warped by the sources of news I was reading…increasingly online. Reviewing the February 2002 headline gleanings - I forced myself to pick 10.

1. Intellectual Resources May Help Soldiers Stave Off Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
2. Second space tourist to take stem cells, HIV experiment
3. The recent discovery of two giant Roman water-lifting machines near St. Paul's Cathedral in London
4. Study shows the average sleep for Americans of seven hours per night is safest
5. Texas A&M Clones First Cat
6. Enormous Iceberg May Be In Its Death Throes; Collisions With Another Large Berg
7. Plague fears spark panic in India
8. A cold front that killed about 250 million Monarch butterflies in central Mexico last month may reduce next year's migrations.
9. Glacier melting could contribute 0.65 feet or more to sea level this century
10. One of the odd possibilities that could emerge from global warming is that much of Europe, robbed of the ocean current patterns that help keep it warm, could rather abruptly enter a deep freeze and have a climate that more closely resembles Alaska than the modest temperatures it now enjoys.

Notice that weather and climate figure prominently in this list (6, 8, 9, 10) since it must have been and area of interest to me in 2002. The last blurb must have been from a story about global weather models; I wonder if the low temperatures in Eastern Europe this year are going to happen with increasing frequency.

Item 8 about Monarch butterflies was a turning point in our summer activities. For several years before 2002 we had collected Monarch eggs and caterpillars from the milkweed behind our house, feed them well while they were caterpillars, and released them when they hatched from their chrysalis. There were not enough Monarchs in our area of Maryland from 2002 onward.

Quote of the Day - 2/2/2012

The nation at war had formed the habit of summary action, and it was not soon unlearned. - Frederick Lewis Allen in Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s

~~~~~

Wars result in more than just winners and losers…changes in country boundaries. They are disruptions that often change life in fundamental ways. The quote today is about the impact of World War I on the US - pointing out that the pace of life had changed significantly. The faster pace of the 20s must have seemed quiet alien and not even the depression damped it back to the pre-World War I level.  It was a step increase rather than a more gradual trend that has happened since.

World War II set the stage for college education being opened to a much larger portion of the population. Prior to that time, the people that went to college were mostly from elite families that could afford to subsidize their children into adulthood. The GI Bill meant that almost all men could earn the opportunity to go to college. It took a while for the trend to spread to women but it did. Again - it was a step increase initiated by the war and then a gradual increase in availability and accessibility of college education after that.

Think back on your family history and talk to family members that remember the time before World War II if you are fortunate enough to have them with you. How did the war change the lives of your family?

• Did fewer of them remain farmers?
• Did they migrate from wherever they were before? How many ended up on a ‘suburb’?
• Where were babies born (hospital or at home)?
• What kind of school did the children go to (building, size of classes, type of teacher, school sponsored activities)?

Did the Korean, Vietnam, and 1st Iraq Wars have an impact that was significant? Perhaps these conflicts should have taught us more than they did.

It is probably too early to determine the most significant change the Afghanistan/Iraq war has had on our nation. Based on the amount of time and the lives lost, we should expect that there is something.

Perhaps it will be our acceptance of a dramatic reduction in personal privacy initiated by the increased surveillance in our lives (for example, airport security checkpoints). Of course, the advent of social media and data mining on the internet has happened concurrently and that did not happened because of the war. Taken together the ‘step’ erosion of privacy is probably already a reality.

Perhaps it will be our use of surrogates - drones flown by remote pilots or computer controlled vehicles - that will change things over the long haul. It depends on how the technology is translated from the military world into the day to day lives of people. Certainly driverless cars on our streets and highways would change our day to day lives.

What else might be the most significant change from the Afghanistan/Iraq war?

Quote of the Day - 1/31/2012

Knowledge, if it does not determine action, is dead to us – Plotinus, 205-270 CE

~~~~~

Data

Information

Knowledge

Wisdom

No matter where we are along the continuum - action is required to translate our understanding into reality. Simply knowing is not enough. Today - think about how you can more fully leverage what you know to hone what you are doing.

Note: This is a widely used quote. I ran across it in a book by Philip Armour (The Laws of Software Process: A New Model for the Production and Management of Software) which proposed that software development should be viewed and managed as a knowledge acquisition activity. The author provides a thought provoking perspective on the history and future of the way we capture then transfer knowledge.

Quote of the Day - 1/29/2012

Scientific work requires intelligence, creativity, education and determination.  As a result, the history of science is always the history of a select group of individuals. - Margaret Alic in Hypatia's Heritage (Beacon Paperback)

~~~~~

Which of the requirements for scientific work (intelligence, creativity, education and determination) is the most challenging for the US population today? Determination would by my top pick and the others lag behind it by quite a lot. There are plenty of intelligent people…lots of good ideas…education is available but linked to determination just as closely as scientific work is. Our high schools and colleges have plenty of capacity in science and engineering yet we hear frequently that there are not enough US students - even though scholarship programs that support science and technology studies are available to top students. So - it comes back to determination and perseverance.

And that is going against the grain of popular culture which has tended toward the sound bite, the quick gratification, instant feedback. After a while it becomes harder to focus on one thing for very long. Determination is needed for scientific work because it can’t be accomplished without deeper thinking…and that takes longer blocks of time. It takes a commitment that evidently few are willing to make.

The ‘select group of individuals’ that make scientific history is becoming more and more self-selected based on determination rather than anything else. Statistically, it is still possible to see gender bias in some fields of science but there has been tremendous progress over the past 50 years that has accelerated in the last 20. The instances of women doing scientific work but not receiving appropriate credit are gone.  

The future health of the economy, both in the world and the US, is highly dependent on the innovations that come from the scientists and engineers among us. There needs to be a cultural inflection point toward viewing determination….thinking and acting for a longer term objective…as a positive attribute for more of our population. It would improve our capacity for scientific work and a lot of other endeavors as well.

Quote of the Day - 1/28/2012

Art is a method of laying claim to the physical world. - Joan Aiken in Morningquest

~~~~~

Maybe this is why I enjoy photography so much. It has become a favorite method for me to ‘claim the physical world.’ I know that with camera in hand, my attention is more focused on details of light and intensity (or not) of color. And then when I look at it later on a large screen, there is often more in the image than I realized.

Fortunately for me, digital cameras are a technology that has advanced rapidly; it no longer takes a lot of fiddling with technology to capture the images I want. Being in the right place and composition are the challenge. The camera I’ve enjoyed for the past year of so is a Canon PowerShot SD4500IS 10 MP Digital Camera with 10x Optical Image Stabilized Zoom and 3.0-Inch LCD, Brown . All the problems I’ve had with it have been self-inflicted (leaving the SD card in the laptop or the battery in the charger). It’s small enough that I carry it in a padded area of my purse or a pocket of my travel vest; it’s always near at hand to capture an image I want to keep in more than my memory. The only extra purchase I’ve made is a second battery for a long day/lots of images captured.

What is your favorite ‘method of laying claim to the physical world?’

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 28, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:  

• Psychology of Color infographic - Hmm…never paint a baby’s room yellow because it will cause them to cry more…other factoids. A snapshot (unreadable) version of the infographic is at right...follow the link to get more explanation and larger size (if it still isn't large enough on your monitor - click on the graphic to enlarge further)
• Food Combining - for optimal health and weight - Goodbye meat and potatoes in the same meal (not a good combination). This article is an easy read with good embedded graphics. Maybe what we eat is not as bad as how we combine it?
• 2011 was 9th warmest year on record - A video that shows global temps from 1884 to 2011 from NASA
• Paper Models of Polyhedra - Wow…lots of shapes you can make with paper with templates to help you do it.
• Smithsonian fire in January 1865 - report and pictures of the event…lessons from that fire applied to the restoration of the building and other museums.
• Nutrient Lists - From the USDA Nutrient Data Laboratory. Lists of foods either alphabetically or sorted by content for common nutrients.
• American Verse Project - An electronic archive of volumes of American poetry prior to 1920. If you are in the mood for poetry and don’t have a book already bought, this a great place to go.
• The Digital Blue Ridge Parkway - Lots of photographs from during the Blue Ridge Parkway construction. This site is also an example of richness of presenting information digitally where it can be accessed from many perspectives rather than in book form.
• Great Meals with Great Grains - a blog about using whole grains to ‘provide culinary excitement without hours of labor.’ I’ve tried amaranth, quinoa and rolled oats; maybe it’s time to try some others too.
• How to store fruits and vegetables without plastic - A fact sheet from the Berkeley Farmers’ Market
• Lisa Harouni: A primer on 3D printing (TED talk) - Is this the future for manufacturing in America?

Quote of the Day - 1/25/2012

History can’t give attention to what’s been lost, hidden, or deliberately buried; it is mostly a telling of success, not the partial failures that enabled success. - Scott Berkun in The Myths of Innovation

~~~~~

History is often taught in timeline fashion with milestones of wars as major drivers of change…and always written by the victor who throws away much of the context from the other side. We need more than the this kind of documentation to understand the how and why of the changes that occurred. Some changes were not driven by war at all.

We also should strive to remember that the perspective of the historian is always embedded in the telling; no one is totally objective. We can solve the problem of ‘single perspective’ by getting multiple viewpoints of the same events or time period. This is why we are intrigued by the connections that the ultimate success had to seemingly unrelated or partially related events. Check out James Burke’s Knowledge Web project site for an update on his work since the Connections television shows he created.

In your own personal history - think about your successes? Were there partial failures (or successes) that led to that success and do you include them in your personal history? 

10 Years Ago – In January 2002

Many years ago I started collecting headlines as a way of honing my reading of news. Over the years, the headline collection has been warped by the sources of news I was reading…increasingly online. I recently looked back to the January 2002 headline collection and picked 10. 

1. Dave Thomas (Wendy’s) dies
2. Ford cutting 35,000 jobs
3. Enron scandal
4. Cuba base for war on terrorism detainees
5. The color of the universe is light turquoise
6. A 984-foot-wide asteroid, discovered Dec. 26 and labeled as being potentially hazardous by NASA, came within 516,000 miles of hitting Earth
7. Dead Sea is Sinking Lower
8. Kmart files chapter 11
9. Amateur satellite doing well in orbit
10. Ex-UK PM Thatcher suffers stroke

Were these the most important things in the news 10 years ago? Some may have been (Enron and Cuban base). Others were simply things I was interested in at the time. I enjoyed looking at the whole list and forcing myself to pick 10. It somehow gave the current news more perspective.

Gleanings of the Week Ending January 21, 2012

The items below were ‘the cream’ of the articles I read this past week:

Office Workers Spend Too Much Time at Their Desks - A study that provides some numbers to what we intuitively know. This is why I try to get up at least once an hour and have a Black Swopper Chair  chair at my desk!

Fill in the gaps--bird the road less traveled this January - hmmm...there is a county near me that is white (a city…so this would be birding in parks) surrounded my dark gray. Maybe I should plan an outing to look for birds and complete an eBird checklist. They promise maps for February around the 1st of the month so this could be an outing for next month too.

Sewer Mining - reusing wastewater in a decentralized, small scale way; example projects from around the world

The Parrot Trade - Lots of pictures of parrots included chicks/juveniles…and the disturbing wild-caught trade that persists

49 ways to save water - The ongoing drought in many parts of the US and other parts of the world prompts us to take a harder look at how we, as individuals, use water

What is your state good at - Map of the US with graphics associated with each state. Text follows to explain what it means

Photosynthesis Fuel Company Gets a Large Investment - plant being built near Leander, TX. The goal is to produce 20,000 gallons of ethanol per acre per year rather than the 2,000-3,000 gallons per acre achieved with cellulosic fuels such as grass and wood chips.

How Coffee Changed America - an infographic with the history (you’ll have to click on it and enlarge to read the text) followed by a write up on modern issues surrounding coffee

Top 25 Wild Bird Photographs of the Week - from the Wild Bird Trust of South Africa…and there should be more in the weeks to come

Video of recent Solar Flare - colorful close up from NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory

Making origami paper cubes - This has a video made by two girls to show exactly how it’s done.

What's in your trash?

My household is down to one, not full, trash bag per week. We’ve done the easy recycling of plastics, cans, glass, and paper; it’s easy because our community has wheeled recycle bins, unlimited amounts, and trucks that come once a week - as often as the trash pickup. Over the years the items handled by our community recycling program has enlarged from newspaper/cardboard to all paper, from limited plastics to many more plastics (and more plastics are labeled clearly now so we know they are recyclable; much of the grocery packaging that used to be styrofoam is now recyclable plastic) and we no longer have to separate by type at all…it all goes into the rolling bin.  We still have to take the plastic shopping bags back to the store for recycling but we are getting fewer of them now that most of our purchases are carried home in reusable bags. So - what is still going in the trash? Here’s an inventory for this week:

• Milk carton, other food cartons
• Plastic wrap
• Used tissues/paper towels/cotton balls
• Broken strand of Christmas lights
• Styrofoam
• Used up ink pen
• Dried up marker
• Orange and banana peel, plate scrapings, vegetable trimmings (peelings, bad places, inedible parts)
• Old sock
• Small bags (shopping and food wrapping)
• Chunks of cat litter

Our household has a goal to reduce our food waste this year both because we want to maximize the nutrition we get from the food we buy; reducing our trash is a side-effect. Our primary strategies are:

• Pay more attention to our handling of left overs
  • not lose them in the refrigerator
  • freeze them for later if we are tired of the entrée already
• Make orange zest from every orange eaten so the peeling is reduced somewhat (and there is a flavorful addition available for other cooking)
• Instead of throwing away bread that has gotten a little stale, make bread crumbs (toasting or drying in the oven in a 200 degree F oven makes them crispy) to use instead of crackers with soups or croutons in salads.
• Collect tea and coffee grounds for immediate use as a soil addition or get a mushroom starter kit to grow your own crop of mushrooms.

There is a part of the trash that is potentially compostable but I’m not quite ready to do it…so it stays a part of the trash. I have started putting food scraps into the trash rather than down the garbage disposal these days (less water pollution) so the potentially compostable part of the trash has increased slightly.

It’s harder to image how the rest goes somewhere else than the trash. For bigger electronics like computers or cell phones, there are places to take them for recycling (Best Buy, for example). For things like a broken strand of Christmas lights, it takes too much effort to figure out what to do with them other than put them in the trash.

That’s a quick ‘state of the trash’ at the beginning of 2012 in my household. What’s in your trash?

Do you Trust your Doctor?

If the answer is not ‘yes,’ you should be searching for a new doctor ---- but it is always wise to ‘trust but verify.’ Trust without verification is something only children can afford; their parents or guardians take on the responsibility for them. As an adult, you need to have a strategy that includes probing to substantiate the trust you have in your doctor. Here are some reasons the ‘trust by verify’ approach is particularly important:

• Doctors are people too. They see many patients and must rely on records rather than memory for your history. Not all of your previous interactions are quantifiable and in the records. And they are sometimes rushed. Don’t assume they have everything correct in your history.
• You know more about your history. You know more about your medical history (and the medical history of your family) than the standard forms request. You don’t have to share everything at once; however, if you have some anomalous tests that are similar to others in your family or consistent over a long period of time (before the records your doctor has on file)….you need to share and partner with your doctor to understand the best path forward for you.
• Your preferences. The tendency in the US is to medicate immediately. Sometimes this means that the root cause of a problem is never addressed. This is not necessary always bad; medicines like Tylenol, ibuprofen, or aspirin treat the symptom of fever helping us feel better while our own immune system gets to work on the cause of the fever. Pills are an easy out….with associated side effects. If you are a patient that would prefer to avoid medication unless absolutely necessary, you need to be clear with your doctor about the preference and be ready to do most of the ‘getting well’ work on your own. For example, blood pressure medication is frequently prescribed when life style change/weight reduction would be better for the patient in the long run (having more benefits than lowering blood pressure). The doctor can provide references to help with the life style change/weight reduction but this leaves hard work for the patient.
• Side effects. You are an individual and respond in your own way to medication. Know the potential side effects for any medication you are taking and contact your doctor for any that are intolerable. Changing dosage level or to another medication may be warranted. Always ask how long medication will be needed and how often need/dosage level will be checked for medications taken long term.
• Red flags - you need to ask questions. If your doctor recommends a new medication to address a side effect to a medication you are already taking, ask a lot of questions about alternative approaches. Careful review of all the medications with your primary doctor (even those prescribed by another doctor) periodically is a good idea; make sure you understand the details of how the medicines should be taken and undesirable interactions that can occur.

In the end, you are the one responsible for your health. Your doctor is a secondary partner. Their advice and assistance is important - sometimes crucially so. Make the effort to find a doctor you can trust.

Quote of the Day - 1/13/2012

Growth comes about when we are confronted by situations that upset our equilibrium and demand change. - Susan Wittig Albert in Work of Her Own

~~~~~

When was the last time you were confronted with a situation that upset your equilibrium? Was it initiated by a decision you made or did it just happen?

Thinking back - I have upset my equilibrium via key decisions and prompted growth throughout my life: getting married, switching from biology to applied math for graduate studies, going into management, having a child, leaving one multi-decade career path and starting another. Growth was not the reason for the decision but it was certainly a welcome by-product.

Some upsets happen out of our control: a car accident, an illness, gifts, an inheritance, a terrorist event. If they disturb our equilibrium enough…we respond by growing in some way. What we learn…how we grow…helps us achieve control again.

Day-to-day problems are not quite at the ‘upset our equilibrium’ level but they too can prompt growth. For example - several years ago, I noticed that I was always fumbling in the space to the right of my PC keyboard. Since I am right handed, my mouse and writing pad were both on that side. Learning to use my mouse with my left hand was my solution. It was a small change (it took a few weeks to develop the skill with my left hand) but it solved the problem and is now my preferred way of working.

Observing others deal with equilibrium shattering situations may prompt growth activities. Have you observed a kindergarten/first grader recently? Think about what happens as they learn to read. As adults, we ask so much less of ourselves. Why is that? What is the adult equivalent of being in first grade again?

Are your bored? Make a decision that upsets your equilibrium…and let the growth begin.

What is Excellence?

The word ‘excellence’ is so overused that it has taken on a glitz that it didn’t have 20 years ago. It implies over to top quality…lots of high gloss polish…best of the best.

Is that really it?

I’d rather think about excellence as being:

Exactly fitting a need or creating a whole new way of achieving something…

Without waste…

Aesthetically pleasing…

Non-toxic now and in the future…

Durable…

Relationship building or sustaining.

How do you define excellence?