Today's Efforts to Save the Earth

So, I've been very inspired of late to try harder to reduce my carbon footprint. Even though, my carbon usage is far less than most Americans, if everyone was like me we would need almost two earths! (Visit http://www.myfootprint.org/ to find out your impact). My biggest successes are being vegan (meat consumption and production are major producers of carbon and waste), shopping at the co-op (buying local food makes an immense difference), composting and collecting rain water to use on plans, etc. Two of my major inspirations are Sumner (her blog is great for people trying to eat more locally) and Jacky - both of whom work hard to consume minimally and locally. Anyway, today I was trying to store my rain barrel for winter. However, because it has rained so much lately it was very full. Not wanting to waste all of the water in it, I filled up some rubbermaid containers to store the water so I can continue to water the plans in it. After filling up and moving three such bins, I decided that it was enough. (Stagnant water in our basement is probably not a good idea). So, I tried to carry the half-full rainbarrel over to our compost bin and dump the water there (I'm not good at keeping it moist). So, soaking wet pants and shoes later our compost is saturated, the rain barrel is stored, and we have three rubbermaid containers with water for our indoor plants. What a mess. We also tried to eat a squash I found on the sidewalk last week... but it was very sour so that didn't really happen. Adventure!!