Saving the planet one product at a time

OK, I have never been one of those hippie types. In fact they kind of piss me off.......like one house guest I had who refused to eat any of the food I cooked because it was not organic and 'Bad for you" So he went out and bought his organic bread and organic cheese and organic eggs and proceeded to make himself an organic fried egg and cheese sandwich. Suddenly my non-organic salad and non-organic stirfried chicken didn't seem so bad. I hope he has a coronary.

Bah! any way where was I? oh yeah. After reading more and more about whats in most commercial shampoos and reading some labels I decided that the daily chemical bath I was subjecting myself too probably wasn't all that good for me. I decided to give some organic/eco friendly products a try.

But first I must state.

"Just because a product is natural doesn't mean it is good for you. Nettles are natural and give you a rash, deadly nightshade is fairly natural and quite deadly. Lots of natural products are just as harmful and their active ingrediants often similar to some of the "chemicals" we are so afraid of."

And this too

"Just because a product is natural dont automatically assume it wont be effective. The ingredients in many different plants have yet to be fully characterised. Aspirin was originally derived from willow trees as early as 400bc and now synthetically produced only because it is cheaper to do so. If someone today suggested you chew some tree leaves to reduce pain you might tell them where they could put their leaves......"

Ok and after all that rambling here is my point
I tried some eco store vanilla shampoo, it really is excellent and by far the best shampoo I have ever used.

Wondrous Weekend Wrapup

What an awesome weekend! Firstly, Dylan Moran on Friday night at the St James. Not much legroom in those St James seats even for a short arse like me, but the bar was open and after a glass of wine is was much more bearable. I really enjoyed the show, lots of laughs and lots of Bernard Black in there too. As usual we seem to end up sitting next to glum arses who don't care for humor and just came along because they thought they might need something new to complain about at work tomorrow. After the show we had a browse of Borders. I love bookshops that are open till midnight, I bought some DVD's, had a coffee and shared a piece of tiramisu with Zed. YUM (zed not the tiramisu)

Saturday was spent catching up with Wellington friend Jamie. We wandered through some pet shops looking at exotic fish, and spotted one of a sort, Our old Boss!! frankly I wasn't up for one of those fake, "Oh how nice to see you" converstions so I hid behind the coral display till she left. Then we had lunch at a frenchy delicatessen and then we played Settlers of Catan all afternoon. That Game kicks Ass! Although everytime we'd played it I was learned new rules because Jamie kept introducing a different expansion pack. Still it was awesome and not to hard to learn.
Photo By burks_berlin

Saturday night was yet another Singstar party, and after a few wines it hard to drag that microphone away from me. I had the dubious glory of getting everything going because everyone else was too shy. And I had to wait for them to get drunk before they would sing. So it was up to Tanya and me. Just as well I love Sing Star, I'm keeping an eye out for a cheap one on trade me. That and Buzz. So anyway I was out till 1:30am which is late for me cause I'm a bit of a Nana.

And Sunday well It was a miserable day so did housework (yawn grumble blah) and watched some DVD's. Stargate and Stargate Atlantis... Oh how I love Sci fi, I would get sky, if they had a sci fi channel. Sigh.

Shit! I forgot to do nothing

After a full on Easter weekend I went back to work today a husk of my former self. Im lucky I didn't lose a finger on the microtome, I was on autopilot the whole day. Even two cups of acrid reflux inducing instant coffee from the tea room (uh more like a nook really, its not a room, actually its a bench in the hallway) could perk me up. I should've taken a day just for blobbing. I find nothing is as rejuvenating as a day spent doing nothing in particular, reading 20 pages from half a dozen books, channel surfing for two hours, surfing the web only looking at the pictures and moving piles of stuff from one corner to another corner. Those are days that make you super productive the next day. I try have one every sunday.

Whats better than sing star 80's?......

....Playing sing star 80's with a projector for 6 feet of 80's music video goodness! Friends with the full singstar collection blessed us with an easter Friday full of beer, pizza and giant karaoke.
"Ah Ha- Take on me" and "Duran Duran - hungry like with Wolf" were my two favourites. I never thought I would enjoy the singstar phenomenon.... it just didn't seem like something I would do. After all, I am a self respecting scientician. But it turns out scienticians love trying to sing "I believe in a thing called love" while downing a Heineken. More beer probably ended up on the carpet than anywhere else.

Go karting kicks ASS! can I say ass on here?

Although go-kart racing is not my first choice for weekend recreation, there is something about the company of teenage boys that makes you excited about anything noisy with an engine.
The place was loud, one of the go carts on the track kept back firing and when I was handed a disposable head covering to go under the helmet I wondered if this really was going to be the 15 minutes of excitement promised. Before I knew it I was in a kart waiting in the pits for the nod from the teenager running the track. To start with the acceleration seemed sluggish, but once I was up to speed there was no stopping me! The low centre of gravity makes it easy to take almost hairpin turns at full speed. I was fearless and just as well because the brakes were rubbish.
So I am now a fully fledged lean mean speed thingee. The only thing that would stop me doing it again is the price. $25 for 15 minutes, although that seems standard across Auckland its a bit expensive for 4 people!

Surprised by James Blunt

Well, after being saturated with his singles for several months I thought I could never learn to "appreciate" James Blunt. I was so over it. But then, a music loving co-worker of mine bought in the Live in Ireland CD to listen to at work. Its a real gem. His unusual voice grows on you and since you already know all the words (unless you've been backpacking through Pakistan for the past 3 months) its just a pleasure to listen to. James Blunt is one of those rare artists who sounds better live. The music is open and when all the slick CD production is stripped away the melodies can really escape. Beautiful album and highly recommend to all those who feel ambivalent about James Blunt.

photo credit here.

Dylan Moran: UPDATE

Oh yeah, I got tickets!!! Someone must have told his agent how desperate we are down here and he's added another show. Colour me overjoyed. So I now have two bookings for the laugh festival, which is some kind of record considering I've missed it completely for the past 5 years.