Hope everyone had a good holiday weekend, full of fun times and relaxation! Mine was good, though I did receive some bad news on Thanksgiving morning.

Turns out, my little guy chose the night before his “turkey fest” to cross over to the great kitty cat beyond. Tyger was a part of the Reed household for 10 years. He was a stray that I took in back when I was 13; I was always bringing in strays when I was a kid (I still would if I could). After being an indoor/outdoor cat for the first couple years we had him, he became an indoor only kitty due to his having mad allergies and constantly getting sick from being outdoors. He somehow got out of the house the night before Thanksgiving, I’m guessing he was in the garage and just slid out when someone opened the door; and no one knew. No one thought to look for him before they went to bed seeing he usually picks a room and stays in it all night. Little Mama assumed he was in my brothers room, brother assumed the same about my mother’s room. The next morning my Mom knew there was something wrong because Tyger hadn’t woke her up at 2am to eat as he usually did; nor was he pouncing on the bed for want of attention as he usually did in the morning. She looked out her bedroom window on the 2nd floor into the backyard and saw him sprawled out on the patio. She went down, got the ants off him, wrapped him up in a towel he liked and set him in his little blue bed. It was quite the crappy news to get as I was meeting my fiancés family for the first time, and being nowhere near home. I will miss my little guy, but he lived a spoiled and ultra comfy life, at least we could give him that. I can also be happy that he didn’t succumb to the fate most cats in my mom’s neighborhood do, being a coyote’s meal. The wild dogs and coyotes in her neighborhood will attack anything that moves.

That was the sad part, more on the positive part of the Thanksgiving adventure later!

Today the dreamboat and I flew into Dallas Texas and I got to meet his mom for the first time. YAY! Now the nerves are gone and I can enjoy the rest of the holiday. We will be staying at his moms house in Tyler with about 20 other people, and come Sunday I will have met 30 people; all family members and a best friend and his family. It’s turning out to be far more fun, and less frightening than I thought it would be, and tomorrow, I’m making brownies!

Ooo, look at what fun little gadget was on Gizmodo today. Isn’t it cute? It’s a Raindrop Ipod Bathroom Speaker by Dreams Japan. It comes in white, light blue, and orange, and from what the review says it doesn’t sound too bad and works fairly well. It’s compatible with the iPod 5G, iPod nano, iPod color display, iPod photo, iPod 4G, and iPod mini, and gets 10 hours of play time from 2 AA batteries. I already purchased that speaker for my Ipod so I can’t have this, I would feel guilty about the waste, but make no mistake; I totally want one of these cute little guys.

Saving and reusing water. What can I do? What can I do? Back on October 28 in Oh to be Green(er) I said that I was going to start trying to do my part in the world of water conservation; part of adding 5 more eco friendly habits to my lifestyle. I mentioned cutting down on time spent in the shower, doing dishes quickly after using them, and a couple other things. Recently I came up with a few things I could to in addition. Over the next few days I will share what I’ve added.

Firstly, I am keeping better track of my shower time. Before I tried to to keep it to 10 – 15 minutes just by estimating when said minutes had passed, and I did well, but after a while I fell back into my 30 minute shower ways. BAD! A kitchen timer was out of the question because A) I am easily startled and being startled makes me angry; I don’t want to be angry that early in the day, and B) I worry about being startled while in the shower, slipping and falling to my death, bashing my head on the side of the tub or the faucet or what have you. Yes, I know…

Enter the IPod. I found this little speaker attachment at the drugstore for 5 bucks. It runs on two rechargeable AAA batteries and plugs right into the jack. I just toss the whole thing into a Ziploc baggy, I re-use the same baggy every day, and play one of my shower time playlists, a group of 3 songs that take 10 to 13 minutes to play through. They allow me to keep track of my time in the shower, and I have fun singing along. Hooray for 1960s French pop songs in the morning!

Today the dreamboat and i went to the Green Festival at the San Francisco Concourse Exhibition Center. While we wished it was more informative and less of a who’s who bazaar of green companies (who will win the battle of the hippie vegan snacks? dun dun dun!), it was totally fun and mind opening.

There were quite a few good products and demonstrations and, just by chance, we got to meet Tami, an oh so awesome lady from Luscious Garage, a woman-owned and operated garage in the Soma specializing in hybrids. We were excited to meet someone from Luscious Garage because a few months ago the dreamboat bid on a design project for them. He didn’t get the project, obviously, but we are very happy that they’re doing well because ladies working on cars for a good cause kicks ass. Actually ladies working on cars in general is foxy and butt kicking, the green part is a very awesome bonus. Yeah!

A few other things that caught my eye while i was there and were new to me: Prisidio School of Management, SF Green Dentist, greeenhome.com, GreenIQ.com, Code Pink, Community Alliance with Family Farmers and VegNews. I took notice of these because they pertain to some particular interest of mine, but there were many other interesting things to behold, such as paper made of elephant dung, many green graphic design companies, and a bouncy baby/toddler/child bassinet/crib/hammock dealie that hung from the ceiling. I haven’t checked most of the things i want to look into out yet, i hope they’re as nifty and worthwhile as they seemed to be at the Festival.

One company that i was bummed to see there was PG&E. If you scroll to the bottom of this page you’ll know why. I find it to be a very poor representation of a “green” energy company. I mean come on! They don’t even get an A for effort. There is so much more that they could be doing, i don’t even know if they’re reaching “bare minimum” status. I need to do more research about this my own (you can’t always believe what Green Guerrilla, or for that mater any, organizations say), but Lets Greenwash This City has a lot of information about PG&Es ad campaign and statistics and infomation about what they’re actually doing…or not doing. I find this page about why PG&E is NOT green particularly handy. The New York Times was there too. Did they become green while i wasn’t looking? Please let me know if they did cause i am unaware of any drastic change aside from the resizing of the paper itself. If individuals like me and you are doing the most we can do, shouldn’t big business do the same?

Oh, by the way Cliff Bar won the hippie vegan snack battle (yum!) in my eyes. One might say they “put the smack down.” Or, maybe they just hugged everyone to death and then gave them carabiners?