highs and lows

one of erin and my favorite movies is the 1999 Rob Reiner drama "The Story of Us" staring Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer. one of my favorite parts of that movie, now that i'm a father, is when their family is sitting around he dinner table talking about their 'highs and lows' for the day. this will be the general concept for this series of posts. for me, this will take on the appearance of a weekly wrap-up with 2 or 3 high points rather than a nightly favorite and i'm going to concentrate on my highs and try to leave the lows behind me when i can.

this weeks highs include:

a trip to cleveland to see our friends, the Budingers. it's always good to see friends and every trip we take with Jonah gets more relaxed and more comfortable.

after struggling with whether to build or buy a good solid cabinetmakers workbench, i've decided to take a 3 day weekend with Mike VanPelt at American Sycamores School. This way, I can have the experience of building my own bench but know that it will actually be completed in my lifetime!

pumping up with Hans & Franz

i've had some trouble with my sinuses over the past few years. last week, i finally broke down and went to see an ear, nose & throat specialist.

i left his office with a handful of prescription slips (i'll save my prescription drug thoughts for another post) of which, one was for a steroid. now, i obviously don't know much about medicine but when i hear the word steroid, my first thought is always Hans & Franz from Saturday Night Live. with a 6 day pack, i don't expect i'll come out looking like these guys but i do wonder what affect they'll have on me.

so, like any good patient, i asked about side-effects. the doc warned me that they might make me feel a little "jittery." when i asked a nurse to clarify "jittery" she said, "jumpy."

"like, caffeinated," i asked?

"no, more like pissed off."

great, just what i needed.

if i seem to be a bit on a rampage this week, i'm sorry.

the solar update

though i don't have time for a detailed blog post today, i think it's important for me to get this info out. i got my new pv system (solar panels) installed yesterday and the online monitoring is up and running today. i have some video of the installation that i hope to have imported this evening and i'll post some thoughts on the entire process.

for now, here is the link to the web monitor.

you'll also notice that this monitor is now embedded at the bottom of the blog as well.

adding some blue to my green side

the next step in my environmental effort solves several problems with one product.

problem #1 is heating. during the cold michigan winters, we spend a lot more time in our basement family room. trouble is, our bedroom is right above that part of the basement. so, even though we have a zoned heating and cooling system, when we heat up the family room we are also heating up our bedroom.

problem #2 is air quality. i knew that i needed to insulate between the two rooms. i also knew that regular fiberglass insulation can contain formaldehyde that can off-gas into the air we breathe, not to mention that it's very itchy to install.

problem #3 is sound. sometimes the volume level on movie night can get a little out of hand. that sound transfers through the entire house.

the solution: Ultra Touch cotton insulation by Bonded Logic. yup, cotton. according to their web site, they use more than 85% post industrial denim and cotton fiber. the way i understand it, it's all the scrap denim left over from the manufacture of jeans.

now, to be fair, the Ultra Touch does have a few drawbacks. first, it's dusty. hence, the glasses and respirator you see above. so plan a little extra time for a thorough cleaning after installation. (for this type of dust, i think that a simple paper dust mask would do the job just as well as the respirator, but that's what i had. and, trust me, you want the glasses. i tried it without them and spent the next day pulling bits of cotton out of the corner of my eyes! not at all painful, just annoying.) The only other issue i have with the Ultra Touch is that it smells kinda funny. almost industrial. i'm sure that once i get the finished ceiling up the smell will die off because I can't smell it in the bedroom at all. but, for now, it just smells a little weird in the family room.

if your interested in cotton insulation, i got mine in grand rapids from a company called L&D Adhesives. they were the closest source that i could find. hopefully someone will start carrying it a little closer to home because it doesn't seen very eco conscious to haul it back from gr!

turning green

i think having a child has already started to change the way i look at things. in particular, i find myself trying to ride the "green" bandwagon lately. erin refers to it as "living with ed" but, i figure, what better thing to do for my son than do my part to make the world a little cleaner. so, in my next few blog posts you may see the eco freak in me start to emerge.

my first step was a simple recycling station at home as well as paper and cardboard recycling at work. though we don't have a recycling pick-up service, it's pretty easy for me to run our recycling to the community recycling center in spring arbor.