I made a trip to Lowes yesterday for more CFLs, water filter and a furnace filter. My sidekick, Darla, and I were perusing the appliance section near the cabinetry and I stopped her. I asked her if she could smell that? She said yeah what is that. I told her that was formaldehyde offgassing from the particle board in the cabinets. Her immediate reaction was "shit, that's bad." She went on to say that "kids wooden swing sets were made with that and what happens when a kid gets a spinter from it?" Exactly. That's the point environmental advocates have been trying to make.
What I am learning is that for those of us trying to exact change in perceptions and peoples' thinking is that you have to connect our message to a trigger point or a hot spot in peoples' mindset. Darla's trigger is our daughter Mallory. This connected the dots between what I've been saying and how its affects even kids. Mallory could have been affected by this. Darla continues to have an open mind about my rants and is really starting to connect the dots and consciously make changes. I am very proud of her. Mallory has been hounddogging kids at her school in the lunchroom that when they throw a recyclable product away she harasses them to pull it out and put it in the recycling bin. She even went to the principle and asked for a additional recycling bins next to each trash can and got it!
Anyway, the good news from Lowes was that as I was checking out, I asked about LED bulbs and the lady at the counter said they were on order. She said there's been so much demand that they put in an order last week and should be in store in a couple weeks.
I was also paid a very good compliment this week. My co-worker and dear friend, Erin, came into my office and said, "It's all your fault! Its your fault that I feel bad every time I throw away a piece of paper or paper towel roll and not recycle it." She and Todd don't have curbside recycling but she said they took 3 large bags to a recycle center. Success! Imagine if one person could affect one other person's thinking about recycling the amount of change would be staggering!
Our company is getting closer to our move to our new office building downtown. We are having another cleanout day so we aren't moving any unnecessary items. I am still struggling with the fact that I am now going to have to pay to park. Right now, I can park 15 yards from the office door for free. When we move downtown, I can get into a lottery to park in the garage attached to our building for $95 a month or just sign up for a surface lot for $65 a month that's two or three blocks away. I am sure the feminists will crucify me for this, but there is no way I am going to enter into a lottery to take a spot in the garage knowing that I am taking a spot from a woman and making her walk.
Darla and I have been discussing it, and I am continuing to lean towards taking COTA down. Its 2.5 miles from my house to the Dublin Park-n-ride. I will take the Express to downtown and then maybe a mile from the terminal to our office. A monthly COTA pass will be half the cost of parking and is a week's worth of gas for me now. There will be some days that I will need my car for appointments or the weather is inclement, but I guess I will pay the per diem on those days. We'll see how it goes.
The IBS in Orlando was fantastic. There were a lot of great exhibitors and the NAHB's unveiling of their Green Building Program was pretty good. A lot of unanswered questions, but I think it's a work in progress and will learn on the move. The BIA here in Columbus will keep our existing program in place and then eventually migrate the the NAHB's once the kinks are worked out.
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