Weekend High lights and Low lights.

Low lights first. I went to an auction looking for a new bike. I found a decent one, and decided I would go as high as $40 for it. I wandered around following the auctioneer watching the other items go when I looked behind me and there was a second auctioneer and he had just finished auctioning off the bikes. The bike I wanted went for $5! No, I didn’t forget to put a zero on the end of that number. This was a nice bike too. It had big shocks on the front, and on the rear wheels, as well as some kind of a suspension thing on the center bar. (Can you tell I know nothing about bikes?) It’s not that I really “need” a new bike, but would have been happy to pick something up. I guess it was not meant to be. I had to keep telling myself that so I didn't spit nails I was so mad when I realized what happened.

Another low light is that my big upright freezer went kaput this weekend. I think the seal went bad. I ate more meat this weekend than I have in months. I managed to fit most of the meat into our freezer in the house, and anything that was remotely looking freezer burned I cooked up for the dogs. The rest was freezer burned veggies and bread so we really didn’t lose much money. I am going to look for something smaller and more energy efficient to replace it.

One of my high lights of course includes my .4 pound loss on Saturday. I also picked strawberries on Saturday and that was quite enjoyable even if it was back breaking. The berries were only $1.40 per pound if you picked them yourself otherwise they are $3.50 per quart this season. Kind of pricey I think. I made John and I some healthy, low sugar strawberry shortcake.

Another high light is that I made my first ever compost bin. I took a 55 gallon plastic barrel (which I already had) and drilled a bazillion holes in it, then put it outside to start composting some of our food waste. I have so many fruit and vegetables peels and scraps that just go into the landfill where they can’t break down because they are trapped in a plastic bag. I need to make a list for John so he knows what can and cannot go into the compost pile. I am still foggy on a few things. I know meat, bones and processed foods are generally a no no. My main purpose is to reduce the amount of garbage we put out to the road. The nice soil it will eventually create will be a bonus, but that is not my primary reason for doing it. I am sick of paying $300 per year for garbage pick up. Between our recycling efforts and now our composting, I think we will reduce our garbage to at most one bag per week. I am terribly ashamed to admit we would put out five bags per week easily before we started recycling. So this is just one more layer to “greening” up our habits.