I’ve posted a funny video below that illustrates how much water we can save by peeing in the shower every day. The cartoon is put out by SOS Mata Atlantica showing cartoon images of Mahatma Ghandi, King Kong, our Statue of Liberty, aliens, Stephen Hawking and others peeing in the shower.
As I said in a previous post, saving water is a good thing. You can save up to 4,380 liters of water a year by just not flushing the toilet.
According to Mario Mantovani, the group’s mobilization director, “In these times of financial crisis when the answer to everything is ‘no’ we wanted to bring a ‘yes’ to people’s everyday lives, encouraging them to pee in the shower.”
I ran across an interesting article the other day on the internets. A trillion dollars could be saved by energy effiency alone, which begs the question. Are you conservingto save money? I’m not talking about saving the planet or being green, but saving money by conserving on energy. Here are a few things I have done in the last year which have been pretty painless.
- Shorter showers, which of course saves hot water.
- Not flushing everytime. If it’s yellow let it mellow, if it’s brown flush it down.
- Bought a more fuel efficient car, saving a few dollars on gas every week.
- Turned up the air conditioning and turned down the heat in the winter.
- Used lids when cooking. This cuts down on the time it takes heat food and also stops splatters.
- I’ve started using dish clothes more and paper towels less. This actually adds up to some major savings.
- Quit watering the lawn, instead letting the lawn fade and regrow with the weather.
I know that is a pretty short list, but doing this will add up to savings in the long run. What have you been doing to save money and be green.
My wife and I officially sold our fairly new condo today, and we have bought a split level house, circa 1969, with some amazing updates for $20,000 less than what we bought the condo for three years ago. This I attribute to the housing market bubble popping.
Now the condo has been nice. It was a new construction when we bought it, nice and open design with all of the bells and whistles. But what happened was that a few months ago we realized that we were becoming house poor. The budget I planned for the condo kept getting blown out of the water from unexpected expenses. I didn’t properly plan on emergencies and raises that we didn’t get due to the economic downfall we have all experienced.
After a couple of years of being tight on cash we decided we were mainly paying for the area we were living in and could do with a less expensive house.
So, now we will be saving about $300 a month in mortgage and taxes and we were able to get our money back out of the sale of the condo. Unfortunately we didn’t make anything, but at least we didn’t lose our butts.
Hopefully the money being saved will be going into savings. Up next is my goal for a lower car payment.
No doubt everyone wishes to be successful. In discussing this, some fundamental principles like diligence, devotion and constancy should be borne in mind all the time.
Unfortunately, many people are “square pegs.” They work hard, but they lack contentment in their career. They feel unhappy and sometimes frustrated.
With Feng Shui, the ancient science of manipulating people’s living and work space, you can create harmonious interaction with the chi energies of the natural environment. The intangible forces create auspicious and inauspicious chi energy. It is important that you direct the auspicious chi energy to improve your career prospects. One effective way to harness truly good fortune for your career is the Life Aspiration Theory of Feng Shui.
The golden rule for activating career luck starts with the understanding of the octagon Bagua: its symbol, element, direction and meaning in relation to our life aspiration. Each trigram represents he following:
|
Wood
Wood
Fire
Earth
Metal
Metal
Water
Earth |
East
Southeast
South
Southwest
West
Northwest
North
Northeast |
- Possess good health, harmony and unity of the family - Become rich and wealthy - Achieve recognition, respectability and humor - Promote love life and enjoy a happy marriage - Have filial solidarity and successful children - Get help and support from rich and powerful people - Advance to great heights in one’s career - Enjoy success in learning and attain academic honors |
From the chart, you can see that the trigram Kan Gua located in the North represents career success and that its element is Water.
If your home or office in this North sector has good Feng Shui, you will attain great heights in your career. With bad Feng Shui, bad luck will prevail and you will find it difficult to gain promotion or even to get a job.
To locate the career luck sector in your house, room or office, first purchase a Feng Shui compass. Next, stand at the entrance door. Draw a rough layout of the area, identifying each corner according to its compass direction. Then you will know which corner of the place is associated with which life aspiration.
Now you can energize your career luck. Apply the rationale of the Five Elements (Metal, Wood, Earth, Fire and Water). Bear in mind that Water is the element of North. Take note of the productive and destructive cycles of the Five Elements.
Water is produced by Metal, so Metal is good for Water
Water itself produces Wood, so Wood could exhaust Water.
Water is blocked by Earth, so Earth is harmful to Water.
Water destroys Fire; it overcomes Fire.
To strengthen the element of the North, use objects or colors that symbolize both the Water and Metal elements. Aquariums, fountains, waterfalls, swimming pools, even fishes and the like symbolize Water. Feng Shui wind chime, Good Luck coin, bells and other lucky charms made of Metal symbolize this element that creates Water. White, blue, black, chocolate brown and gray are all favorable for the North.
When your garden is in the North part of the house, you can place a fountain to activate excellent opportunities for career advancement. It must be in harmonious balance with the overall garden setup, however. Do not use oversized or oddly-shaped fountains; they might overwhelm the other chi energies.
If the Dragon side of your house happens to be the career sector, it is ideal to place an aquarium as this makes an excellent Water chi energizer.
If your main entrance door is in the career sector, use the Feng Shui wind chime to attract lucky chi energy. This should be made of Metal, having at the center a Yan-Sheng coin and a Holy Gourd hanging below. This allows the lucky chi energy to be channeled to the proper sector.
Right now the wife and I are trying to sell our home. Let me tell you, what a pain. We are lucky however that we have someone interested. What is holding back the process is a thing called a party wall agreement. We live in a condo and there are certain rules when it comes to sharing walls with another tenant. According to the party wall agreement, we need to share the same insurance company as our wall sharing tenant.
I’d never heard of such a thing, but it’s enough for the buyer to hold off on an offer. I’ve never discussed insurance with my neighbor. Very weird, but part of selling a house I suppose. Have any of you ran into a party wall agreement problem?
