We've been eating a lot more vegetables over the past few months. I used to think that a meal had to have meat for it to be a meal, but as we've become better at cooking, it's become easier to make good recipes with mostly vegetables.

The vegetable box we receive also gives us plenty of things to cook that don't have to be accompanied by meat, and I'm trying new fruits and vegetables with each box we receive.

I've made a conscious decision to try to minimize the amount of meat I eat and there are some benefits of that. For example, I may live longer by eating less meat.

A minor benefit of eating less meat is that cooking less raw meat means that there are fewer times when animal blood gets on our counter top and fewer bacteria in the kitchen.

The animal food industry has a huge impact on the environment due to all the resources it takes to feed animals so we can eat them, and also treats many animals inhumanely.

We have a couple pretty good cookbooks that we use that have many meat-free recipes. Stir-fry with vegetables and sometimes tofu is a favorite of ours. We've also found some recipes online for chili, veggie sandwich, and mushroom and potato soup.

Eating some meals without meat does take some effort to find new recipes that don't include meat, but for me it has been worthwhile and for many other people who have reasons for eating less meat.

Seattle City Light sends out a newsletter bimonthly with news and tips for saving energy and recycling electronics among other things. This issue detailed where our electricity comes from:

• Hydro - 91.2%


• Nuclear - 4.4%


• Wind - 2.3%


• Coal - 1.4%


• Other - 0.7%

The Seattle Public Library has Kill-A-Watt's to borrow. A Kill-A-Watt is a device that you can plug other electronic devices into and it will tell you how much electrical power it uses. I've known about these for a while, but it's not relly worth buying at around $25, so it's really nice that they can be rented from the library.

Over the past several days, I've been plugging all of our electronics into it to see how much power they consume. While electricity is very inexpensive here at around $0.05 per kWh, it's still cool to know how much electricity our electronics are using.

We weren't able to measure any high-voltage appliances, but certainly our refrigerator and oven use a lot of electricity. Of the appliances we were able to measure, our microwave and vacuum use the most power when in use, but we don't use them very often, so they don't account for a very large portion of our electrical consumption.

I was most interested in finding out how much standby power our devices used when turned off. Over time, these phantom loads from TVs, microwaves, and video game systems can add up to quite a lot of power. Some estimates are that standby power costs Americans $3 billion annually and accounts for as much as 10% of residential electrical consumption.

We found that the biggest things that steal electricity when not in use our CD player (particularly the clock), computer equipment (especially the modem and router), and our cable box. In fact, somehow just the clock on our CD player uses more power than our laptop does when powered on.

Contrary to things we'd heard, many things didn't use electricity when not in use - our cell phone chargers and other electronics chargers didn't show any electric consumption when our devices weren't charging.

Now that we have a better understanding of how much electricity our things use, we'll try to make better decisions about how we use them. For example, it's not very hard to switch off our surge protectors at night when we're not using them, and in doing so we could save over 10% off of our annual electricity bills (we only spend around $157 annually anyway). We'll also likely keep our CD player clock off now that we know how much power it wastes.

Anyway, it's cool that we were able to borrow the Kill A Watt from the library and now we're a little more educated on how we're using electricity.

We found out recently that our apartment building offers composting. I can put things in compost at work, but we've never done it at home. Some people have their own composting bins at home so that they can use the fertile soil that comes from it. Residents in our building can just put their compost in a separate bin and some company picks it up.

Food scraps are the main thing that is compostable. We eat a lot of vegetables and there are always unused portions for composting. We also just finished a bag of Sun Chips, which are now sold in a compostable bag, and were happy to put the bag in compost instead of adding to our landfill-bound trash.

We already have bags to put our recyclables and our regular trash in, but we don't yet have a place for a composting bag, so we'll need to figure that out soon. It's too bad we didn't take advantage of this over the past couple years, but it's nice that there's another way in which we can reduce our negative impact on the planet.

Whenever we go to the coast, we always see "tsunami evacuation route" signs and are amused since it seems so foreign to us having not grown up in this area. Some locals in small towns along the coast have removed the signs so that tourists aren't scared away. But tsunamis really are very dangerous and apparently the West Coast is totally unprepared for such an event. Apparently there's a series of 39 buoys all along the coast from Alaska to South America that are supposed to detect tsunami waves and alert areas that will be affected by them. However as many as a third of them are down for maintenance issues at various times.

The last earthquake and tsunami from the Cascadia fault occurred 300 years ago. The last tsunami to hit the northwest coast was in 1964 when an Alaska earthquake caused a tsunami that damaged Cannon Beach, OR. Here's an excerpt from a Seattle Times article that explains what parts of the northwest coast are considering in order to be more prepared for tsunamis:

The Oregon town of Cannon Beach is considering construction of an earthquake- and tsunami-resistant building that could serve both as a city hall and a refuge. On Washington's Long Beach Peninsula, where there's very little high ground, leaders are mulling the idea of building berms where people could gather to escape a tsunami surge.

We live near Puget Sound, which isn't that close to the Pacific Ocean, so tsunamis aren't as big of a threat to us, but are still possible.

A new Seattle city ordinance effective today requires all restaurants to use recyclable or compostable containers instead of styrofoam. Restaurants will be subject to fines up to $250 if they are non-compliant. By doing this, Seattle will prevent up to 6,000 tons of trash and leftover food from heading to the land fill every year. I'm not sure why this wasn't required 10 years ago, but it's a good step in the right direction. This is just a sign of how Seattle is more environmentally-oriented than other cities.

"Carbon footprint" is a phrase commonly heard around here as people here often consider impacts to the Earth and the environment when making decisions. So, that's why it was not surprising that the church we go to recently had a sermon series on environmental stewardship.

In my time attending church in Texas, I don't remember the environment being mentioned. The difference is probably not in theology but in how culture affects what aspects of theology are emphasized. The environment is an important issue here, so God's call for Christians to be good stewards of the Earth may seem more relevant to people here than in Texas, where, for example, it can still be controversial to allude to global warming.

Our church encouraged congregants to take alternate forms of transportation to church (carpooling, walking, taking the bus, etc.) and many people participated. Anyway, it's just kind of interesting.

The company where I work partnered with a non-profit organization and invited all employees to help clean up a local greenbelt this week. I wasn't sure whether I wanted to participate, but after seeing some great weather in the forecast last week, I figured some time outside (while still getting paid) would be good, and signed up to help out last Monday.

I went with about 15 other employees to meet with members of the Nature Consortium, which is in charge of the project to restore several acres of land near the Duwamish river. I don't know the full story, but the area has been overrun with invasive plants and so the Nature Consortium is trying to restore it to how it used to be before human settlement.

We started by potting some baby trees that were loose in a bucket. They were going to be planted, but apparently it is too late in the season to plant them so they'll be saved for next year. Then we mulched the side of a hill, which was probably my favorite part, though it was also possibly the hardest. Then we had to dig up some invasive blackberry species and remove some ivy, which can add a lot of weight to existing trees and cause them to fall over in strong wind.

It was 4 hours of hard work, but I really enjoyed it. The weather was great and it's really cool that my company sponsored this community service activity.

With suburban sprawl reaching into the foothills of the Cascade mountains, the previously natural habitat for black bears has been taken over by roads, houses, and people.

In 2008, state wildlife officials fielded 881 calls about bear sightings in King County alone, and sent officers out on 260 calls. That's up from the year before, when officers received 679 sightings and responded to 202 bear calls.

This article in the Times talks about how a service dog is being used to chase these black bears away in their quest for food so that they learn to stay away from populated areas.

When I started work, I enjoyed being able to ride the bus, but wasn't totally comfortable with it at first. However, now that I've been taking the bus to work regularly for six months, I've gotten comfortable with taking the bus and enjoy it more than ever. Here's why:

1. Having time to read - I've always had a hard time finding time to read at home in the evenings or on weekends, so I haven't read much. However, I do really enjoy reading. When I take the bus, I have 30 minutes available before and after work and have been able to read more books over the past six months than I had in the previous few years.


2. Being able to walk - I love to walk but, like reading, it can be hard to fit in time and a reason to go for a walk from home. However, I get to walk every day when I take the bus. If I don't want to walk far, I can take a route that goes by where we live, or if I want to walk longer, I can take another route and have a 10-15 minute walk home in the afternoon. There's another route that takes me by Pike Place Market and gives me about a 20 minute walk home. It's a great time to get outside, see the city, talk to people on the phone, and get a little exercise on my way home.


3. Environment - By not driving, there's an extra half ton of greenhouse gases that our car didn't release into the air.


4. Money - Over the past six months, I've saved about 1000 miles of wear and tear on our car and about $100 in gas. Not a ton of money, but it adds up.


5. Less stress - Seriously, people here drive so slow and are always in the way. That just doesn't bother me on the bus.

In fairness, riding the bus isn't perfect and it's not for everyone. Here are a few of the things that annoy me about it.

1. It's slower - It takes about 40 minutes to get to work by bus, including walking time and I can drive to work in less than 20 minutes. I don't see the extra time as wasted, though, since I can spend it reading or walking. But, it is nice to shorten the time spent in transit. Sometimes I'll drive if I'm running late and some days if I just want to get home at the end of the day I'll wish I'd driven.


2. I can miss it - This doesn't happen nearly as often anymore, now that I've found One Bus Away, but I sometimes try to catch the bus from work and don't give myself enough time and end up missing the bus. Usually this isn't a big deal, but it's especially frustrating if I'm working late when the buses don't run as often.


3. I don't get it all to myself - When I first started riding, it was always full and I always had to stand. However, after gas prices dropped, seats opened up and I can always find a seat. Just, sometimes, it'd be nice to have the whole row to myself.

I was tired of being embarrassed by my old web host so I changed web hosting companies this weekend. The host I'm using now, Host Gator, powers their servers with 130% wind power. Yeah, they actually put electricity back into the grid. The blog is hosted by Blogger, but the photo gallery is now hosted by HostGator. They also offer more capacity at a lower rate with better support, so I'm happy I switched so far.

Seattleites seem to really care about the environment and the latest example of that was the pizza we had on Friday night. The top of the box was covered with environmental facts and included a note about how the pizza company is trying to be green.

I think it's cool how treating the planet respectfully is on the minds of so many people here. Eventually we'll all get so used to things like conservation and composting that it won't have to be advertised and will just become a part of normal American life. But in the mean time, I'm happy to buy pizza from a company that is doing their part (and also makes really good pizza).

We had our first earthquake this morning around 5:25AM. It was 4.6 magnitude and about 22 miles to the Northeast of us. I didn't feel anything though and there's no reported damage.

We had some pretty bad snow and ice here, which was made worse because Seattle didn't use salt to melt the ice. However, based on how much the city was shut down during the last couple weeks, the mayor has decided to use salt in the future:

Seattle Mayor Greg Nickels announced this morning that the city will reverse its decade-old policy and use road salt to melt ice in future storms.

The roads were pretty bad before we left and with the snow that Seattle continues to get the roads are probably still pretty bad, especially since the city doesn't use salt to melt the ice:

The icy streets are the result of Seattle's refusal to use salt, an effective ice-buster used by the state Department of Transportation and cities accustomed to dealing with heavy winter snows.

"If we were using salt, you'd see patches of bare road because salt is very effective," Wiggins said. "We decided not to utilize salt because it's not a healthy addition to Puget Sound."

I'm sensitive to environmental issues, but at the same time, it sure was a pain that the roads were so impassible. Anyway, it's just kind of interesting that the city doesn't use salt even though it would surely help a lot.

We get an electricity bill every two months. I don't know why it's not every month, I guess because energy is so cheap ($0.0376 / kWh), Seattle City Light (the same energy provider everyone has) doesn't bother making us pay every month.

When we received our first bill, we were using about 9.73 kWh per day. We weren't using any climate control, so I guess a lot of that was for the refrigerator, lighting, cooking, and laundry.

Since then, we've been trying to conserve energy by turning up the fridge temperature, turning the lights off when they're not being used, and turning off the surge protector for the computer and TV at night.

And, our efforts have paid off, so to speak, though with our bimonthly energy bill dropping from about $24 to about $21, there's not much of a literal payoff. Still, our use has dropped about 33% from what it was when we first moved here to about 6.53 kWh per day.

When we were back in Texas and using climate control almost daily, we were spending a lot more money, with energy prices being much higher. And we were consuming more energy as well, but not as much as I expected. With the heavy use of the air conditioner in the summer, we were using up to 18 kWh daily. The good thing was that we were able to get clean, renewable wind energy. However, over the whole year, we averaged only about 9.5 kWh per day, which is a little less than what we used when we moved in here. Here we're using the washer and dryer inside the apartment and since we used the community laundry room in Irving and since dryers use a lot of electricity, we actually used more energy than our electricity bill indicated. We also had gas heating for our hot water.

I haven't been able to find specific details on the energy sources used, but Washington uses a lot of clean, renewable hydroelectric electricity. That, combined with the fact that energy here is ridiculously cheap, means that there's not a huge incentive to cut energy consumption.

Still, we're continuing to find easy, effective ways of wasting less energy and we hope the habits we develop will help others to find ways to save energy and serve us well in the future.

We've posted before about how we've been driving less, but we finally figured out how much less we've been driving. We buy gas for our car once every three weeks. Since we arrived here in February, we've driven only about 3,300 miles and are on pace for 4,500 miles for the 12 month period after arriving here.

When we lived in Texas, we each had our own car and totalled around 17,000 miles over the previous year. That means we're driving about 1/4 as many miles as we used to. Even if you factor in our drive up here from Texas, that's only about 7,000 miles on our car for a full year.

Excluding our drive up here, our reduction in driving has prevented roughly 9,000 pounds of carbon dioxide from being released into the air. The amount of CO₂ emissions we saved is equivalent to the amount produced by an average home's electricity use in over half a year. It's nice to do our part to help the environment.

We don't drive often and we pay $125 per month for parking, on top of insurance and other expenses. I kind of wish we could sell our car to save money and then pay ZipCar to borrow a car when we needed it. That way we wouldn't have to pay for parking, gas, insurance, and maintenance. It would also be much more environmentally friendly as we would be more motivated to walk and use public transportation.

However, ZipCar charges by the hour and we use our car too often for ZipCar to be a practical, money-saving alternative. And, while I posted a while back about wanting to live closer to the grocery store, groceries only account for about a sixth of the time we use the car. Another sixth is shopping. About a fifth of our time with the car is church. More than a third of our time with the car has been spent on going for hikes.

So, if we were to sell our car, we would have the money we make from selling it, but the cost to rent a car for all those times, even considering the fact that we would drive less, would be higher what we currently pay per year. And, even if we moved closer to church and the grocery store, the cost for day trips is much higher if we don't own a car. Plus, if we sold our car now and had to buy another car later, we would probably have to pay more for another car than we would get for our current car. So while I was interested in selling our car as a way to save money and help the environment, it just isn't feasible right now.

I've been consistently taking the bus at least four times per week. After finding out about MyBus.org, I've been missing the bus a lot less. I missed the bus in the morning once last week, so that was the day I decided to drive. However, I really like taking the bus, mostly because I get to read along the way, but also because I don't wear out the car. It takes a little longer to take the bus, but I've really enjoyed it. I'm still thinking about getting a bike to ride to work, but for now the bus is just fine.

I've had some frustration about taking the bus to work, since it's not very consistent. However, I found this great website, MyBus.org, which displays how far behind (or ahead of) schedule the buses are. It's not as good as what San Francisco has, but it offers some guidance to me so that I know when I need to leave my desk to catch the bus. So, now that I have that resource, I really enjoy riding the bus to work 4+ times per week.