Day 29

So much for the winning streak. I spaced out and the next thing I knew I was eating a Club pannini, which has turkey and bacon. Oh well, everything else was just fine, the driving and showering and such. I talked about board games with my instructors, because we're nerds like that. Only a few more days left until I can eat meat whenever I want. I'll probably still thing about it every tim eI do eat meat, but it's not like that's going to stop me. I mean... c'mon. Bacon.

Day 28

It's getting closer, I was just checking the calendar and seeing when classes (and this project) would be ending. In two weeks from tomorrow (May 31st) I'll be giving a presentation about this carbon diary/journal thing. It's supposed to be a poster board presentation, but maybe I'll try and do a powerpoint instead, you know... to lower my carbon footprint since the computers are already in place. I can review that more later, but I think to give myself plenty of time to work on it I'll be ending this on Friday, though I might do another post or two just to wrap things up, this Friday will be my last meatless day. Though I have to admit, I'll probably still keep eating those Trade Joe's corndogs, those are pretty tasty.

I didn't have any meat again today, even though I could hardly tell the corndogs were meatless, and I managed to even avoid eating too much junk food at school, which was good. The normal driving occurred and I did buy a coffee, and one for Lindsey, but she can take the credit for that one. I'd like to say I was planning an exciting trip for the summer, but I'll just be taking classes and hopefully working on an internship, so no worry of flying anywhere either.

Day 27

After grabbing some groceries at Trader Joe's I managed to keep another meat free day. Carbon footprint was the same as usual in terms of driving and the other things. I didn't use any extra plastics or papers or any of that stuff.

Day 25 & 26

I had a great weekend, thanks for asking. I did some hanging out Friday evening with a friend, and enjoyed some veggie Pud Thai, then went to Marrymoore park and grilled on Saturday while playing Frisbee. We got to watch some LARPing and sword fighting by these guys while we enjoyed burgers, soda, and the sun. Don't hate, it was entertaining, and there was like 76 of them so they could definitely team up and kick your ass with their foam swords and shields and pikes and... well the arrows are pretty much worthless.

I walked for 8 miles with my parents and their friends on mother's day Sunday, then ate a 1/2 pound burger to counteract all that calorie burning. I also hung out with Ben on Saturday night, just remembered that. I did a bunch of driving around and meat eating and all those fun things that kill the environment. I know it's terrible, but I had a great time.

Day 24

As promised, here is another thrilling installment of "Oh God, Why Did I Give Up Meat?" Now as I've said before it isn't actually all that bad, the most difficult part is finding things at school that don't have meat that aren't just chips or other things that are equally horrible for you. Going out to eat can be a bit difficult as well since they tend to put meat on everything, including the salads, and you know I can't really blame 'em for that. Who wants to eat a big bowl of dry leaves? Speaking of salad, I had one of those yesterday with a little bit of bacon and some chicken. I know it's meat, but I didn't really want pancakes for lunch again so I decided to say F-it and go for the salad. It's mostly non-meat, so that counts, right?

I had to drive a bit extra yesterday, to meet my mom for lunch so I could get that salad that had meat in it. I also ended up ordering a pizza for dinner, which of course means someone else had to make it, bake it, then drive it out to my house. So there's 800 tons of carbon going straight into my footprint, or is it gigatons? Whatever it is, I'm sure it wasn't very helpful to the world. I'll do my best to avoid getting pizza delivered from now on, and instead maybe swing by the Safeway or something on the way home and grab a pizza there instead. Saving the cost of someone making an extra trip out and back to my house.

I also had to fill up again yesterday, I suppose that in itself isn't too bad but it's always a good remind as to why driving is bad, mmk? I suppose if I have 40 grand or so I could buy an all-electric car and reduce my CO2 emission by 30%, since we're about 30 percent hydro here in the PSE district. Or I could walk 2 miles, ride a bus, walk a little more, then wait and ride another bus to school and work... I guess this is why I'm just driving my car. I will agree though that reducing your usage should be your first step to improving your carbon footprint or your energy usage. That's right, I just made a connection between Gail and Dave's classes.

Too good

Day23

No extra driving, no extra showers, no laundry, and no ordering t-shirts from Iceland. Meat was successfully avoided with a PB&J sandwich, egg salad sandwich (it was meh) from the famous Stop Watch Espresso down on the lower level. Dinner was some cheese pasta and toasted french bread again. I know these are getting far to short and not nearly as entertaining, I'll try and work on it or something later, I've got class again.

Day 22

So far so good, I think. The carbon foot print has remained pretty much the same except for the lack of meat, which is a good thing of course since that's what I'm supposed to be cutting out. This is going to be another very short post because, as you may have noticed from the time stand, I forgot to write this in the morning and I'm frantically trying to remember what I ate yesterday.

Ok, fine. There's nothing frantic about it. I know I had broccoli and cheese, some toasted french bread, and some pasta for dinner last night. Then I think there was some snacks and random little things for lunch and a bagel with cream cheese for breakfast.

Day 21

The more of these I write I find myself way "day [whatever]" in a way that one might if they were stranded on a desert island or hold up alone in the zombie apocalypse, but surely being without bacon for 5 days in a row for 6 consecutive weeks can't be quite that bad. I shouldn't even be complaining this week, the weather has been amazing since last weekend and is supposed to stay that way until the next.

No meat again, so good on that, except I had Velveeta mac-n-cheese which turned out to be not nearly as good as I remember it. Oh well, that's all for today because I need to eat before class.

Day 18, 19 & 20?

Ok, so I just realized that I missed Friday by accident so I'll just lump it all into the weekend and call it good.

Friday
Drove to and from school, then to and from my friend's place in Ballard. I had pizza twice because both times it was free, the second time it even had meat on it but it was only a couple hours from the weekend so I called it good. I mean, how am I going to turn down free pizza? I'm sure the both and creation process make plenty of carbon though.

Saturday

I did a lot of sitting at home and doing nothing, but that's good because low carbon, right? I did drive into town then home again, but it was for my Dad's birthday dinner so I can't really say it would have been legit to skip that sort of thing. I had some awesome food, which included meat, however it was all supposedly grown locally. Within 360 miles of the restaurant, apparently. Other than that I spent most of my time at home eating left overs and trying to fight off the urge to cook the pound of bacon I have left in my fridge from last weekend.

Sunday
So I did plenty of driving. I went to Issaquah, then somewhere else in Issaquah, then one more place, then came home. The first one was my buddy and I looking around for a supposed hiking trail which we had no luck finding, then we gave up on that and went to Tiger Mountain instead and hiked 8 miles. That was good times, my legs aren't even that sore... well except for the blister. Then we went to XXX Burger and got some giant burgers with even bigger 22 Oz. mugs of rootbeer. A perfect way to counter hiking up a mountain, calorie wise.

In recap I'm sure it was a heavy carbon weekend for me, but I can't really say that's too unusual. Avoiding meat on the weekdays is getting easier, but I'm also starting to doubt that it will actually make that big of a difference in my carbon footprint once I go back and do the calculator.

Day 17

Oops, I accidentally had some pepperoni today. I didn't even think about it and grabbed a subway with a friend while killing some time between classes. Everything else has been good, spent a big more gas so I could fill up my car, but that's how it works. However, I had some awesome "black bean patties" for dinner, they have some other veggies like squash and the like in them, but they were pretty tasty despite not actually having any buns to put them on.

Overall it was a pretty good day for the carbon footprint even if I did accidentally have meat. Maybe I'll make up for it by not cooking two pounds of bacon this weekend... or maybe not.

Day 16

Ok, I have to give a shout out to all my readers, especially you Germany-based blog-trolling bot. You were here before those Russian blog-trolling bots and therefor are clearly a much more dedicated fan... or fans, I don't really know how many of you there are. I only know I get around 5 page views a day and I'm  fairly certain none of them are real people, but I'm ok with that because I don't actual care. Not caring is nice, it makes it so I don't have to worry about what people think. Speaking of being egocentrism, here's the days recap.

• No unnecessary driving. +0 points
• No paper cups. +1.25 points
• No excessively long showers. +2 points
• Did not print out 23 pages. +0.75 points
• Did all of the tings above, just not to the extreme. -15 points

Needless to say, besides avoiding meat I'm probably doing a horrible job at reducing my footprint, though I'll just saying I'm taking the scientific approach and only changing one variable at a time to measure the real impact of it.

Day 15

First off I just need to share this. It's not like it's the first time I've heard it or anything, plenty of those views are mine, but I was listening to it just now and decided the world should know about it... so I'm going to do something besides post it on a blog no one reads. Maybe.

I had to wash some clothes yesterday and I don't think I have energy star appliances. While this isn't really any of my own doing, it still counts because of all that water and energy (yes I used a clothes dryer because it wasn't one of the four days a year you can dry clothes outside in Seattle). That's the big difference, the rest is the usual drive to and from school, sit at the computer all day, and eat things not containing meat while I wish they contained meat.

Speaking of not eating meat, I hear my man Mike put his carnivorous cravings aside as well, though I think he might just be crazy enough to be trying to give it up all seven days a week O.O Not sure I'd be capable of that, I mean, no more bacon or chicken? I might be able to do without the rest so long as I could sneak a burger ever now and then, but I already feel like this not eating meat thing is making the weeks drag out. Maybe it's just because I'm hungry all the time, whatever it is it's probably a good thing considering the quarter is just flying by.

Day 14

Not a bad day Monday, mostly snacks and other things but at least there was no meat. Here be the carbon recap.

• Driving
• Computer use (electricity)
• Hot shower (Nat Gas)
• Paper cup for some coffee
• Printed 23 pages for an audit for 205
• Had the air handler shut down for a tour, so that saved us some power.

I've been trying to decide if I'm actually eating any healthier or if I'm eating a lot more carbs and other crap that's beefin' me up, pun intended. Anyway, I've noticed plenty of driving, but that's almost all just going to school and coming home, and electricity use. The electricity use I'm sure I could cut down on but  I'm just too used to using my computer.