Christmas in July

Christmas came early for me this year. Saturday night our new recycling/yard debris bins were delivered, an event that has filled me with a little less anticipation than our trip to Bali and a little more, than the start of the fifth season of Project Runway. It kind of ranked right up there with the release of the new Batman movie.

Why is my life so pathetic that this got my heart all a twitter? If you can recall, we've been trying to get by with throwing away 1 32-gallon can of garbage a month. For the first month of this experiment we did pretty well, even though the lid to the can barely fit, we managed to last four weeks. Then three weeks later we had to wheel it out for pick up, not because it was full but because it smelled something awful. Could have been the raw chicken bits baking in the sun for three weeks. Phew!

The new bins allow us to recycle a few things that would have been thrown away, like yogurt and sour cream containers! And rather than schlep all of our old plant pots back to Portland Nursery for recycling, we can dump them in our new container, which cleared out our garage. Every bit helps when you're down to one small can! And they are such a nice bright blue and green, they roll, and are far bigger than the old yellow bins.



Speaking of garbage, we saw Wall-e last week. The story is that the human race has made such a mess of the planet with all their crap, that they have taken refuge on a huge spaceship a couple of galaxies away. All fine and dandy. Wall-e was cute--in a robotic sort of way--and the message about the human race becoming fat and lazy was unexpected, yet entertaining. However, when we bought our ticket we were handed a cheap non-working watch--must have been a promo. It was a craptacular piece of marketing that lay forgotten in Dylan's cup holder at the theatre, only to see the trash bin moments after we left. Can you say dripping with irony?

An aside note: this is my 100th post on Only Planet! We're still traveling, (Dylan & I to Colorado & Andy to North Carolina in the next week) and still hopefully finding something interesting to comment upon. Namaste.

Dancing Through Life

Did you see this article in the New York Times? After reading it, I had to check this guy out and watch him dancing around the world. He's whimsical, fun, and yes dorky at the same time.

Video brings another dimension to the traveler's tales. We can tell you that there seemed to be no one on the Great Wall of China when we visited, but you can see it yourself when you watch the video we have of Dylan running down the wall. Somehow smaller moments, like dancing in the street, take on a larger meaning when captured on video.



While we value the movies we took on our trip, it's also important that you set aside the camera and just allow the moment to happen--because often those are the ones we remember most.




A nine year old's ode to American food, recorded in Kilkenny Ireland.